What makes a simplistic storyline interesting?

TheThoughtfulBoxful 2017-09-15 21:00:00 UTC #1

For example: "Character moves to a new town, makes friends, ect." or "College student falls in love with a peer."

These are simple, pretty typical storylines that have been the base of many well-received comics/graphic novels and/or books. My question is how to branch a simplistic plotline out into something that will keep people engaged? Or rather, what elements keep a plot from being boring?

Edit: I'm not looking for story ideas. More like writing advice.

Kura 2017-09-15 21:03:29 UTC #2

"Character moves to a new town, makes friends, but only with their pets because they are an introvert. Has to struggle with being social and interacting the humans so that they'll be able to visit and hang out with their pet friends."

Basically just take the base and build from it in anyway you want. At least for the theme, the actual story is a whole other beast with all kinds of things involved. Engaging characters, interesting twists, and as with any story pay attention to the pacing. If your bored reading one of your scene over, chances are your readers will probably be to. If it's a scene that is critical to the story, Redo it to make it more interesting for you and your readers to read, because chances are readers will either skip over or drop it if it feels like a chore to get through.

joannekwan 2017-09-15 21:15:33 UTC #3

It really depends on the characters and setting to add flavor to a plot I suppose.

Take Fallout 4 and Finding Nemo for example. Both stories are about a parent finding their lost child, but taking into account the characters and setting, they are vastly different.
Finding Nemo is set under the water with a bunch of sea life as the cast. The father along with his friend face various obstacles and meet mostly friendly inhabitants on the way.
Whereas in Fallout 4, the human parent faces even more obstacles, most of them dangerous and quite happy to kill them, in a gritty post apocalyptic setting.

tayo_rafferty 2017-09-15 21:28:16 UTC #4

The character. How sympathetic and emphatic they are. Whether they have an internal conflict or not. Whether they have agency or not.

Characters who you cannot at least empathise with and who have no internal conflict and no agency are rarely engaging. So if you make sure your character has these things then no matter how simple the story is it will be engaging.

The best way to start writing a story is to take whatever the idea or theme is and construct an interesting and genuine character to interact with it.

TheThoughtfulBoxful 2017-09-15 21:35:57 UTC #5

@joannekwan What a drastic comparison, yet it's the same plot. Thank you! <3

So it looks like a good story depends on well-crafted characters and an interesting setting. Taking this into account, I feel a little less blocked in my writing. Thank you all!

MaxAmms 2017-09-15 22:11:54 UTC #6

in my opinion simplistic story line needs complicated/human/interesting characters , take a video game like the last of us the story line is pretty simple and the promise is really overused (zombie apocalypse) but what makes it stand out as a masterpiece (imo) is the complicated relation ship between it's characters .

Heliox14 2017-09-15 22:38:49 UTC #7

Personally, I think it's how you branch out the story from there.
If you're just going to make the characters Gary Stus and Mary Sues (read: Perfect Characters), then the story's going to go nowhere. Just like most of the doomed "Percy meets Chaos" stories in PJO Fanfiction.net.
The things that make people interested in your story is how relatable it gets, and your character is the way to do it. Nobody cares about the setting, whether it may be in Harvard, an intergalactic mining station, or a concentration camp. If your characters and description skills are good, then it will work.
You might also work on your descriptive skills. Also try to NOT plan the story beforehand. It will make writing the story feel boring (At least, for me.). If it works for you, then it will be fine.
Good luck :))

XzynderVexymous 2017-09-15 22:53:24 UTC #8

Every good story has a simple line. Romeo and Juliet is a story with the line: "Two people who should be enemies, fall in love". Then it gets complex. I personally made one for my story, my friends have, and you should. If you can't explain your WHOLE story in one simple statement, it's not worth writing. Also, if you can't stick to your simple statement, it's garbage. Great stories don't leave the main idea.

In my opinion, of course.

TheThoughtfulBoxful 2017-09-15 23:00:33 UTC #9

That's actually an interesting statement (opinion, I know), because usually my basic plots are two sentences long (or I cheat and use a semicolon ";").

I think my problem rests more in an inability to start (for some bizarre reason) than an inability to stick to the one-liner, because I can write/have written stories no problem. I'll get it eventually...

Thank you!

XzynderVexymous 2017-09-15 23:09:34 UTC #10

You will, it took me 3 years to get a simple statement. You see, you're already doing it correctly. You probably have an awesome, complex story but bringing its most basic form is hard for us writers.

I promise you'll get it, just keep working and trying to
personally, understand your characters and story.

TheThoughtfulBoxful 2017-09-16 01:35:28 UTC #11

Wow... that's really encouraging of you to say, thank you!

Pandastrophic 2017-09-16 07:19:24 UTC #12

Characters make any story interesting. I have a pretty simple storyline that's just build on the stories/challenges of the characters and their personal conflicts and relationships and it's mainly because I like writing characters more than writing stories. I personally feel like characters can carry the story but the story can't carry the characters (I can read a simple story with complex characters but I can't read a complex story with simple characters), if you work on and invest a lot of time into writing them then whatever situation you put them in you'll know how they'll act/react.

colonel_ressentiment 2017-09-16 18:02:57 UTC #13

That's a great summary! Basically, simplistic doesn't have to mean generic. One way to think about it is "what are the usual ways something like this plays out? How can I introduce a twist to the formula that makes it more interesting?" For example, I've been writing a story including a trope that's so popular in my specific fandom there's memes making fun of it, but the way that I'm handling the trope and resolution is original enough that people are interested in seeing where it goes.

IdiotWithPencil 2017-09-16 18:17:33 UTC #14

the characters

like Craig McCracken said"kids didn't love spongebob cause he's under water they love spongebob cause they love spongebob"

don't care for the story if the characters are bad =D