What makes a good story? · 1:21pm Sep 5th, 2014
What makes a good story? This is a question that gets asked a lot and has many different answers, here’s my take on it: What makes a story great is its ability to trap you in its world, to make you feel for all its characters and to understand the story through emotions.
Here’s an example; I recently came across a story called “It's complicated” by TheSillyAnon, it’s your classic Human in Equestria story where the guy has a crappy life and comes here by accident but he doesn’t really like any of the ponies at first and eventually warms up to them. This sort of plot is par for the course, but it caught my interest so I decided to give it a shot; the first 2 to 3 chapters were pretty interesting but nothing spectacular, but as I kept reading something interesting happened. Now, of course, I have a life so I can’t read everything I wanted to in one sitting and because of work I needed to do I was busy for about 5 days. When I got back to his story there were about 4 more chapters, all about 8,000 to 10,000 words a piece, and I just plowed through all of them within the span of an hour or so.
I was so interested to see what happens next that I totally lost track of time; and not just that but due to the events of the book (I won’t spoil anything for people who want to check it out) I was angry, and I mean REALLY angry, like I wanted people to die. And then it hit me; I’ve seen a story like this a dozen times over but this one really made me feel like I was part of it and it really got to me, if a story can do that to you then you know it’s good.
As a writer we all hope to capture our audience like this! Kudos to that pony! lol. And happy reading Spider. :P Let's hope that we capture our audiences in the same way. :)
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head, there: a good story is one that brings you back, immerses you, and makes you feel something.