You know your story is bad when readers are confused (not intrigued), characters lack motivation or feel flat, the plot is disorganized with too many tangents, pacing is off (too slow/fast), there's no significant conflict or growth, and the writing pulls them out of the story with clunky sentences or errors. A bad story fails to create emotional investment because the elements don't feel earned or believable, often relying on deus ex machina or cheap emotional tricks instead of genuine character arcs and struggle.
What Makes a Bad Story? The Top 5 Reasons Stories Fail
Make sure to include no intrigue, no suspense, and no stakes. You want it to be the type of scene that nobody wants to read. If you don't have any ideas, try one of these: A prologue about the fate of the world.
A good story challenges preconceptions, shows growth, demonstrates adversity, has interesting characters , asks questions, paints a picture, is funny, is clever, is paced well, has an interesting hook, and is an adventure.
Things like plot holes, continuity errors, tense inconsistency, or inconsistent character traits and motivations.
A story is usually cringe if it spoonfeeds everything to you and spells all the plot points out, leaving nothing for the audience to think about or imagine.
It is widely assumed that great writing needs a great brain. The truth is that writing is a skill that anyone can master with enough practice, discipline, and constructive criticism, no matter how high the IQ is.
To review, the five Cs are: Character, Context, Conflict, Climax and Closure. The fifth process step is to determine emotion. The best stories typically have more rather than less emotion because humans are emotive beings.
While many writers only come into their own after 30, most won't start to rise until after 50. Half of those will continue to be prolific until 80. The same is true of journalists, whose average age at their peak is 47. Writing is one of those skills that takes a long time to hone.
For traditionally published authors, royalties range between 10% and 15% of the retail price of the book. If a book sells for $20 and the royalty rate is 10%, the author would make $2 per book sold. But remember, publishers don't pay royalties out until the author has earned back their advance.
Great storytelling comes down to the 3 C's: Characters, Conflict, Change. Master these, and you'll capture any audience! Why does storytelling matter? Because stories influence, inspire, and make people remember you.
Experienced writers can write a 1000-word essay in less than an hour, while beginners can take up to four hours. Working on your writing speed and efficiency helps you maximise your time and improve your focus.
Your writing may be bad because you may have neglected to learn the ins and outs of the writing craft. You tried so hard to be writerly that you bogged your story down in superfluous details, and you indulged in cliches. Most lousy writing also shows a lack of proper editing.
The "5 Cs of Writing" offer guidelines for effective communication, typically focusing on Clarity, Conciseness, Correctness, Coherence, and Completeness, though variations exist for different contexts like business (adding Courtesy/Character) or academic literature reviews (Cite, Compare, Contrast, Critique, Connect). These principles ensure your writing is easy to understand, brief, accurate, logical, and contains all necessary information for your audience.
Statistically, research shows that INFJs (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging) and INFPs (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving) tend to be the best writers. But before we dig deeper into these two personality types, keep in mind that you can be any personality type and still be an excellent writer.
The Five Finger Rule is a simple guideline for readers, especially children, to find a "just right" book by checking its difficulty: open to a random page, read it, and hold up one finger for each word you don't know; 0-1 fingers means too easy, 2-3 fingers is ideal, and 4-5 fingers means it's too hard for independent reading. This helps prevent boredom (too easy) or frustration (too hard) and builds reading confidence, though highly desired challenging books can still be read with help.
The "3 Cs of writing" usually refer to Clear, Concise, and Compelling (or Coherent/Complete), guiding writers to make their message understandable, to the point, and engaging for the reader. Clarity means simple, direct language; Conciseness involves cutting unnecessary words; and Compelling (or Coherence/Completeness) focuses on keeping the reader interested and ensuring the message flows logically, often through storytelling, examples, or consistency.
Most people make over $25,000 and 1 in 8 people who sell their books have advances of over $100,000. I honestly was really surprised by this in a good way. It means it's quite possible to make… quite good money on your book.
Saeed Rashed AlMheiri holds the Guinness World Record.
He wrote a book himself and published it at 4 years and 218 days of age. His book, The Elephant Saeed and the Bear, was not just attracting readers all over the world; it set him a Guinness World Record on March 9 2023, as the world's youngest published author.
Many writers start their stories before the interesting part. Way before. So instead of beginning with something intriguing, the author wallows for a few paragraphs or chapters, which causes the story to slow down. This is a particularly damaging mistake when you're planning to send out material for publication.
15 Important Story Elements
To keep your reader engaged and interested, your story should include these plot elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
No, an IQ of 97 is not considered dumb; it falls squarely in the average range (90-109), indicating typical cognitive abilities, though some tests might place it slightly below the exact midpoint of 100. An IQ score of 97 means you performed better than 42% of people, and due to the test's margin of error, your score could be anywhere from the high 80s to the mid-100s, still within normal intelligence.
Here are the problems that hold writers back the most, along with some mental shifts to help you overcome them:
Lady Gaga's IQ is widely rumored to be around 166, placing her in the "exceptionally gifted" or genius category, though this is an estimation often cited in celebrity lists, not a officially verified number from a public test. This high estimate is supported by her early academic achievements, like attending a summer program for the top 1% of students, and her demonstrated creative and musical genius as a composer and performer, notes Us Weekly and Brainmanager.io.