Magna Cartas

[sulwen]

One of the things that Chris Baty advises doing in his NaNo how-to book is making two lists: one of things you love to see in books and one of things you hate to see. It's surprisingly easy to forget which is which when you're deep in the middle of writing something. Plus, it's a great resource to look at when you're not sure what you want to be writing. I feel like I may have done this before, but I can't remember, so I'm doing it again. This is just a beginning and will be added to as I think of more.



Magna Carta I: Things I Love

- Character-driven stories
- Strong characters to drive those stories
- Lots of character interaction
- Stories with very few characters
- Sexual tension
- Sex
- Kink, especially BDSM
- Unconventional pairings, especially between men
- Romance
- Increasingly desperate situations
- Things getting worse before they get better
- Characters being forced to tap into their own dark sides
- Witty banter
- Loving description of places that matter
- Media, especially in fantasy worlds
- Folklore and mythology
- Skeptics and cynics
- Snarky bastards
- Characters who are good at what they do
- Competence
- Angst that feels like real pain and not teenage whining
- Plot twists that feel satisfying rather than contrived
- Endings that satisfy while leaving you craving more
- Long series that actually have enough story to justify their length
- Secrets
- Dark pasts
- Magic
- Alternate realities and dimensions
- Doors in between worlds
- Schemes and plots
- Characters that don't feel sorry for themselves
- Smart writing
- Poetic writing, used sparingly
- Tight storytelling
- Page-turners
- Love having to overcome obstacles
- Philosophy
- Characters who know what they want
- Antiheroes
- Strong, likeable villians
- Obsession and madness
- Character death, when appropriate
- Fae, elves, vampires, and other pretty non-humans
- Characters that bring out the best in each other
- Characters who will do anything for each other
- Characters who go on even when they know all hope is gone
- Mostly male characters
- Wizards
- Thieves and spies
- Protagonists who act above or outside the law
- Quests and voyages
- Weapons
- Things not always being as they seem
- Power and control issues
- Forests, mountains, oceans, and caves
- Secret passageways
- Codes
- Apathetic characters
- Music and poetry
- Shades-of-grey morality
- Creative cursing
- Mysterious characters
- Characters who are supremely confident
- Pregnancy and babies
- Brothels and prostitutes
- Sacrifice
- Inner conflict
- Strong emotions
- Doing things for personal good rather than the greater good
- Interesting narrators
- Worlds that I want to live in
- Just the right amount of horror
- Hearing character thoughts
- Literary devices, when used effectively, especially repetition
- Characters who are good speakers
- Seduction
- Charming characters
- Characters who have intimacy issues
- Characters who are deeply connected with each other
- Forced close quarters, like being in prison or being handcuffed together
- Training and learning new skills
- Books that get to me so much that I cry

Magna Carta II: Things I Hate

- Stupid, incompetent main characters
- Anything that had a "message" or a moral
- Anything highly religious
- Cliches, unless they're done in a new or interesting way
- "Strong Female Characters" (TM)
- ANY error in the text
- Awkward sentences
- Whining
- Teenage angsting
- Teasing a relationship between characters and then not following through
- Slow beginnings
- Too much action
- Gratuitous description of anything
- Characters that are too happy
- "Wannabe" characters
- Weak, boring villains
- Most prophecies
- Keeping the interesting characters apart the whole story
- Stilted dialogue
- Urban fantasy (mostly)
- Pointless subplots
- Anything that feels like filler
- Anything that feels like a guilt trip
- In fact, pretty much guilt in general
- Spending the whole story with royalty and the upper class (by and large)
- Really vanilla sex
- Plot holes
- Too much time skipping
- Characters that everyone they meet falls in love with
- Long, hard to pronounce names, especially with apostrophes
- Infodumps
- Stupid characters in general
- Characters that are disabled, especially mentally
- Law enforcement characters
- Too much focus on honor
- Introducing characters just to kill them off
- Too many characters
- Authors that forbid fanfiction (I know this isn't really related, but it bothers me)
- Bad cover art
- Pacing problems
- Endings that happen too fast
- Really obvious foreshadowing
- Stereotypically pretty girls
- Characters that are too good or nice
- Characters that are really naive
- Characters that are always having to be rescued
- Characters doing things that just don't make sense
- Invisible villains (as in, you don't see them the whole story)
- Writing that's really similar to other famous authors
- Annoying characters that make me want to strangle them
- People praising the main character when his friends did all the work
- Soap opera relationships
- Talking animals
- Animals of any kind being featured too much in the story
- Dragons, in general
- Rushed romance
- Plot-driven stories
- Overly complex and hard to follow plots
- Description of places, people, and things that aren't important to the story
- Stories that lack any suspense whatsoever
- Endings that aren't endings so much as teasers for the sequel