What makes a story a gem?

What makes a story good? Beautiful, lit, entertaining?

Do we all have a different taste? Or do we desire the same thing?

Why only read your favorite genre, why not go outside of it?

For the past couple days, I’ve been wondering these question’s answers. I never found one. To me, if a story is something extraordinary (which by means, even though I’m a romance-hater, if it has unique plot, like The Bad Boy Game) and has decent/amazing directing. That makes it a gem. It’s not hard to write a beautiful story with “stands screen center”, neither it’s impossible to cover your plot holes with your directing.

If a story has realism in it, that means it’s a gem for me. It’s something I never see. (This is the reason why I hate romance stories) If the pace is not slow (it doesn’t take 20 episodes to get in to the point) the story is a gem for me.

What are your opinions? What makes a story a gem? Not good, not great, a GEM.

A perfect story.

-TTT

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for me, a gem is a story that tackles real issues & has MC/MCs face real problems.

it usually has to be cliche free & diverse without too much focus on romance.
romantic interests are fine but if it’s marketed as a comedy, make it funny
if it’s marketed as a drama, add actual plotwists

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Finally someone who likes realism too. Thank you for filling the missing part.

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Yeah, a lot of stories on Epsiode have petty MCs with petty problems.
& that makes it hard to like the characters or feel like the story is going anywhere.

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Exactly, first world problems. :woman_facepalming:

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In my opinion, the story is the most important. Of course directing is very important as well, but making a compelling and interesting plot is a must for a story. I, specifically love the fantasy/sci-fi genre, so I may be a bit biased here, but I find that I generally enjoy stories that take place on earth, but with a twist the most.

For example, a story that I truly enjoyed through and through was the Secret of Rain by Joseph Evans. Joseph Evans is a great writer, in my opinion, and even when he strayed away from his fantasy roots with the Last Goodbye, I still really enjoyed that story. But, in all seriousness, if you haven’t read the Secret of Rain, I would recommend it. The plot twists (I won’t spoil anything) are on point :ok_hand: and the story is great.

Something else that I noticed in stories, is that sometimes good directing can somewhat excuse a rather lackluster plot — and vise versa. Honestly, I’m fine with any type of directing, as long as there aren’t errors all of the time. But, again, as long as the story is good, and there aren’t too many directing errors, I’ll likely enjoy it. And if you’re an author that can twist cliches, and make them interesting, that’s great, and a rarity.

Honestly, when I first downloaded Episode a few years ago, I played it somewhat ironically, due to a lot of the cheesy, cliche, stories that Episode often featured. However, today, while those cliches still exist, there are a vast number of great creators on this platform, who strive to make good content, and I respect those people. Those people are currently encouraging me to create my first story on the platform, and I’m excited for the day, I’ll get to publish my story :v:

Anyways, those are just my thoughts and opinions,
—Brooke

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Yes, yes, yes.

If we’re talking about true gems, I think super, amazing, out-of-this-world directing is the key.

When I think of my favorites shelf, they are all pretty different in terms of plots and realism and cliche level. But they all usually have some kind of directing that has made me go wow

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Characters that you fall in love with, relatable MCs, amazing plot twists, and an ending that doesn’t leave me feeling depressed. Good spelling and grammar, excellent dialogue, and good directing are also key.

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I love people who put, like people have said earlier, realism into their stories. People who misrepresent mental heath issues and the LGBTQ+ community, alongside with other diversity issues. I’ve actually been thinking about making a story about my life, because then there would be real problems and not the same old cliche melodrama we’re all used to.

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If a story makes the reader feel powerful emotions, then it’s a gem. It could be written with beautiful narrative and have amazing directing, but if it fails to make its reader feel anything, then its failed its number one purpose as a story. Not counting powerful boredom or powerful anger (directed at the writer, that is).

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To me a gem is a story that focuses on a topic or theme that is not featured a lot on Episode and tackles it with great writing and directing.

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Sorry to pounce on this old comment, but I started playing episode for the EXACT same reason! I found out about it from the insanely shitty tumblr ads, google “episode tumblr ads” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Let me tell you, a year ago I had no idea I would be publishing stories for an app like this!

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Yeah, there are a lot of awful Episode ads out there :sweat_smile:
But, then again, those ads are what got a lot of people playing :thinking:

in my opinion, it needs diversity, and non-stereotypical plots/characters/scenes. add POC but don’t stereotype them. also good directing and a good plot! bad boy plots are okay but make sure they’re not too… weird and uncomfortable if you know what i mean?

some people really like cliche stories like pregnant by bad boy and other stories (i find most of them problematic tho), so if you’re looking for an audience and quite a few views, you can do that. it’s much better to write a diverse and realistic story, but gang stories and stuff seem to attract readers and make episode feature your story or promote it. i wouldn’t recommend it though.

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