Interesting answer. Do people accept a good plot even if they have seen it before? Or does it have to be new and unique? Does it have to be high-concept? What intrigues you as a reader? Do you look for a "new" story or do you want something familiar and comforting? Do you want to be surprised or do you want it to be predictable (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, or good triumphs over evil, for example)? Will you read yet another "dinosaur in a park" story, or would you rather read something else that you've never seen before?
What intrigues you as a reader to consider a plot having "promise"?
Well I'll try to answer them all.
"Do people accept a good plot even if they have seen it before?"
It depends on how that plot is presented. If two stories sound the same with a few changes, then one is bound to have more readers than the other.
My guess would be (and with this I answer your next two questions) that the one that was most unusual, would get more attention.
Because it's innate in us to examine the unusual, the quirkiness of a proposal that the writer presents to us.
And the weirder it is, more attention it's given to. You're more curious to see what roads and paths the writer takes you though.
"Does it have to be high-concept?"
I would guess that this would be a matter of personal choice, of personal liking and disliking, but I do tend to notice that the stuff that gets a lot of attention is, again, unusual stuff.
I know this is a site for writers, but I'm a person of the movies, but you go look at the highest grossing films and they're all unusual plots. Giant unsinkable ships that sink and pirates with drunken-like walking who go to the end of the world, fight a man cursed with tentacle beard turn their ships upside down to see the sun rise. Then you have Harry Potter.
And on top of this, if you're going to make it 'high' more attention is given to it.
Lord of the Rings, my god, you know? It has history books written about the events of the thousands of little tiny stories Tolkien had in mind.
It gets people entertained, which is also a factor in plot.
"What intrigues you as a reader?"
It's unusualness. And Bigness. But this is me obviously. But I notice I'm not alone.
I only remember the books by, sure the characters, but also those little scenes you remember after two months. That footprint in the mind.
Books are known for that. Moby Dick. White whale right there.
Of course it's more than that, it's the struggle and revenge and all of that.
But most of the time, people are just curious as to how a man is going to deal with a whale.
Obviously they're interested in the emotions involved in it.
But the plot is "man goes after white whale."
It's unusual. And the whale is white!
"Do you look for a "new" story or do you want something familiar and comforting?"
I'm most likely to pick up a "new story" than something I've seen thousands of times on the shelves and that people don't seem to comprehend that it's just going to fill the shelves with more unimaginative variation.
You see a book like "The da Vinci Code"...and then it's shelves filled with templar conspiracies and Mozart being involved in Mason stuff.
I mean, I roll my eyes to that sort of stuff.
I go for different stuff. I can jump from Douglas Adams to Lord of the Rings.
I honestly haven't read any of the usual classics (but I want to!), but I have no inherit likeness to the stories.
The stories that attract me are H.G.Well's "The Time Machine" and "The War of the Worlds" and Jules Verne's stories, which I haven't ever read from cover to cover.
And these books are popular. You say their titles and people are like "Oh, yeah."
These books are popular. It can't be just word of mouth. What makes it be word of mouth??? I think that's the question.
It's, again, the unusualness which attracts us as humans.
If you go for unusual, you're bound to get inquisitive eyes skimming the back of your book, not to mention that you might put a smile on the face of the publishers when that story comes out from a pile of what they thought was going to be more of the same.
"Do you want to be surprised, or do you want it to be predictable?"
Both really.
Show me good versus evil, but among insects or trees or planets or tables. Or walls or rocks. Be interesting. And insane! Girl likes boy and such, get them separated by megalomaniacal environments that want to eat the boy who's going for the girl.
Just thinking about this I get these really eccentric ideas.
"Will you read yet another "dinosaur in the park"?"
From the start, I'm going to think that it's a writer trying to be as popular as "Jurassic Park". However, if it gets word of mouth, I'll pick it up. Why? Because if it's word of mouth, it has something unusual about it, which is intriguing a lot of people.
Of course I don't think this through in my daily life.
It's automatic.
"What intrigues you as a reader to consider a plot having "promise"?"
Unusualness. Out of the ordinary. And the more eccentric the better. For ME, mind you.
If you're having characters saying that Jesus was a human and be controversial and have people shooting each other in it and put da Vinci's works of art in it, I'll be glad to read your book.
It's intriguing. It's a weird combination of things!
If you're having a 4 foot high being destroy the greatest evil of middle earth, which is just a ring.... I'll pick it up.
It's curiosity in how the writers are going to get through these ridiculous ideas, with their chins high in the air and actually getting praise for it because they did it in an entertaining way.
That's what I look for in books anyway. And that's what I try to do with my own plots.
The whole memorable unusualness is something I'm constantly thinking of. And I tend to make them big. And because it's stuff I would want to see in my book, and I know it's stuff people would like to read.
I really don't know what makes a "good plot." I think I could probably define what a good plot is for a particular genre, but it certainly wouldn't be all-inclusive even in that context.
