Discussion: What do you think makes the story good?

[Deleted member 29316]

in other words, he's in beta-testing phase

ayy

Well, 'ya know we all have that time we started as fools but slowly matured.

 

[K5Rakitan]

"Unique tropes" is an oxymoron.

 

[Deleted member 12793]

Presentation, I guess? That falls in editing.

I see a lot of web novels where the Author obviously hasn't done any editing,
and I wonder why. Even if your English isn't very good, a simple editing program
can fix some of the main problems. Or have another set of eyes take a look.

I'm sorry, but I will not read a chapter where there is not even a single punctuation,
where the capital is either all uppercase or lowercase, and when every other word
is spelled wrong.

I won't even take a second glance at a novel where the title doesn't have proper
capitalization or spelling (unless the spelling and capitalization is intentional)

Lack of a proper summary. No idea what the story is about, so why bother trying it?

As for, 'What makes a story good?' in general, I think that really differs between a reader's preference.
Besides good presentation, I look for specific genres and see if the plot is interesting.

Lack of unique tropes, non-perfect grammar and all, I can forgive, but there are 2 things that are insta turn-off for me: Betas and bad tenses. Jesus lads, either use present tense, or even better, past tenses. NEVER USE BOTH!

Unfortunately, I'm bad at that. I tend to switch between present and past tense.
I've never been able to fix that. Though I try to fix it when I can....

 

[bigbear51]

It takes quite a bit to understand if a story is good in terms of how it's built. Certainly more than focusing on one aspect to writing a story.

If anything, for most people who write on this site. It's probably better to focus on minimizing on what makes for a bad story. It could be simple things like making sure the grammar is proper. Avoiding using poor tropes, or at the least trying to make them good. Things like that would lead to better stories without trying to chase on one specific point.

 

[MajorKerina]

People just keep reading through it without stopping to think that they are reading. Usually that comes from reading it yourself and still feeling that devotion on edit. If a text to speech kerps you engaged. It's like cooking. Right alignment of choices, no major distractions, good execution, and desire for more.