What makes a good book better?

[Ginge Club]

What is it that makes the really good books stand out? I think a good book needs to be messy, chaotic, partly thought, partly planned, and one or two really good chapters (or really fine sentences) are better than a dozen workmanlike ones. This is a like asking, Is it inspiration, or is it craftsmanship? Unfortunately, I think I tend to be more a craftsman than inspired. What is is that stands out for you in a book?

George

[Phogg]

My first thought was...
Being in a treehouse with a basket of kittens and some apples on a crisp October day makes a good book better.

Location, location, location.

[Apache]

There are many things that can make a book better.
Great characters are important and authors who uses descriptions that make make you believe you are there are two of many.
Apache

[Belfaborac]

I just want a good story, well written. Other than that I'm with Phogg all the way - a howling winter storm outside, a roaring fireplace, a full pot of newly brewed, strong Assam and a glass of Single Malt. Location and ambience makes a huge difference.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

I just want a good story, well written. Other than that I'm with Phogg all the way - a howling winter storm outside, a roaring fireplace, a full pot of newly brewed, strong Assam and a glass of Single Malt. Location and ambience makes a huge difference.

Any place and any when is a good time to read a book. I ain't picky.
Apache

[JSWolf]

I know one thing that makes a good book better...proper formatting with no errors. You go to read a book that's formatted the way most are these days and no matter how good they are, the formatting is going to distract from reading.

A lot of eBooks are formatted with indents too big or no indents. They have big space between paragraphs. Left/right margins are way too big. They start the chapters halfway down the page with a lot of wasted space at the top of the page. They have the justification set to left. They create an internal ToC and then link chapter headers back to the internal ToC. They use a default font size of small. Lastly, sometimes they use a line height that's just too big. All of these things are distracting. So even if the story is very good, it's not going to be fun to read.

A well made eBook has no extra space between paragraphs except for section breaks. It has reasonable indents (I prefer 1.2em). The pages that starts chapters do not start halfway down the page. The base font size is left at the default. Justification is justified. No internal ToC is needed in an ePub. Use very small margins if you do use margins. So when you have a well made eBook, the eBook disappears and all you are focusing on is the story. So how enjoyable the read is is up to the story. The eBook then won't get n the way.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I know one thing that makes a good book better...proper formatting with no errors. You go to read a book that's formatted the way most are these days and no matter how good they are, the formatting is going to distract from reading.

Formatting doesn't bother me, if it's too annoying I always reformat them to my own preferences anyway. It's all the typos that spoil them for me, nobody seems to bother with proof reading any more.

Also, and I haven't worked out why yet, some books send me to sleep while others keep me awake. It's down to writing style more than anything else, or maybe whether I can associate with any of the characters. Even books with total carnage on every page can send me to sleep, while books where nothing much happens can keep me awake.

[RainingLemur]

Whisky.

Oh, you mean IN the book? A main character who drinks whisky. Or...Something that is well written. And has zombies. Whisky and zombies. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

[Ravensknight]

A sequel that is actually better than the aforementioned 'good' book...

[Talldog]

Being under the awning on a warm sunny day at the campground.

With whiskey. Kentucky bourbon or Tennessee whiskey on the rocks most days. A nice single malt on occasion.

[Nancy Fulda]

Literary agent Donald Maass (who represents several prominent authors) discusses this topic in "Writing the Breakout Novel". It's an excellent read, and I hesitate to attempt to summarize a rather lengthy book, but a couple of the elements he mentioned are:

Larger-than-life characters
Heightened stakes
Unexpected moments of grace
Beautiful language

I'm not sure whether I came away from the book able to write better novels, but I certainly came away from it thinking that Donald Maass is a very, very smart man.

[RHWright]

Why do you fall in love?

It's different every time and for every one. And it's often the small things that make the difference.

Some of the common things, though they're not always present in every example of my favorite stories, and certainly to different degrees:

Character(s) I connect with
Ideas to think about
Well-crafted language suited to the story*
A plot that is just a little ahead of me and that presents some surprises, while at the same time fitting together in retrospect

*I love both Tolkien and Dashiell Hammett, but (other than for a lark) I'd hate to read LOTR written in Hammett's hard boiled style or the Maltese Falcon in Tolkien's epic prose.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

Literary agent Donald Maass (who represents several prominent authors) discusses this topic in "Writing the Breakout Novel". It's an excellent read, and I hesitate to attempt to summarize a rather lengthy book, but a couple of the elements he mentioned are:

Larger-than-life characters
Heightened stakes
Unexpected moments of grace
Beautiful language

I'm not sure whether I came away from the book able to write better novels, but I certainly came away from it thinking that Donald Maass is a very, very smart man.

Very interesting. I like those elements in the books I read.

[VaporPunk]

I'm with the wolf here, good editing.

And nice maps in fantasy books, I loves me a good map!

[carpetmojo]

Mr. Martin et al would probably suggest "more" ......

Eventually.