What is most important to you in a story?
48 votes
Macro drama: Nations battling nations, heroes rising and falling to the ebb and tide of history.
Micro drama: Individual characters dealing with their respective trials and tribulations as events beyond or far from their control carry on.
Characterization: Exploring how characters evolve as the events of the story unfold.
Comedy: Because everyone needs to laugh and smile sometime!
Believability: If you don't like to suspend your disbelief. You want a story that could actually happen in the real world or at least be *close* to it.
Fantasticality: For those who wish to leave their world behind! The stranger and more alien, the better.
Suspense: Not knowing what's going to happen next, keeping you watching or turning the page, concerned for the events unfolding.
Action: You don't like the drawn-out talkie scenes. You like seeing the hero kick ass and take names!
Other: (Specify)

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Zucca-Xerfantes's avatar
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GamemasterFel's avatar
All fiction, as I see it, can be akin to a work of engineering. Most or all parts should be working in perfect conjunction with the other so the (insert metaphorical device here) may run at peak efficiency, so that they may succeed in their function, whatever that might be (after all, different genres, different tones, imply different end-goals). 

Therefore, from where I sit, in a work of fiction - video game, TV show, film, animation, literature, etc - it's not a single element that carries the most important load, per se. A single element might have the most impact, certainly, but the product truly shines when every little thing (character, pacing, world building, personal drama, etc) is working perfectly with one another. These parts, these elements, they inform the other, they compliment. 

Here's a good example of what I mean. 

Say you're working on a film, and you're the sound editor. The director has called for an appropriate sound to suit a tragic scene. What do you do to convey that tragedy? Depending on execution and context, if you have the orchestra blaring at full volume, it might... twist the scene into a farce. So what about something subtler? 

Or how about an absence of sound entirely? Either way, this lends itself to the audio-visual language of the film and this one particular scene. 

Of course, imagine how silly it would be if you, say, decided to employ "And My Heart Will Go On" to highlight a tragedy. Who in their right minds would take that scene seriously? 

You see? All parts must work in perfect synchronicity. This changes medium to medium, of course. Film requires expertise in sound and visuals for, shall we say, "sensory language" that runs parallel to the script. Without that expertise, the script is not a film but a novel without a cover. 

Literature, on the other hand, requires no such high-end technical maintenance, so all the stress is heaped upon the execution of tropes and content to make a story work. Which, naturally, is easier said than done. It's noble to say, "Why, characterization should take the highest priority," but that doesn't mean the story will be any good. Good characters alone do not make a good story. Good characters are informed and evolved by the environment they inhabit, and without the means to convey either what's the point of even paying the slightest bit of attention to details like structuralism?

Just my take on things.