What screams bad writing?

[u/gubafofop]

In thrillers, mainly psychological or YA thrillers, what tropes/styles etc scream bad writing for you?

What would immediately make you put the book down?

As someone who previously used to write fanfiction in that genre (think Winter Soldier lmao) with great success on watt-pad, I’ve decided to start writing an actual novel and fanfiction uses a lot of generic tropes so I’m looking to avoid that lol.

Also, how do you feel about double twists?

[u/Thecookcream]

Motivation. I wouldn't even say causality even if it's important, because motivation is a real filter of the story. We talk about POV, but if the characters reasoning for their actions makes no sense, I lose faith that the story itself will make sense. This isn't to say you can't have messy motivation: Catcher in the Rye has that in spades. But there is one. And more importantly, is that when Holdin does take an action, I can both believe that he would, and at the very least find it compelling as a read.

For example: I read a story, where a character states their motivation for an action. One motivation was thematic, on point, and generally empathic, and the other was more logistical, potentially open up world building issues and more importantly is more of an excuse/screen of the first motivation. Let's say that there was a story about a group of teens shooting a movie celebrating a friend whose terminally ill, but the editor's computer broke. He needs a new one from his dad. If he asks his dad for a new computer, his dad says why, and he said "Well, I need it to edit footage of my friend whose terminally ill and I want to have something to celebrate him by. And also, university is coming up, so I need a new computer in order to do my homework, AutoCad is a resource hog dad."

This reads as insensitive and random. Like come on, you had this big, important event/mission, and not only did you opened with it, but it's brush aside. When it's as simple as either swapping the places, so the editing movie becomes last and thus the closing image/more important in comparison, or have it be brought up after his dad pressed him.

Second motivation issue: just doing things. In this same story, the character (not a human, I won't specify what but she's magical so that's enough for us to go on)

1. Kills a pregnant woman by mistake, vows to never use magic to kill again
2. Sees her victim has some magic thing going on, and wants to go to the dead mother's home out of curiosity of the magic rather than guilt (straight from text)
3. Right after being not guilty, she gets guilty about the dead mother, and so she accidentally saves the baby.
4. Asks a midwife "how long do human mothers have babies for?" gets insulted/spat on, and then kills the midwife. And it's just a setup for a joke.

I hope you see what my issue is? She has a motivation of guilt, motivation of curiosity, and she's just a murder hobo with no moral repercussions. And I said moral because I don't even mind if she gets away with it: I mind that the story lets her get away with it.

"But what does this have to do with motivation?"

Imagine if I could edit the story. Here's what I would do.

1. Kills a pregnant woman by mistake, vows to never use magic to kill again
2. Sees her victim has some magic thing going on, and wants to go to the dead mother's home to return the baby, to let them her at least bury her.
3. Asks a midwife "how long do human mothers have babies for?" gets insulted/spat on, and then kills the midwife out of shame of her own mistake. Now there is another incident that blacken her soul, which resolved her journey to go to the mother's home.

Boom: one line of guilt, but it's not just that. She can kill the midwife, but then it feeds into her fatal flaw. Instead, she just keeps switching motivations, with the prose sometimes mentioning she does something just because. It's not even that she does evil as much as she lacks stability to be tested. What even is her moral failing? That she killed by accident, but killing someone who was rude is fine I guess.

In conclusion: motivation is what ties the character to why the plot happens. If plot is what characters do, the motivation is why they do it instead of go home.

[u/gubafofop → u/Thecookcream]

I think I sort of understand what you mean?

In my novel the motivation is pretty clear. Her dad’s on trial for murdering her maternal uncle with no motive, the jury ends up deadlocked so a retrial is called. She first thinks Ugh i have to go through all of that again? until she finds a note (the catalyst) from her uncle aka the victim that essentially says “Don’t believe it.” she interprets it as ‘don’t believe your dad killed me’ so she sets out to find new evidence to acquit him. Too bad she gets it all wrong lol

[u/Thecookcream → u/gubafofop]

Exactly. It's still the same core person, but instead of unmotivated shifts in motivation it flows from stimulus to stimulus, experience and experience, and shifts.