Important Question

[backupdump002]

Throwing this up here real quick while I'm thinking about it.

Internet, what is the main thing that you look for in a story? Three-dimensional characters? Intriguing plot? Breathtaking world/atmosphere? What is the one thing where, even if everything else about the story sucks, you'd keep following it anyway because your interest in that overshadows everything else? Just, you know, if you had to pick.

GO.

Comments

[zarla.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm...

If something has really hateful characters, but a good plot... I'll probably get tired and ditch it. Then again, I pretty rarely ever see a good plot, come to think of it.

If something has really hateful characters, but a really awesome world... I think I'd put up with that actually. It was definitely not the characters or plot that got me into Pokémon, that's for sure, it's the world of Pokémon and all the Pokémon themselves. That applies to a lot of things for me, I think. Of course the world has to appeal to me personally, if it's a really deeply detailed world of unending boringness I'm out of there. But I'm assuming that by breathtaking/good/intriguing you mean to me personally. |B

Awesome characters, stupid plot, I'd put up with that. I could always write a fic or something with a better plot. Silent Hill games for example aren't exactly known for their coherent, well-planned plots. :B And the plots for most of the Paper Mario games are pretty forgettable. The characters can make anything fun though if they're good enough.

Awesome characters, lame world... I think the characters would still be enough to make me put up with it, although I probably wouldn't really like it.

Awesome world, stupid plot, I'm pretty much for that. I'll just make up my own plot in that world and go with that. There's nothing I love more than a deep, expansive, engrossing world you can really get lost in. I love that stuff.

Awesome world, stupid characters, same thing. I can just write them out and make up my own characters and do things that way. No problem.


Thinking about it, probably a deep, engrossing world. If I love the world of something enough, I'll just write fic or draw art for it that takes out everything I don't like, and you still have an awesome place to play in, like a sandbox. :B And an awesome distraction from things you don't like, like characters or plot. JUST MY THOUGHTS

[doxinator.livejournal.com]

I didn't even think of Pokemon! Yeah, most of the time the world's not real important to me and it seems like a lot of stories sort of fall short of a good world, but the ones that DO have interesting worlds, yeah, I'm all over that. Pokemon, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Pikmin--I love just exploring and admiring all the details and the thought the creators put into making them. That's probably why it takes so long for me to finish games like those, haha.

Of course, I think a lot of it really depends on how the author works with what they've got, and also the genre/medium, like I was sayin' to gogoicarus. I mean, from what I've seen, video games tend to be more oriented towards worldbuilding than other mediums, because the interactive aspect of video games gives you so much opportunity--movies can show you a world, but games can let you play with it and explore it. And now that you mention it, I'm much more forgiving of crappy characters/plot when it comes to video games, as long as the game has an interesting world for me to run around in and observe. Everything else, though, I tend to lean more towards wanting good characters (with some exceptions) :B

i feel like none of that really made sense WHATEVER POST COMMENT

[zarla.livejournal.com]

I REALLY LIKE WORLDBUILDING SO WORLDS TEND TO APPEAL TO ME :B and why do i automatically default to games when people talk about stories wtf self

BUT GAMES GIVE YOU OPPORTUNITIES TO TELL SUCH DIFFERENT AND VARIED STORIES IN WAYS YOU CAN'T REPLICATE OTHERWISE AND BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH


Another thing that just came to me - If you have a good plot, it'll inevitably be dragged down by bad characters since generally, those characters will be driving the plot. IT IS A BAD SITUATION.