#2, an interesting idea or novel approach to an "old" idea. Something intriguing that I couldn't have thought of in a million years, yet seems surprisingly obvious once you understand it. Love Larry Niven for this kind of thing, for instance.

#3, moral dilemmas.

Note, #2 & #3 are maybe tied for importance to me.

Think about this. How many novels have you read recently that you really enjoyed, and as you read it, you cared about the characters a lot, but when you finished it, you only remember the events that happened in the story?

The reason is because a lot of times characters only need to fill the function of the plot. You identify with them as you read the story, and then forget their names and the things they said afterwards, because they were good characters--they performed the role the plot required them to. I don't remember most of the characters from the Dragonlance books. I don't remember the name of the character from The Garden of Stone. I don't even remember the name of main character from the Iron Lance book I finshed a few weeks ago, and I really loved him and the book. I can tell you everything that happened in it, but.. the main character only did what he was expected to.

When someone says an author created a great character, it means to me, that character stands out. Ender is a great character, I don't forget him. But most stories I read don't have characters that good. Nafia was a good character, and yet he's memorable to a lesser extent because he's a little more typical heros. But that's fine. I think if you craft any story well, concentrate on conflict and suspense, the audience will care about anyone you write about. So that's why I say the focus on creating characters is to intently focused on. You end up with characters like the kind King created, realist, and memorable to the last detail, but thier stories are never as interesting as they are.

By the way, check out Exquisite Corpse by Poppy. Great gothic background, cool plot and unforgettable characters. I'll never forget Andrew and Jay, and Luke and Tran.

Since, for me, the story is about a great character, I can disentangle the story from the character. What's Moby Dick without Ahab?

--Almost never.

The reason is because a lot of times characters only need to fill the function of the plot. You identify with them as you read the story, and then forget their names and the things they said afterwards, because they were good characters--they performed the role the plot required them to. I don't remember most of the characters from the Dragonlance books. I don't remember the name of the character from The Garden of Stone. I don't even remember the name of main character from the Iron Lance book I finshed a few weeks ago, and I really loved him and the book. I can tell you everything that happened in it, but.. the main character only did what he was expected to.

--Maybe it’s because I’m a RPG’er, but I remember the names of nearly all of the main characters from Dragon Lance. It’s Tanis’s inner struggle between his human and elven natures; Caramon’s learning how to let Raistlin go his own way; Raistlin’s odd traits that keep him from being completely evil; Laurana growing up; Sturm keeping the spirit of the Knights of Solamnia alive and the inidividual qualities of the others that make Dragonlance such a compelling story. The subplots of the series all result from one or the other of the characters’ actions based on their unique personalities. (For example, the romance between Tanis and Kitiara, the friendship between Flint and Tasslehoff, and the courtly and unrequited love between Sturm and Alhanna). The main struggle, that of Takhisis trying to take over the world, is old hat. It’s the stuff in-between, the interactions between the characters, that turns /me/ on.

When someone says an author created a great character, it means to me, that character stands out. Ender is a great character, I don't forget him. But most stories I read don't have characters that good. Nafia was a good character, and yet he's memorable to a lesser extent because he's a little more typical heros. But that's fine. I think if you craft any story well, concentrate on conflict and suspense, the audience will care about anyone you write about. So that's why I say the focus on creating characters is to intently focused on. You end up with characters like the kind King created, realist, and memorable to the last detail, but thier stories are never as interesting as they are.

----I just can’t bring myself to care about characters who have no redeeming qualities or are not interesting to me in their own right. As I mentioned before, I didn’t like Zillah, the monstrous main vampire in Lost Souls. I didn’t like his cronies, Twig and Molochai. I sort-of liked Nothing, but only because he at least tried to take his future into his own hands and only had a chance to get anywhere once Zillah was out of the way. I liked Ghost because of his kindness and loyalty to Steve, even though Steve really pushed the limits, and because of his cool ability. I liked Christian because, even though he didn’t want to live, he did what he knew he had to do until the right death came along, and also because he was complex—why did he dump Nothing off in an affluent suburb, when he could have found someone who could have handled Nothing a little better? (But that is for another discussion). All of the conflict and suspense are caused by the characters and their actions. If they had been merely tools of the plot, there would have been no plot.

By the way, check out Exquisite Corpse by Poppy. Great gothic background, cool plot and unforgettable characters. I'll never forget Andrew and Jay, and Luke and Tran.

It's like the difference between a time capsule and a archeological dig in the community trash dump. One tells you what the people of that time wanted you to know (it doesn't tell you if they're being honest, either). The other tells you the truth. Trying to put subtext into your writing deliberately is like the community that has a faked up dump that they try to present as representative of themselves. Fortunately, to take my analogy a step past prudence, they also have to have a real dump somewhere, and the same is true of artificial subtexts.

Interesting subtext is one of the reasons that it's so vital for artists to share vicarious experiences with other, genuine, storytellers. Because most of use have never had a life and death struggle that was particularly dramatic (somehow, all my actual life and death struggle turned out rather...boring, in the actual event) we need to take in the experience portrayed in the writings and work of others, then incorporate that into our own body of experience (true story, the most terrified I've ever been in my life was when I was playing Doom all the way though the first episode for the first time...of course there's the time I got a shot of epinephrine at the dentist's office, that was synthetic, though). As writers, we cannot afford the luxury of reading stories without investing ourselves in them, because if we let ourselves recieve a story in a detached mode, then we miss an opportunity for a really powerful experience that could make our own writing infinitely more interesting. Somehow, I get the feeling I'm just repeating something that Card has said before. But there are a lot of cognitive theorists that also talk about this stuff, how cartharsis allows us to become sensitized to the experience of a narrative, while criticism deadens our sense of the theme.

So I would say that subtext is an inevitable result of the overlay of your own personal experiences onto your telling of the story. Trying to add subtext is redundant, even harmful, because the reader that is open to your work is sure to detect that there's something fundamentally wrong, because he'll be getting both texts (unless you're lucky and he just misses your artificial text). The critical analyst isn't worth writing for, because he doesn't think that your story is good enough for him to experience it anyway.

William Goldman, in his book, ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, says that subtext is what the story is =really= about. He says that if you don't have more to the story than the surface stuff (if you don't have subtext), then maybe your story isn't worth telling.

Of course, there are unconscious things an author puts into a story, and people can do whole PhD dissertations on what they think those things are, but that isn't the only definition of subtext.

But there is a genuine reason for choosing among various directors and actors that isn't simply a measure of their competence, and that has to do with 'what they bring' to the performance. What an actor brings to a performance and what a director brings to a performance are not issues of sheer competence, but rather of selfhood. Bruce Lee brought something to his characters that no one else could match, because of the life he lived. And that was subtext as well.

In writing, we aren't under the same restrictions that bind directors and actors. We don't have to use some tricky, learned syntax to communicate that a character is experiencing something. If we want to twitch an eyebrow, we say it. "His eyebrow twitched, just a little." Imagine an actor doing that. "I twitch my eyebrow, at this point, in an expressive manner." I have to admit, that kind of performance might be hilariously funny, but that's not how actors act in our convention of acting.

But we do share a common ground in that the area of subtext that is said to come with the actor or director, "what they bring" to the performance, does exist in writers as well. We have the freedom to explicate anything that we are conscious of in our story, and we should. Not doing so would be like an actor trying to communicate that his character's eyebrow wants to twitch without giving any outward sign.

Believe me, just because you explicate everything that you are conscious of in the story, it does not follow that there will be no remaining elements that you are not conscious of. But for most sane people, that unconscious understanding is likely to be an integrated whole. If you try to put elements into your subtext consciously, the subtext will suffer, because you cannot know that what you are putting into the subtext is compatible with what is already there.

All I want to do is escape reality for a time.

that is why even serial novels like star trek etc are ok to read they may not be good "writing" but they help me escape. In fact sometimes I like 2 dimentional character they are easy to figure out and not very much work.

I like novels that move fast and make me think (but not too much). The main character must have some redeeming traits, but I prefer one with a serious flaw. I do not have to care about the protagonist to like the book, but he/she does have to be interesting.

As shallow as this sounds, unless I'm reading for a specific subject matter, like horticulture or the history of Islam, when I read I novel I am generally wanting to be entertained. I dislike preachy books and subtle political commentary, unless it is a book that doesn't hide the fact that it was written specifically to preach or make political commentary.

If the plot is boring, no matter how good the characters are, I'll not enjoy the adventure. If the adventure is entertaining, but the characters are flat, I won't feel any excitment about what is going to happen to the characters.