Is a neutral/impartial story "boring"?
In one of my wanderings through the interwebs, I stumbled upon the idea that "neutral stories are boring". A neutral story is a story that doesn't support any side, i.e. an impartial story that just shows the facts and you decide who is the hero and who is the villain or whether there is any difference between them.
I think I can hypothesize why is that, on a psychological level. No one likes to be told or to find out that they made the wrong choice, so the reader likes to be sure that the side they are rooting for is the rightest side. That sureness generally comes from the side the story is supporting the most, who the story is implying that has the point and is right (usually the protagonist).
But is that so? Can impartial stories be considered "boring" because there's no support to any side? Should I bear that in mind when I write this type of story?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/31253. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think a story can be impartial without being boring.
IMO a story is boring when it lacks conflict or unresolved conflict. Readers are interested at first by interesting characters, but that won't last long. They become interested in the story because of conflicts, and wondering what the characters are going to do, or how those plans are going to work out.
That is what makes a story interesting. I may be rooting for A more than B, but the author does not have to do that, I can be interested or worried for A as I read her ideas and plans, and interested in a more hateful way in what B is doing and his plans that are endangering A. Or vice versa. The reader will pick their side, an author might be able to pull off being neutral.
A can be in conflict with B, without either of them being villainous or evil, just because there are a lot of goals that can only go to one of them. The Olympic gold medal in a particular race, an acting role, a promotion, their mother's approval (just kidding).
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For the sort of poor soul who can only enjoy themselves if they are rooting for one side in a fight, then I suppose that a story that does not take sides will be boring.
But that is not and never has been the function and appeal of art. Art is about seeing the world as it is, but more acutely, with more insight, than we see it day to day.
For those who value art for its ability to make us see more acutely and with more insight, a story that insists on taking sides (and therefore eschews insight for propaganda) will be boring.
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