I recently finished reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, and while I was raising my eyebrows at some of the writing decisions while I was reading, it wasn’t until I talked about it along the way with my friends in our Discord server and listened to a review about it on YouTube that I truly realized just how \*bad\* it is. Like, basic worldbuilding and story structure that makes absolutely zero sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. I feel like I glossed over a lot of the issues this book had because I just came out of a Warrior Cats binge read, and I’m kinda just used to some of the more objectively questionable writing choices in that series, so I didn’t give Forth Wing too much flack at first because I was just excited to be reading something that wasn’t Warriors for a change. But I still can’t help feeling like a lot of my time has been wasted on a book with an overall shoe-string plot, which is a shame because the premise itself sounded interesting.
So now I’m left wondering: what exactly am I supposed to be looking for when determining if a story is good or not, or at the very least makes sense? I already have a few questions in mind to ask myself (What is the story trying to say? How does it say it? What themes is the author trying to explore? How do they explore them? Is it through imagery, word choice, characters, setting, etc.? What role do the characters play in the story? What kind of dynamics do they have with each other? How do they tie into the larger narrative?), but I’m sure there’s more I’m missing. I just don’t want this to be a regular occurrence where I finish a book and come out the other side feeling like I just skimmed through the pages without actually understanding anything of note.
by -GreyRaven