Ideas or storyline- what's the heart of a good book?
By Wanderlaugh
@Wanderlaugh (1622)
Australia
January 20, 2007 6:03pm CST
My obsessive hobby is ideas. I write and watch them evolve. That's an interesting process, because half the time I'm not too sure what's going to happen, and I get some story lines through the logic of the ideas.
What do you think makes a good book, the concepts or the way they develop? You'll notice this isn't a chicken/egg discussion. A concept can drive a storyline, and a storyline can create a new concept, while writing it.
Meaning that you now have a concept added to the story, like adding a new character, but you've also added it to the logic of the story.
Since we're wallowing in writers, I thought I'd ask how people feel about their own story development.
1 response
@wonder_grrrl66 (236)
• United States
22 Feb 07
Overall, I think that what makes a good book great is one in which the concept or plot I would say is married well to the characters. I read a lot and often. Most of the time, the book might have some very clever and cool characters but they were put into a plot that does nothing for them, so they wallow and die on the page. On occasion it happens the other way around.
My own personal process can be tough. I find that I often think of very cool characters but I have trouble finding the right plot for them to develop. It's still a flaw that I am working on.
@Wanderlaugh (1622)
• Australia
22 Feb 07
Some books are the characters. The story, sometimes for the better, gets lost in the character plays, and that actually produces a better story.
I find that the characters can do a lot to help. I got lucky in my first books, and found some good strong characters, and they, thankfully, did most of the hard work in building the character of the books. Actually one of the jokes in the first book was that my characters weren't really all that keen on the plot line, they just got thrown into it.
Maybe, from the sound of that, you might be better off working from the characters' perspectives.
