What Makes a Story Boring?

(This is a shorter + simplified version from written on mirror.xyz.)

Have you ever read a story that lose your interest quickly? Did you know why it distract your attention? One isn't sure about the "why" for you; here we speak of the "why" for one.

Too much details. An author writes too deep into the details. A story is interesting because it's sufficiently general, perhaps with one or two details; and leave the details to the imagination of the readers. If the author detailed too much of the story, he/she enforce his/her imagination to the readers, leaving little imagination on the reader's part. The reader slowly lost interest when he/she can't think as he/she reads.

Too much explanation. An author that makes the main sentence too vague that he/she needs to materialize it with "because", abuse "because". An author that introduces unnecessary attention to what the reader doesn't care about uses "because". A conversation is healthy, fun, and engaging when it leaves out the details, speaking on the general side. If the reader ever needs the details, he/she can ask for more information. Though, it's more difficult on writing, for the author to decide what to put and what not to put. Putting too little leaves some audiences blur, others okay. Putting too much lost most audiences interest, some audience nit-picking errors from details and file a complain report. It's better to leave out most details by attracting the audience; as audiences whom are attracted to the details are minority.

Too many long chapters. The whole story attracts its audiences with variable length chapters: some long, some short. On average, it's just "about right". Though, some authors goes to great length for the first story, it's fine. But it's not fine when they keep writing long chapters, each and every chapter. Chapter are progress; and sufficiently short chapters signifies progress to audience; medium length are "just right", not too short that they doesn't feel the adrenaline rush and not too long that their adrenaline rush is over. When one play games, one loves to stop at a single "sub-chapter" or chapter, so we always begin a new beginning the next time we play. A story too long forces its audience's attention for too long, and it's annoying when the audience have other things to do and cannot stop because the story haven't yet finished. Long chapters should be an exception, not the norm.

Too many stories concurrently. A story attracts its audience to a single detail, and speak around that central goal. The beginning of the story acts as a compass, directing the audience in each step, progressing towards the end of the story that's defined at the beginning. Even for fiction stories it progress towards one direction, perhaps not a small direction that's defined at the beginning of a chapter, but a larger direction defined at the beginning of the story. If you defined too many side quests, it diverges reader's attention to unnecessary part of the story. In video games, it's fine; the audiences interact with the game and can choose whether or not to complete the side quest, how many side quest to complete, and what side quests to skip. For story that tries to emulate game, audience don't have a choice but follow through what the author writes; and if the author detailed too much side quests, it lost its audience's attention. Slow progress loses its audiences. Multiple stories = too much to say = story not finishing when they should have finished tens of chapters ago = dwelling too long on that sub-storyline.

Too attracted to the past. A story that keeps visiting what happened in the past, especially when it's already mentioned in the past chapters, are boring. Even if it's not mentioned before, it loses its point, capturing its audience into something of the past too often. Once or twice in the whole story is fine; but more than that it's not. And rare short visit (of 40 words max) is fine; no more than that. Dwelling too much on the past loses its attention on the main storyline.

Additional Details (not available on the longer story on Mirror)

Writing like text messages. Have you encountered people whom type messages, sending every few words before they finish a single sentence or even a single paragraph? One found that extremely annoying! It's even more annoying if author writes a story like writing text messages. A story keeps my attention if they manages to at least finish a single sentence before pressing ENTER, with proper punctuations! If

its a story that

writes

like this,

I'm sorry, however interesting is your story, it's non-legible, non-readable. There are no proper beginning, no proper ending, hence annoying.

Conclusion

These are details that keeps one annoying, opens the door to quit reading these kind of stories. What are the details that you are annoyed about? Tell me more on the comments below!

Remember to check out one's Mirror.xyz writings. These writings are mostly unique from read.cash, unless it's worth publishing on more platforms.

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