The Magic of the Story

I've wondered from time to time, as a reader and especially as someone who likes to write, just what makes a good story.

Is it the plot?

Is it the writing itself? (The tone, or all the other tons of small technical details that we use to pick apart and describe our own language.)

Is it just something about the writer that comes through somehow in a bunch of printed characters on a screen or a page?


Or maybe it's some magic that comes from the reader themselves.



I think it's probably all of these. And it's interesting, because if you look closely enough you can tell which writers pick up on this and which ones don't. Which ones take these things into account; especially the last, realizing that the story belongs to the reader just as much as to themselves.