Is it interesting characters? Or believable motivations? Maybe writing style? Is the world building?
And how likely are you to enjoy a book that doesn’t fit your own criteria?
Good prose
I also find the form of the writing to be very important! Can you give an example of particularly good prose?
The narrative has to make sense within the bounds of the books established rules. Partly why time travel fucks shit up so much.
In theory, there are ways to make time travel work, but it’s hard to make it interesting. I don’t think I’ve read any time travel book other than Well’s.
What book did you particularly enjoy because of its following of its own rules? And the opposite: a book that doesn’t hold up to this standard?
Have you read Outlander? I think she does time travel well and it’s interesting, at least if you’re interested in that kind of historical fiction.
I’ll check it out, thanks!
Carbon
Consistency in character.
Absolutely! What book did you like that had good characters?
I’m currently reading The Moor’s Last Sigh by Rushdie. His narrators tend to be wacky and his characters often do unconventional things, but when you read these books, you never feel like someone did something out of character. You read something outrageous and still feel like the character would definitely have done or said that.
Prose, themes, character arcs, plot are the essential building blocks of a novel.
All 4 of these are important for a book to be a masterpiece, with plot being the least important.
Closing plot threads in the order that you’ve opened them.
That’s an interesting take. Why do you think the order of the closure is important? I never thought about it…
I heard it on a podcast called Writing Excuses. It’s more of a feeling thing. You ever feel like, at the end of a movie, things just feel kind of off? It’s usually because they messed up their order of things. So like, if little Jimmy is solving a murder mystery, then he gets trapped inside a maze, then he encounters some deeply buried emotional trauma; then he has to resolve those issues in that order. He can’t solve the mystery until he leaves the maze, and he can’t leave the maze until he confronts his emotional trauma.
Plot threads are like nesting dolls. You can open as many as you want, but you have to close them in the reverse order. Next time your watching a show or movie, keep track of when they open and close plot threads and you’ll get it. When it’s done right, the audience will feel a good sense of resolution and they won’t even know why.
That’s really interesting! I never thought of it, thanks for sharing and for explaining it so clearly. I’ll play more attention while reading and watching to check this.
Characters that are written consistently, so that if they do something that is ‘out there’ later down in the story, the writing would have shown before hand how they got to that place.
To me, variety in characters is oddly important. By this, I don’t mean a superficial diversity, even if that helps, but more on the emotional level. If all the characters are smart and outgoing, or introverted and shy that doesn’t make for an interesting read in my opinion.
Characters that sit in that grey area. Any character who is 100% good or 100% bad makes for terrible reading.
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I think different readers enjoy different things in a book. Reasons for why a person may like a book may vary from individual to individual. For me, the most important reason for liking a book would depend on how real the characters feel to me and how much emotionally involved I feel with the characters. If a book fails to make me care for the characters, I lose interest. It’s even better if the book has philosophical undertones. Additionally, prose also matters. So, I can’t give an opinion on what makes a good book; I can only speak for what I like. And if I fail to get interested in a book beyond ~25-30% mark, I DNF because life is short and I would rather read for pleasure. For me world-building is not important, however someone who loves world-building over everything else might love a book which someone like me may not like at all. So books of different styles are great for different people who would enjoy them.
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