Things You Love in Stories

When settings play a significant role in a story. I think the only reason I even gave Nicholas Sparks a chance as a writer (because I am so not the sappy romance type) is because I've been to a lot of the places where he sets his novels and I absolutely adore those places, and I love the way that he makes the setting prominent in the novels.

When stories that focus on the relationship between two people, usually romances, casually slip in that the characters have lives separate from each other. I can't stand loads of filler chapters that don't advance the plot just to prove the characters do their own thing sometimes, but I also don't like when an author makes it seem like their whole lives revolve around each other. I prefer when those details are just added into the narrative seamlessly so it makes the characters seem more realistic without disrupting the action of the story.

Definitely parents that are present, and especially when characters are close to their parents and go to them for advice and things. Alternately, parents who are there and supportive but not necessarily close to the protagonist, or divorced parents who see their children. So I guess basically realistic situations with existent parents.
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Bromances. I absolutely love stories with bromance in it. Or stories in which a girl and a boy are friends and their relationship is strictly platonic.
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Diversity in terms of character ethnicity. (I'm not sure "ethnicity" is the right word here, though. I might mean "race"). And since I'm Chinese, and therefore (slightly/somewhat?) biased, I'd love to see an original Chinese character.

Unreliable narrators.
Abstract symbols that connect to the message of the story.
Rich, bright details that employ a really eclectic lexicon.
Little quirks/flairs like memories or comparisons.

Drama. Drama. Drama. I don't know why, but it just eats me up.

Varuo.:

Unreliable narrators.
Abstract symbols that connect to the message of the story.
Rich, bright details that employ a really eclectic lexicon.
Little quirks/flairs like memories or comparisons.

Yes!

Katie Mosing:

Drama. Drama. Drama. I don't know why, but it just eats me up.

Katie Mosing:

• Crazy, alcohol fueled, party type drama
• Suspicions of cheating
• Clever titles
• A lead female character who isn't the typical shy, nervous type, but isn't overalls bad ass either
• Parents that are there and give advice/act like parents

All of it. Just guilty pleasures of mine.

>I love simplistic layouts with beautiful graphic design.
Science fiction that isn't about the apocalypse or what happens after.
Stories that take place outside the Earth's atmosphere.
When the author uses words that display their prowess as a writer, but don't display them as stuck up.
Description and detail on small, random things, i.e. the colour of the walls, or the vastness of the sky. (But only if they tie this back to the actual plot somehow. Otherwise nope.)
Stories that either centre around something aside from romance, or don't contain romance at all.
Characters with names you'd likely find in your role call, aka names that are believable.

1) romantic tragedies. I mean, depressing, awful, bawl for hours tragedies. With a lot of abstraction.
2) the concept of a male who is typically strong in demeanor and/or body being reduced to his weakest self because of imprisonment or torture or misfortune. And to be even more specific, when there is a person in charge of it, and they show compassion to that person while intimately inflicting the pain. (This is such a horrid and gruesome thing ever consider being compared to real life, but as a concept I love it and think it's beautiful.)
----- - along the lines of this, a "hero" figure rising from the torture and becoming strong but fatally flawed.
3) plot twists. daring, bold moves that show the author is ballsy enough to not keep things boring and comfortable.

Parents that aren't assholes, but aren't the "let mummy buy you a pwetty wittle dwess" kind either. Parents that care, and show their love, and treat their kids really well. Just generally good parents in stories make them seem much more real.

Stories with overweight people where their weight isn't central to the plot.

-Slash
-Make out scenes and cute/fluffy dates
-AU
-Plot twists
-Mental illnesses (where it is pulled off amazingly)
-Tragedy (makes me cry a waterfall and has me thinking about the ending for days)

Just some guilty pleasures of mine. When I say tragedy, I mean a character death or something absolutely terrible that shakes up the whole story just as it ends and has me overwhelmed and just thinking about it. Also, I'm a sucker for stories that have hints along the way that make absolutely zero sense at the time but are all wrapped up in a nice, neat bow at the end.

Oh, and not a repetitive story where the same thing happens over and over and over again. E.g. A and B love each other, A cheats on B with C, B goes into a depressive mood and doesn't talk to A, A apologises and B accepts apology, C gets jealous and then gets A to cheat on B again.
Just no.
Or, A's parent is abusive and B wants to kill/maim A's parent. B stops A. This then continues for every single person that goes up to A and so much as looks at A the wrong way. No, that is not on. That is boring. Give me drama and plot twists, not safe little things!

Realistic love triangles where it isn't flat-out obvious who's going to end up with who in the end and it doesn't come across as if everyone just can't help but fall head-over-heels for this one unique-special-snowflake person.

Characters with different body types or don't look stereotypically masculine or feminine.

Katie Mosing:

Stories with overweight people where their weight isn't central to the plot.

Especially this.

-I think everyone like a realistic, likable main character
-Lots of drama
-Complex situations
-Easy going relationships with friends and family

Any character that resembles Seth Cohen or Stiles Stilinski. Enough said.

-Stories that never name the narrator, or the main character if it's third person.
-Flowing, poetic, eloquent word choice.
-Strange character description (ie She was the colour of sun bleached sand: pale, but not too pale, and with her eyes like hot cocoa and her hair like jet, she could have been a lovely woman, were she not a deceitful monster at heart.)
-Balance of 'said' and its variants. (Not all words are 'said', but not all words are 'shouted/announced/whispered'.)
-Few to no time lapses.
-Repetition of a phrase throughout the story.
-Complex, entirely original plots
-Descriptive small events. (A meal, catching the bus, passing a child and his mother at the mall)
-CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OMG.

When setting plays an important role in a story, especially when a character has a tie to a specific place and feels a connection to that one special place.

When you can see that a writer really has tried to write a scene in a certain way or has tried hard to perfect an event or something. Just seeing that a writer is making an effort and you can see it through the story is just lovely to read.

I love it when two characters get together, but instead of falling in love right away, the author builds up their relationship. They take their time to get to know one another as people and then, eventually, fall in love.