What makes a book interesting?

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BATFAN

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What specifically do you think makes a book of fiction interesting?
What about the Plot, Characters, Themes, Dialogue, Et cetera.
Please be as specific as you want. The more detailed your answer, the better.

Basically what do you think makes for a successful work of fiction and or what do you look for in fiction?
 
Ooo....good question.

Novels that interest me generally have settings that are vivid. I want to be able to imagine what I'm reading. If the setting is outside in the rain, I want to be able to feel the rain. Does that make any sense? That's really the best way I can explain it.

Dialogue is a biggie for me. The Dialogue has to be realistic. If I'm reading a teenage novel and it's obviously written by a 41 year old lady with 5 cats, then I will drop it. IMMEDIATELY.

I'll put plot and characters together because I feel they correspond to one another. The plot has to be...I don't know....a plot I couldn't have written even I tried. Same with the characters. They have to be realistic, yet beyond my writing capability. I'm only 15 years old and if I feel that I could have written a book I just read, then I won't read it.
 
Well, when you're writing, you want to make the reader feel like they know the characters very well. Detail is important because you want the reader to make an image in their mind like a little movie.

For the first chapter or the preface (the preface is optional) you want to confuse the reader by giving them lots of detail but they don't know what's happening, and they want to read more. (ex: I ran down the glistening road, covered in the tears of the sky. I could here the footsteps. They were getting faster. I didn't dare look back for what might happen. I needed to get away, and quick, or there would be certain doom.") something exciting and suspenseful that grabs the readers attention. You want them to be asking questions. "who's chasing the person? What certain doom? What's happening?" and then they will read on to find out what comes next.

Good luck with writing the story! You'll have fun, trust me.
 
This is what i always look for:

Adventure
Hint of mystery
a little romance
ORIGINALITY
realistic characters..not stereotypes
underdogs winning in a non-predictable way
dialogue that moves the plot along instead of lengthly paragraphs of nothingness
fast paced action (everything happens not quickly..but there is no long gaps of boring bits)
a main character i can either relate to or crush on!
issues i can relate to
villains i love to hate
unexpected twists in plot that keep me awake until 3am to see if the characters i love survive!

I also enjoy fantasy fiction and forbidden love in fiction stories.
 
An interesting book always (in my opinion) has an original plot and believable characters. I can never tell what's going to happen because I've never read anything like it. As to the themes, I think they ought to be universally relatable without being cliche.

But most importantly, I think a good work of fiction must have good writing. If the words don't flow as they should or the author doesn't grab my attention with his sentences, I will not read the book (no matter how good the story plot is).
 
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