What is the difference between good and bad fiction to you?
#asknostr
Discussion
A good one tells me something.
A bad one copies stereotypes.
I mean, as far as quality goes, the standard stuff: musical prose, well-designed plot, complex characters, etc. What determines whether or not I became obsessed with a piece of fiction,, tho, is if I fall in love with one of the characters.
Musical prose is something I don't think about often, but I do love it when literature has a poetic quality to it. One book like this that pops to mind is The Weight of Ink. There are passages of prose near the end that are just amazing.
It's not just poetic quality, it's also... Idk, it flows well. Good variety of long and short sentences, vivid, properly placed, and not overused metaphors and strong verbs, etc. I literally feel my muscles relax when I'm reading that type of prose (unless it's a high - action or tense scene that is).
I can’t describe it, but I know it when I read it.
Yeah, a good story makes time fly. That's when I know it's good, when it's effortless.
Good fiction resonates and immerses; bad fiction feels hollow and forgettable.
#asknostr
That is a genuinely hard question to answer.
Good fiction has presented problems in such a way that it changes the way that I think about them. Or at least it makes me stop and think about whatever issue they're presenting.
Bad fiction is just run of the mill for lack of a better way of saying it. It doesn't have any substance to it.
I think that's the vibe I'm getting from this thread. Good fiction speaks to you in a way that is aligned with your own experiences. We all have problems and good fiction offers answers in the form of stories of how those answers could play out. And you could possibly apply that answer to your own life.
A good example for me is the book Stranger in a Strange Land. A human raised as a Martian, learning to be human again.
bad fiction is like whatever they write, good fiction is when you place your heart on it and create something more than good
Well there is only really fiction you enjoy and fiction you don't.
Rationalisation happens afterward. We already know we like something and then we decide why that was.
It only seems like it's the other way around until you rationalise it 😊
Facts. Liking or disliking a book is first an emotion, then a reason 👏
The credible of the not credible
Fiction that critiques modern conventions in unique ways
Fiction is a great place to say the quiet part out loud or draw attention to the elephant in the room.
If it's a book, good fiction is written in a way that keeps me glued to the page, or listening to the story intensy, as the world around me disappears, without spelling mistakes or awkward sentences that take me out of the story and back into my critical mind.
Those would be bad.
For tv shows, it's good if they show me, instead of tell me, and the characters are believable, even if they're totally goofy.
Personally, my husband and I really like cerebral shows that are made with highly intelligent characters and plot lines.
Vibing with the story and getting immersed 👌 That's how you know the story is relevant to your soul.
Good fiction:
Complex characters, deep world building, characters struggle, genuinely hateable villain, a good ending (hard)
Bad fiction:
Shallow world, tied to real products or times which make suspending disbelief hard, characters overcome challenges without difficulty, ham-fisted political bent, abrupt or anticlimactic ending.
The hard thing is you can have good writing undone by a bad ending or similar. For example His Dark Materials has great world building, but the blatantly anti-Christian themes end up coming across like a petty tantrum.
Yeah, you can tell when an author just has a lot of stuff on his mind unrelated to the subject of the book.
Though in Moby Dick, you can forgive the author for using a quarter of the text as a sperm whale encyclopedia cause he's just really into them.
Good fiction is anything by Raymond Chandler.
the good author respects his readers. The bad one wants to push a message
That's a good point 🤙
Good fiction to me is written in prose but has the imagery and inspiration of poetry. Cormac McCarthy.
Very good question. Language rhythm and word choices do matter for me. But sometimes the story is everything.
Some fiction remains with me for decades.
Nowadays, the reality surpasses any fictions. Thus, it is probably more difficult to create stories that capture readers. I rarely read fictions now.
🤙🫂
I feel you on the modern literature. Maybe it's survivorship bias, and the old fiction we like is just the best from that time, and not enough time has passed to figure out what the best is today. But in the end I still prefer older fiction.
Originality, character development and depth, plot complexity, and the exploration of ideas and questions
The underlying message being valuable
Is it really “fiction” or just a version of what is happening or could happen, depending on the fiction-topic at hand?
Yeah, good fiction can inform you on how things can play out in real life. Maybe what makes bad fiction bad is that if you apply it in real life you get rekt.
If there are no zombies, spaceships, magic or lot of carnage it's a bad fiction 😂
The good fiction (personaly) is just called a fiction because it predicts reality one step ahead OR is a pane of glass to a reality hidden for the general public.
I'm not so much into the jellybean martian invasion anymore.