Honestly, a story is worth telling if you or anyone else wants to tell it. If it's what's got you excited, got your head spinning with ideas and your fingers itching to write, then it's worth telling. What makes it worth telling is the fact that you want it to be told - if you want it to be told, it means something to you, and will almost certainly inspire others as well. Every story has the potential to inspire emotion in its readers, to show them a new perspective, and that makes stories worth telling.
As for what makes a story a good story, the answer lies a lot more in the execution than in the idea. There's a quote that says something like "There are no bad novel ideas, only poor executions." In my mind, what makes a story a good story is if it can hold the readers' attention - make them feel something, fulfill the reason they decided to pick up the book in the first place. Different people have different tastes, of course, but in the end this is much more reliant on fulfilling the explicit and implicit promises you make to the reader in the first pages of the book, rather than the actual story idea or genre. At least, that's how I've always seen it.
We're all stories in the end.
I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff. -EternalRain
I think you, @Deanie and I are like the Three Book Nerd Musketeers of YWS. -bluewaterlily
Well, I don't know if others think so but my opinion is lessons. The lessons within the stories are what make them worth telling. Someone like me, just doesn't care if it's a book for kids or something like that. As long as it has some beautiful stories that explain the concept or value of things, I will read. I don't read books just for fun and seriously if your stories have something like what I have just told. It will last forever in reader's hearts. Engage something good in beginning and give them the best ending, that is what makes stories great.
A little late to the party here, but a really interesting question! I couldn't resist.
I think there are a few possible answers.
1. Change. Characters that grow and affect the world around them. 2. Empathy. Showing characters going through struggles similar to real people, for a sense of solidarity, and showing how they deal with them, and feeling like real life isn't so impossible and overwhelming. 3. Escape. Sharing a really cool, unusual world/culture/setting.
Tension & conflict drives stories, so there's probably some really deep philosophical thing buried in that fact somewhere.
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