Should theese points be bad writting? Thoose are either suspension of disbelif beacuse the nature of a CYOA, or lazy writing at worst. Belive me the real bad writing problems are others. Like:
Incohirence:
Changing things like names, places etc. without reason
Double standards and/or morality center protagonist (if the villain crash a bug he’s a monster, if the hero kills hundreds of unnamed characters everything is fine)
Characters who sudden act out of character or change side/ideas because “reasons” (or worst no reason at all), especially if it involves someone acting like an idiot because plot reason (malus points if it’s a “too dumb to live” case)
Favouritism (or branch favouritism in CYOA): no matter how much the hero is an idiot and the villain is a genius, the hero will always win becuase the plot says so.
Anticlimax: a major threath who/wich defeated a character easily is beaten by the same character with a snap of fingers
Inconsistence:
Characters: a character has much focus but plot wise is a minor one, a major character has just 3 lines of dialogue, a character just disappear from the plot without reason or a new one comes out of nowhere.
Plot and subplot: a subplot seems relevant but it’s just a background event, unresolved subplots, plot twist for the saking of having a plot twist
I mean… people can be superficial, even IRL. Not every character is going to be some deep flawed character with a tragic backstory.
Personally, I don’t really care if a character has a tragic backstory. I just file it away as something I’ve read about but on its own merit I don’t find it note worthy, especially if it’s hamming up the tragedy for the sake of having tragedy.
It’s overused and I find myself more attracted to static characters nowadays. It’s my personal opinion that you can oversaturate your writing with too much tragedy/negativity/drama to the point where your audience loses interest.
And I myself have lost interest quite a few times reading stuff that has drama for the sake of drama. Or negativity for the sake of negativity. Or tragedy for the sake of tragedy.
Can’t remember who, so forgive me. I think it’s Bilbo Baggins from the Hobbit who comes to mind? He doesn’t want to go on adventure. He wants his mundane life where everything’s the same.
Unless I’m misremembering something (which please correct me if I’m wrong), Bilbo’s backstory is the everyday joe. His motivation is that he wants to keep his normal life versus going on an adventure.
I find this incredibly perplexing. I’m no sure how one could find a character interesting if there is no conflict; without conflict, generally originating from a character’s backstory, what motivation do they have to do anything?
Bad writing is NOT choosing not to force players to possibly re live their experiences with oppression and discrimination in a fictional world. Bad writing IS having characters with superficial flaws, lack of description, poor dialogue, and story inconsistencies. Drama can be created in ways that don’t involve race, gender, or sexuality.
It is not lazy to create a fictional world where people do not experience the same discrimination and oppression as in the real world. Know your audience, and write something that you want to write and they want to read. Many people, myself included, do not want to read about a world rife with sexism, racism, or homophobia, as many of us experience these things in the real world and do not want to have to experience them in fiction as well.
You are asking about taste. You could also ask, why do people like good or evil characters. It is personal taste.
I have been reading here and really asked myself, If a different social status is really a drama thing? Such things may differ a lot in other places but here thats just no big thing. The Mixed relationship Thing, also nö biggie Herr, I see that everyday. So if I write a story both would not matter, does that make my writing bad? Only because something does not fit the personal experience that does not make things bad.
I am not young anymore, so much of the drama from some games feels weird for me, mostly teenage fears and such, they just do not play any role in my life. So why would I need drama for the sake of drama? But that would not cause me to call that writing bad. It might just not be my cup of tea.
I don’t think it’s particularly productive to compare our experiences with oppression and discrimination in this thread. All of us have faced some sort of difficulty in our life. This does not make one person more qualified than another to speak on what they think is bad writing.
Edit: I’m growing a little bit concerned with the direction the thread is taking, I really think we should keep this on the topic of bad writing if we want it to stay open.
Seconded Tornam’s penultimate point here. If Mara has never experienced class prejudice in Europe, then I’m happy for them, but to claim that there is no such thing as class prejudice in Europe is absurd, and perhaps disrespectful to the many people who have experienced it. I live in Europe and I can tell you, from personal experience, that class prejudice is a thing here, although it may vary substantially from region to region.
To return to the topic, none of this, of course, is to say that COG authors must include class prejudice as part of their fictional universes, or that not to include it is “bad writing”. Different books and different authors do different things.
Locking this because it’s spiraling badly off-topic. It seems a thread like this will just inspire arguing based on personal preferences and biases, not constructive conversation.
However: I find that many threads devolve into vent sessions where one posts unconstructive and thinly-veiled complaints about one specific game, becoming “call-out” posts. If this happens again I will lock those threads as well.
