Is it interesting characters? Or believable motivations? Maybe writing style? Is the world building?
And how likely are you to enjoy a book that doesn’t fit your own criteria?
Characters that sit in that grey area. Any character who is 100% good or 100% bad makes for terrible reading.
@Eq0
Earth, Fire, Air an Water. Skillfully arranged and connected in an ensemble commonly called an “author”.Good prose
I also find the form of the writing to be very important! Can you give an example of particularly good prose?
Prose, themes, character arcs, plot are the essential building blocks of a novel.
All 4 of these are important for a book to be a masterpiece, with plot being the least important.
Consistency in character.
Absolutely! What book did you like that had good characters?
I’m currently reading The Moor’s Last Sigh by Rushdie. His narrators tend to be wacky and his characters often do unconventional things, but when you read these books, you never feel like someone did something out of character. You read something outrageous and still feel like the character would definitely have done or said that.
Carbon