Interest in others writing

What is the main thing that draws you into a story? Is it setting? The characters? Themes, morals, ideas, just content of the story in General? Or are you the type to just jump into something on a whim or based on prior experience with the writer?

Usually the characters and a good idea are what draws me in to a story. Setting and themes/morals are more extra bonuses for me. I do admit though sometimes past experiences with the writer is also the reason as I'm already aware what sort of content they write and their writing style.

Nickels if I knew what specifically draws me to a story. There are certain things that I follow that seem to be good heuristics - authors that spend sensible time delving into aspects of their setting, characters that evolve gradually during the story, overall calm, positiveness in the ambiance, Pokémon that are actual characters, straying far from certain trite tropes. But none of those seem to be the "main", or are any of them a sure point to sell me a story.

I guess there's some sort of combination of all of the above that just... clicks. Probably regarding how sensibly are the characters, the plot and the setting explored, discovering and explaining but still remaining positive (aka no "lol it's realistic so it has to be edgy and dark").

The characters and how they're handled are my main interest when reading. I like to see where the characters go and how they develop as the story goes on.

A far second interest that I have when reading is the plot. If I'm reading a multi-chapter fic/book, I keep an eye out for how quickly the plot moves along. If it's been over 100 pages and nothing's happening? I'm dropping the story (which I did very recently).

For me, the greatest factors of whether or not I want to begin or continue on with a story after the first chapter or two are the characters and the setting with the plot itself coming in close behind. Your story could have the best plot ever, but if the characters or setting just aren't there I won't be able to keep at it.

To me it's also the characters, but also their interactions/meetings. Also, I like a good tone/pacing and it does start to get on my nerves if there isn't something to get me interested. If the scenes in the beginning are mediocre or at least, uninteresting, I'll be tempted to drop it. Grabbing my attention can be done in many ways and I can technically read through everything, but staying with a work requires a good impression.
The first parts can either make or break a story, since a good amount of people quit if its a bad start even if it gets better later.

To get my interested we need to move a step before the actual story. I don't click on a thread here to just check it out most of time, it already has to catch my attention. Active community members are quicker to get a read from me, as are really catchy titles. We don't have much to advertise with here, though, so just posting around the section makes me more interested in your stuff.

From a story perspective, grammar is a great help. I really like good grammar. Formatting helps. Paragraphs make everything easier to read. And then a plot hook with a good character concept.

Hmm, that's a hard one.

Some of it depends on what site I'm reading on. For many forum sites, I start by looking for an interesting or catchy title. Some sites also give a blurb with the title. For example, Fanfiction.net has authors give you a little blurb on their story. For those that have this option, I don't usually care as much about the title. Rather, I look at the blurb and I immediately know if I'll spend time on this story because-if it's well written- it tells me their tone, point of view, plot, and everything else that needs to be there to get me interested.

Once I begin reading a story, the first chapter is a huge deal for me. If it's super fast-paced or can't suspend my disbelief (more stories than you would think have Ash catching Dragonite or Arceus in the first chapter).

Lately, I've been a bit more mellow concerning the first chapter and have found a lot of gems that give me something to enjoy my evenings with.

I'm not super strict on grammar, but if there's enough that I'm noticing them all the time I'll usually drop the story.

Summary: Title or blurb needs to catch my attention. The first chapter needs to capitalize on my interest by being well-written and interesting to keep me flipping (er, clicking?) pages.

I hope this answered the question.

Personally, I'll put up with some mistakes if the story's in a genre I like, or has a really interesting premise. I'm okay with dark fanfiction as long as the author doesn't get there by twisting the personalities of established characters, and I really enjoy AUs. I guess for me a balance has to be struck between the quality of the plot, prose, and premise.

I think I'm pretty likely to jump into random stories, but if I find that I don't like them, then I'm just as likely to hit the back button and jump out.

TaillowFeather said:

I think I'm pretty likely to jump into random stories, but if I find that I don't like them, then I'm just as likely to hit the back button and jump out.

Click to expand...

At least you are more consistent than I am. I sometimes hit back on stories I like too, under that pretense that I tell myself and I swear that I can totally finish reading it later.

...Yeah, we all know how that one goes.

More recently I have made an effort to archive fics in print preview form so that I can read them whenever (on the bus etc). It's helped somewhat. It helps me keep track of why I liked a story and why I should totally resume reading it.