which is worse?

[kaigou]

Poll #5852

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 70

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When reading/watching a story, which is the MOST painful, frustrating, or annoying for you?

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A well-written story focused on a topic/theme that you usually find boring.
5 (7.1%)

A badly-written story focused on a topic/theme that you usually find interesting.
65 (92.9%)

Comments

[cyphomandra]

I get frustrated about well-written stories about deeply boring topics in the abstract, because so much of my local literary fiction is determined to write nicely about unpleasant characters doing nothing in particular, and deciding that it's below them to bother to have a plot. But I just avoid it, so specific books don't really frustrate me. And I'm certainly capable of enjoying badly written stuff if it's about something I'm interested in; a lot of the time that's fanfiction, and I think there that emotional connection to the characters (probably driven by fannish attachment) will carry me through a lot of problems - I think the thing that does make me bail faster than anything else is flat, on-the-nose dialogue.

I ticked the second option, though, because this is definitely more frustrating. Failure to resolve a plot well or unlikely characterisation is more likely to annoy me than actual writing style, though, although poor formatting will probably do it fastest :)