Today our topic is another of those questions that has no definite answer but nonetheless raises an interesting point and has plenty of scope for discussion and debate. What makes ‘good’ fiction?

This question is made especially tricky by the fact that two people can have entirely different opinions on the same book. We all have different ideas of ‘good’. In some cases, we might be able to recognise the technical merit of a book, but still not enjoy it. In others, we might have to admit that a book isn’t the most technically brilliant ever written, but we still love it anyway.

Perhaps then, we can say that the first thing fiction requires to be good is a hook of some kind. We might not all agree that a specific book’s hook has us, well… hooked… but we can probably all agree that if we’re going to read and enjoy a book, we need something to get us interested in it. Which conveniently leads us onto all the other things a book needs to be ‘good’…

For instance, it needs decent characters. When we think about series of novels, often it is the characters that keep us going back for more – they’re a hook in themselves. We need our books to be populated by interesting, compelling characters. It doesn’t so much whether they’re ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but it does matter that we want to know more about them.

Likewise, it seems fairly safe to say that good fiction needs to have a plot that we want to read. Some books obviously contain more action than others, but the story needs to provide at least something that makes us want to read on until the end. And the ending is a factor in itself – I would wager that no matter how promising a book is at the start, if the ending is no good, it will ruin the whole thing for the reader. Good fiction needs to deliver.

Then there’s something that I suppose we could call the X factor. We’ve already seen that different people can have completely opposing opinions on a book, so in order for something to be good, it needs to have that certain something that just makes us think ‘yeah, I like this.’

We can’t always identify what it is, but that magic ingredient can be what it needs to take a book from an interesting read to one of our all-time favourites. I think some of this is down to the author’s style – we all have styles that we like to read, and I bet we can all think of at least one author who is generally considered to have an excellent style but who we just can’t get on with.

So maybe the answer to what constitutes ‘good’ fiction is actually very simple – we might not be able to define it properly, but good fiction is simply something that keeps us compelled from start to finish.

And on that somewhat inconclusive note… what do you think makes good fiction?