My Favorite Things to See in Stories.

I am having so much fun with the Positivity Week activities. I really just cannot stop myself. I only have two activities left. Including this one. I really want to get to 1,000 points in the Mibba May thing. Call me crazy. I only have 180 points right now. And I know that it's really not that big of a deal. It's just nice to have a goal in mind. I haven't really wanted to try hard for anything in a while now. So, I'm willing to give this a shot.

Let's get this shindig started. Shall we?

+ Strong emotions that I can feel through your words.

I really love when an author can make me feel the way that their character is. Whether it be agony or joy or hope and sadness or hopelessness. I want to feel it. I want to know what is going on in their mind and why they are doing the things that they are doing. You definitely get brownie points from me if you make me relate to their situation if I have never been in the same situation myself. Then I am extremely impressed.

+ Strong characters.

Whether pleasant or otherwise, I like it when characters really carry themselves and have very distinct personality traits. They don't even have to be the good guy. Just not the stereotypical Mary Sue. Especially when it comes to female characters. It's really difficult to really separate your character from somebody else's. Especially considering that girls tend to have a lot in common. There are a lot of stereotypes that girls live up to. And they are not always avoidable. I'm not saying that people should go out of their way to make their character seem alternative and completely original. Original, yes, but also believable. I'm not going to believe you if your character is some alternative goth chick who can also work a bow and arrow and knows five different languages on the side. It just doesn't work like that. But just make your character stand out. We are not all the same. I am not the same person as the person sitting next to me. So why should it seem that way in a story?

+ Twisting of words.

I love it when people just go crazy with their words and just let their mind drift. It's no fun if the story is just the telling of a story. And, most of the time, it's just better not to force it. And to just go with what comes to mind. Play with the language. Make up words. Twist them around. Use synonyms and antonyms and personification and similes and paradox. And anything else that you can think of. Tie it into what you know from your life. Find a way to describe something that nobody else has thought of.

+ Frequent updates.

Really, you guys, I don't like to wait two years for the next chapter. Especially when you leave it at a cliffhanger. I might just throw you off a cliff.

+ When you can make your point in few words.

I am impressed with people who can pull off a drabble with less than two hundred words and still manage to rip my heart out. And just make me want to read it over and over again. And still somehow makes me feel something different or stronger every time I go over it.

+ Cute layouts.

I won't say that it is a necessity, but it's nice when people have those pretty little layouts that make me want to swoon and cry at the same time. Because I can't make any layouts look pretty, no matter how hard I try. And I love the creative things that people manage to do. Like put little symbols and links to songs and the pictures of the characters. Especially when it comes to a longer story. It just makes it a lot personal, and it really shows how much time you have donated to the story. When I see that people have links to pictures of the characters, I automatically think that they must really know their characters well and they know who they are. They know exactly what they see in their head.

+ Personal touches.

I am not going to believe a single word you write if it does not sound like it is coming from the heart or from inside of you, as corny as that sounds. Quality writing comes from what you know from living the life that you have lived. You know better than anybody else what emotions you are feeling right now and what you have experienced in the years that you have been alive. So why not share that? Put the betrayal and the sadness and the hopelessness and the joy and relief and everything in between into words of your own. Don't even think about what other people might think. Even if you think that your words won't make sense to them. You would be surprised. Help people visualize what you have seen in all those years.

+ Love.

I won't lie, I am a sucker for love stories.

Some things that I don't like to see in stories:

I thought I would include a couple. I won't go into too much detail.

+ Long, confusing titles.
+ Too much detail in description, to the point that there is nothing but description of the settings.
+ Lots of spelling and grammar errors.
+ Incest.
+ Stereotypical or overused story lines.
+ Really, really, really long chapters.
+ Mary Sues.
+ Preppy perfect characters who never seem to do anything wrong and are nice to everybody.

Yep, I think that covers most of it. Nothing else really comes to mind right now, though I am sure that both of these lists could go on for days.