What makes a story interesting?

D

Deadeye

First time out of the vault
I've written severel....stories. All of them I have stopped writting at one point, either a writer's block, loss of an idea or simple lack of interest or lazyness.

I seem to be good at creating characters and situations in my head, but whenever I try to write it, the stories themselves feel....less.

And the fact that writting in english is something I'm not very good at doesn't help.

Couple of weeks ago I re-installed Fallout Tactics and as I was playing it, an idea for a story slowly emerged. I've created a main character that serves in the Brotherhood, though it doesn't happen in the game itself. Not exactly.

What I mean is, it probably won't happen when The Calculator awakens and all that. It will just happen...in the world of Brotherhood Of Steel.

Maybe later on the robot menace will be included, though at this moment I am unsure.

I feel a bit crazy writting this, since I haven't even beggun writting a single word. Heck, I haven't even thought of a title.

So, I guess my question is, would you read about someone who is in BOS, about the missions he and the squad he's in will take, they're struggles, victories and losses?

........for all I know, I may give up on this before I even start. But I want to hear from you who first, who still visit this page.

Please be honest.
 
Well, my friend, I know how you feel. I am currently writing a story based loosely on the events after the Chosen One, and though I have done two chapters so far, I am stuck... just waiting to make my next move.

But I understand the feeling. I could suggest you write some of it and edit. I usually do that. I see some stuff, add, subtract and divide.
 
Meh, most writers will do anything in their power to get away from writing. The hardest thing is quitting the bullshit and plopping your damn lazy self in front of the typewriter/wordprocessor. And then you've gotta force yourself to peck away at the words; you can't just wait for the muse to give you inspiration.

After an idea for a story comes to me, I have to force myself to write about it immediately. As I'm typing away, the details flesh out by themselves. In my case, the story picks up pace and writes itself after I churn out the first five or so pages. If it doesn't, I save it and make empty promises to myself to come back to it. But I never do because the most depressing thing is to see your own stale words staring back at you with a healthy amount of page margin left to fill.

So, stay consistent and just force yourself to write or else you have nothing to work with. Even if it's not really good, just have a go at it to lay down the groundwork. That's what revision is for: to smooth out the roughspots.
 
Sometimes some good music playing will help. Make it more pleasant to sit there... One big advantage we have here is a lot of people interested in writing. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone, as you just did. Get some feedback. I'll try to help if I can. Good luck.

**Edit**
Ok, I have a bit more time now. Why not first decide on your first scene? You need to figure out the basics...What time of day or night is it, where does it happen(a ruined town that turns out to be inhabitated?), how many people are in the squad, what is the mood or emotion felt by the main character, what tense are you going to write in(1st or 3rd, 2nd is practically useless), is the main character the leader or just someone who has to take orders(is the leader a competent leader or a jackass?). I'm telling you, if you nail down these things, the rest of the story will practically write itself. Hell, I'm tempted to start it for you... :D
 
Deadeye said:
....................
So, I guess my question is, would you read about someone who is in BOS, about the missions he and the squad he's in will take, they're struggles, victories and losses?.................................
Click to expand...

Yes, I would read stories like that. Have in the past and will in the future.

I love Hammer's Slammers.
 
I agree with GG. No matter how interesting your ideas are, no matter how vivid a character is in your head, it doesn't mean a damn thing if you can't write effectively.
 
Originality.

Writing comes from pure originality. You don't want to write a story that somebody else in the world has already done etc etc.

Me for example, I adore power armor.

There are two groups in Fallout that wear power armor, the BOS and the Enclave.

The BOS is too widely known and highly secure and therefore requires a crapload of writing.

The Enclave can be trickly fairly easily in the first 5% of the game to get Advanced Power Armor..

You need to find a topic that's interesting, then think about several factors.

• Is my spelling good? If your spelling is bad, make sure you use a spellchecker.
• Is my grammer and punctuation ok? If you get confused about ! and ?s and everything else, then you need to learn a bit about punctuation and grammer and etc.
• Am I confident with quotes? One problem most people have is quoting. It's pretty hard to have a consistent speech monologue and at the same time make the reader intrigued. You can't have 9 pages of speech and nor can you have 9 pages without speech. You need to use quotes in moderation.
• Easy to read, explores imagination? Your story must be easy for readers to comprehend, but at the same time it should challenge their imagination and allow them to view something in a different sense than you mean. When you say that you jammed a knife in a person chest, that is simply going from one viewpoint. When you say you murdered him with the knife, then readers can think of 900 ways to kill a person with a knife. Sometimes being direct is good, but not always.
• Is my story interesting to myself? The most important factor to writing a story is the thing to be interesting to yourself. Play Fallout alot, get inspiration and when an idea pops in your head, WRITE IT DOWN. Don't wait until after that commerial, until after that last soda, run your ass to a paper and write it down.
• Is my story blocky? Is there alot of text in your story? Make sure that it is seperated in paragraphs or it is moderately easy to read if you leave it in block format.

With alot of those things in mind, you can write an excellent original story.

Some people write at the level of Mark Twain and died not ever knowing fame. The true spirit of writing is not the way of writing, it is the way of words. You must make the reader feel the words are an image, not a bunch of ink on paper. Once you have mastered that, you can accomplish anything with writing.

Regards,
DarkLegacy
 
Damon Knight wrote: The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...

That is a story.
 
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...

... And a security guard barged into the sauna, slapped Bob a few times across the face and yelled: " Hey! You're not allowed to shit in the sauna, you fucking pothead! "
 
Bob stepped outside to view the devastation, as he patted Sally's curly locks, he said "Sally, it's a good thing we were in that experimental chamber. Everything is gone now, everyone dead. It looks like the two of us will have to repopulate the planet."

Sally looked deep into Bob's eyes and said "Baa."
 
That was the whole idea. I had no idea it was a cliche---sorry, I've been out of college for more than a decade. When I read it in a creative writing text (by Damon Knight) it provoked thought. I liked the open-endedness of it.
 
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