07-04-2016, 09:18 AM
My favorite show growing up was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn't because of boobs or murder, but it was because it was one of the most well-written television shows I had at my disposal as a like, 10-year-old (I was a weird kid, sod off).
I'm drawn to character more than anything else. It's nice if you can put out a cool action set-piece, and it's great if you can craft a nice scene or wield a verbose vocab. All of those are skills that are going to make your writing great, but for me, the thing that I really enjoy is the character. It's why I've always liked play-by-posts (since you usually write a form of 3rd-person limited, where one character is the focus).
Nothing engages me in the overall story more than seeing living, breathing characters. Nuances. Quirks. All the fun things.
And since I love Joss Whedon, dialogue is another thing that I look out for. I've always thought I've had a strong vocabulary and some skill at scene-crafting, but dialogue is probably the one skill I've tried to hone since I started writing online. Now I'm not saying that dialogue should always be witty and laden with pop culture references, but it ought to be believable and not just like, extra words with quotes around them (which I often feel like it is). The same applies to internal monologues, which can be a great tool if it's not screwed up.
So yea. Character+Dialogue. That's what will keep me reading once I've grown tired of the violence and the adjectives.
I'm drawn to character more than anything else. It's nice if you can put out a cool action set-piece, and it's great if you can craft a nice scene or wield a verbose vocab. All of those are skills that are going to make your writing great, but for me, the thing that I really enjoy is the character. It's why I've always liked play-by-posts (since you usually write a form of 3rd-person limited, where one character is the focus).
Nothing engages me in the overall story more than seeing living, breathing characters. Nuances. Quirks. All the fun things.
And since I love Joss Whedon, dialogue is another thing that I look out for. I've always thought I've had a strong vocabulary and some skill at scene-crafting, but dialogue is probably the one skill I've tried to hone since I started writing online. Now I'm not saying that dialogue should always be witty and laden with pop culture references, but it ought to be believable and not just like, extra words with quotes around them (which I often feel like it is). The same applies to internal monologues, which can be a great tool if it's not screwed up.
So yea. Character+Dialogue. That's what will keep me reading once I've grown tired of the violence and the adjectives.