What is best in a story?

SerikoLee

Chaos Realm Creator/ Chaos God
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I made a third attempt on making a story and some of the readers and a author helped me out.
But am wondering what should i do in the story to make more interesting.
Here are my most common requests.
A. Filler
B: More details about the world
C: Making more of a backstory of the story
D: Slowed down pace
Which is the best way to do this?
Feel free to tell your own opinion on the matter.
 
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LotsChrono

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Slowing down the pace can accomplish all of the above.
Agreed.
I made a third attempt on making story and some of the readers and a author helped me out.
But am wondering what should i do in the story to make more interesting.
Here are my most common requests.
A. Filler
B: More details about the world
C: Making more of a backstory of the story
D: Slowed down pace
Which is the best way to do this?
Feel free to tell your own opinion on the matter.
What @K5Rakitan said.
 
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Deleted member 45782

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B, C, D sounds nice. But it really depends, can't say for sure since haven't read your story yet so can't say which is good idea to work on.
 

AliceShiki

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I'd say you should just write in whatever way you enjoy the most tbh...

I personally am fond of making the story as short as it can be tbh, so I'd definitely skip the first 3...

Slowing down the pace can work if you want more time to develop things though, but only if you feel like you'd enjoy the story more if it was slower~
 

ArcadiaBlade

I'm a Lazy Writer, So What?
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Filler is to pad a story up and develop characters.

Details is to enrich the setting and develop the world into a large playing field to test out your creative juices.

Backstory is mainly to create a character, his/her relevance to the story, and how you plan on advancing him/her.

slow pace is mainly to develop all the above.

However, each has their own disadvantages so its mainly how you plan on developing the story counts.

Filler if you want to create more personality however, too much can lead to bore or anger readers for a slow pace plot development.

Details is basically info dumping and handling it wrong would lead to dire consequences.

backstory is always good however like filler, it slows the plot and even would disregard the MC if you handled it poorly.

finally, slow pace is like how you win a race, would you do it slow, steady but has a high chance lose the game yet without any mistakes in advancing? Or go fast and hard but would stumble on a roadblock of development issues later on which you lose the game but has the quicker chance of winning. What I mean by that is either options have different results in what you go for but its mainly how you handle it what counts.

A writer would always has this issues when they all start to write a novel so its only your path to pick. The common option for writers is to go slow but some tend to pick the fast option(me included). My main recommendation for you is what type of author are you. Are you the type to be patient and develop your story properly or like us, be a maverick and optimize to write a story which you like but has a high chance of being unpopular.
 

TotallyHuman

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Slowing down the pace is a good choice in my opinion, but only when you have a clear picture of the setting
 

lnv

✪ Well-Known Hypocrite
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I made a third attempt on making story and some of the readers and a author helped me out.
But am wondering what should i do in the story to make more interesting.
Here are my most common requests.
A. Filler
B: More details about the world
C: Making more of a backstory of the story
D: Slowed down pace
Which is the best way to do this?
Feel free to tell your own opinion on the matter.

Judging by those details, it sounds like maybe the issue you are having is that you are jumping from A to B.

A story in general should go up a ramp on a climax, then wrap up with an anticlimax. You know like this:
1622090873534.png



While you don't need to exactly follow that, understand you need to build up hype to get readers interested, and then slowly whittle that hype. I've seen plenty of stories where the author tries to make everything super duper awesome that it becomes stale.

A story isn't just about the ending, but how you get there.

Like imagine your favorite food, now imagine eating only your favorite food for the rest of your life and nothing else. Before you know it, you will get sick of it fast. (It is proven, lobster is often considered a premium food, but back in the day some prisons served nothing but lobster which resulted in prison riots)

Effectively, you can't keep a story at all time highs or it will become stale. So I don't think people are asking for filler per se, what they are asking is that you spend more time building up the climax rather than jumping from A to B. I know it is tempting cause as a reader, you always wish to get to the juicy part as fast as possible. But that is cheap satisfaction. For people to really enjoy a story, you need buildup. Make people crave that B so they can feel satisfaction. Of course don't over-stall either.

World building, details and filler are simply methods of accomplishing that.

Writing a story is like drinking tea with sweats, the bitter tea makes the sweats sweater. If you eat nothing but sweats, at one point your tongue adjust and everything feels bland.

Makes sense?
 

Not_A_Symphony

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I made a third attempt on making a story and some of the readers and a author helped me out.
But am wondering what should i do in the story to make more interesting.
Here are my most common requests.
A. Filler
B: More details about the world
C: Making more of a backstory of the story
D: Slowed down pace
Which is the best way to do this?
Feel free to tell your own opinion on the matter.
Firstly keep in mind that every author has their own type of writing and each story has its own theme and, these two factors will never please all the readers in the world.
Since I have no idea what your story is about I'm just going to state some things that you can use (and how not to use them too much):
  • Fillers: These are nice if you want to delay the story itself, in other words creating chapters where not much happens and it's more of a Slice of Life than the main plot is always good to slow down the pace and make the story last, however, you must beware of fillers since if you do them too much, people might give up on the story itself (like some people just skip Naruto's and One Piece's filler episodes, etc);
  • Bonus Chapters: You can always add fillers in bonus chapters that are not related to the main story itself (this can be with the characters from your story or a brand new small story just to change the flow of your writing) [P.S.: Personally I feel like this is the best option, at least for me!]
  • Backstories: Creating and explaining backstories of the places (like the world/town/kingdom the character is in) and the main leads/second leads or even some extras is a great way to delay the story in a way that people enjoy since it makes them feel closer to the characters in question. Be careful not to do this every chapter otherwise people will start skipping it due to being "fillers".
  • Change of POV: Let's imagine you create a scenario where the MC is having a picnic and you are doing it from her POV, it would be interesting to repeat that scenario in the POV of another character or even the narrator itself (in 3rd person). You can also show a brand new scenario from a different character's POV.
  • Details: Adding details to the story itself is always a great way to make people imagine the scenario around them better. Things like: what type of attire is the MC wearing? What can she/he see with her eyes? What is the MC feeling?
  • Loose Ends: Every story has a main plot (usually already roughly planned) but it is important to add loose ends to keep the reader interested and delay the "final boss". So for eg: if your MC ultimate goal is to become an Emperor of a country and to do so he needs to murder the current ruler you can make it so there are several problems for him along the way that force him to delay his plan (like the current ruler plant spies on his house, making him be attacked, saving children from an orphanage, meeting other characters, etc)
  • Memory Ride: It is always pleasant to know more about the memories of the MC itself especially through memories or even dreams.
  • Small Problems: Unlike the loose ends (which are problems that cannot be resolved in one chapter), you can always create situations that are threatening to the MC but end up resolved in one/two chapters.
So right now this is about all I can remember regarding how to delay the story. Keep in mind that if you are going for a Japanese type of novel, none of the above fit since they consist of very small chapters that barely have any "juice" in them (in other words, details and such).
Of course, like everything in life, if you exaggerate in something too much the readers will get tired and leave so I would advise you to just do what you think is right for your story.
I'm terribly sorry for the big Holy Bible over here but I hope it helped you in any way! :blob_sir:
 

Reisinling

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Basing on the popularity of novels, I agree with others- "Climax". Except the other kind. Especially involving gender-bendered white haired multi-colored eye vampires/elfs
 

LoliGent

The Lolicon Gentleman
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People actually want filler? That sounds weird to me. I actually believe people don't like fillers. I don't. The term itself, filler, it connotes itself. It's just there to add up without substance.

Or is there like a new era of filler that is actually worth looking at? Or maybe I am getting the wrong impression of what filler is.
 

JayDirex

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first of all, stop with this filler nonsense. it is not your job to write filler!!!

The word you are looking for is SUBPLOT. That is the other side storylines running parallel to the main story. and Subplot also has to be interesting. And what I mean is just slowing the pace of your story down just to do it does not equal an interesting story.

So be mindful of that what you're writing actually keeps a reader's interest.

And instead of filler you can slow the pace down by having something like a chapter where they go to the festival and see the fireworks, or the beach or something. And we find out a little fun/(or dark) backstory about one of the characters. But it must be interesting.
 

Ai-chan

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I made a third attempt on making a story and some of the readers and a author helped me out.
But am wondering what should i do in the story to make more interesting.
Here are my most common requests.
A. Filler
B: More details about the world
C: Making more of a backstory of the story
D: Slowed down pace
Which is the best way to do this?
Feel free to tell your own opinion on the matter.
What story? It's hard to make suggestions when we don't know what's wrong with your story in the first place. Our suggestions could make it worse by suggesting you to do things you don't need when your flaw lies elsewhere.
 
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