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What makes a story memorable?
Nov. 29th, 2009 06:04 pmI've been on a reading spree on FictionPress, and one question keeps coming up -- What makes a story memorable?
As a writer of DA fanfic, I readily recognize the faults of the show from poor character development to consistent plot inconsistencies to the copy and paste dialog. Yet there's something that draws me in.
I'm starting to notice a similar pattern in stories I'm reading online. Certain stories, in spite of these flaws, tend to draw the reader in while stories that do have better style and plot and character development seem to fall flat. You can even see it reflected in review stats. I think that checking for grammatical, spelling and punctuation (I know this falls under grammatical but I feel this issue comes up enough to warrant its own title) errors are best left to an editor. There is a huge schism between reading for content and reading for editing.
So is it content then? I'm not sure. If the content is not complete due to internal inconsistency or lack of development, what is it about the story that makes it memorable? I guess it's that gusto or je ne sais quoi that can't be explained and literary scholars write about for generations on end with no actual answer.
Also, I have no idea why I blank whenever someone asks me who my favorite canon author is. It's Anne Bronte or Shirley Jackson, depending on the mood I'm in. I'm such a dork. But I didn't think Charlotte's Jane Eyre was that great, and every time I read a few pages of Wuthering Heights my head hurts from how annoyingly dense the prose is and how annoyingly insane the characters are. Anne didn't buy into that nuttiness and was more of a feminist in her writings, her characters are more practical (aside from Pride and Prejudice, I'm not a big Jane Austen fan, and even that took a third reading to grow on me). So we're back to gusto and my flare for unusual stories.
I guess what it comes down to is how much of yourself you see in the story. I'm a practical person, so I remember characters that portray ideals that I like to uphold. Maybe that's it. Finding that part of yourself in the story and connecting to it?
I really need to stop waxing philosophic like I'm writing a thesis again.
As a writer of DA fanfic, I readily recognize the faults of the show from poor character development to consistent plot inconsistencies to the copy and paste dialog. Yet there's something that draws me in.
I'm starting to notice a similar pattern in stories I'm reading online. Certain stories, in spite of these flaws, tend to draw the reader in while stories that do have better style and plot and character development seem to fall flat. You can even see it reflected in review stats. I think that checking for grammatical, spelling and punctuation (I know this falls under grammatical but I feel this issue comes up enough to warrant its own title) errors are best left to an editor. There is a huge schism between reading for content and reading for editing.
So is it content then? I'm not sure. If the content is not complete due to internal inconsistency or lack of development, what is it about the story that makes it memorable? I guess it's that gusto or je ne sais quoi that can't be explained and literary scholars write about for generations on end with no actual answer.
Also, I have no idea why I blank whenever someone asks me who my favorite canon author is. It's Anne Bronte or Shirley Jackson, depending on the mood I'm in. I'm such a dork. But I didn't think Charlotte's Jane Eyre was that great, and every time I read a few pages of Wuthering Heights my head hurts from how annoyingly dense the prose is and how annoyingly insane the characters are. Anne didn't buy into that nuttiness and was more of a feminist in her writings, her characters are more practical (aside from Pride and Prejudice, I'm not a big Jane Austen fan, and even that took a third reading to grow on me). So we're back to gusto and my flare for unusual stories.
I guess what it comes down to is how much of yourself you see in the story. I'm a practical person, so I remember characters that portray ideals that I like to uphold. Maybe that's it. Finding that part of yourself in the story and connecting to it?
I really need to stop waxing philosophic like I'm writing a thesis again.