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But it's not like this can't be true sometimes. Also, I think the phrase "no effort was put into this story" can have a different meaning, a non-literal one.

Of course, it can be true in the sense that an author might not have tried to do their absolute best on a story. But I dislike this assumption that just because somebody thinks a story isn't good, it was done without any effort. That's what I mean.

Okay, I feel like I need to explain why I have a problem with this specific phrasing: You can absolutely dislike a story, think it's bad, and also say so. But "effort", to me, implies something else. Mentioning effort or a lack thereof implies the author didn't work hard when readers simply have no way to judge that.

The quality of a story comes from a lot of places: grammar, writing style, characters and their constellation, world-building, plot etc. Different authors struggle with different parts of this and excel in others. So if, for example, the grammar is atrocious, that doesn't mean the author didn't put in effort. Maybe they are an ESL speaker, have dyslexia, or didn't get around to editing yet.

Same with any other part: Maybe they like a certain trope even if a reader thinks it is overdone. Maybe they are even trying to make a point with having a certain type of character in the story even if readers dislike that character type or think it's flat. But none of that says anything about how hard an author tried, aka, how much effort they put into the story.

The golden rule of judging stories is to judge the actual story, not the author. Saying "there was no effort put into this" is, in my eyes, judging the perceived lack of effort on the author's part and not the story. If somebody wants to judge the story, they'd have to say what they deem lacking. "Effort" simply isn't a part of the story that readers can judge, IMHO.

You totally don't have to agree with this, btw. As I said, it's a personal pet peeve of mine because I tend to think that there is effort put into any story simply by us sitting down and taking the time to write it.

Sure, we might put more effort into some stories compared to others but there is no story that is written with no effort at all as far as I'm concerned. We still had to come up with it and type it, after all. A no-effort story is a plagiarized one you copied somewhere and even that one had effort put into it, simply by another person.