Recently I had a conversation with two friends, a couple, who are keen SFF readers, amongst other genres—but we were particularly talking about SFF/speculative fiction and what, for each of them, is most important about a story when deciding what is/isn’t a great read.

For the man, it was definitely the world. In fact, he felt world creation was the main reason he keeps coming back to the genre.  Without that aspect, he argued, if the read were just about plot and character, then you could go to any genre: world building, to him, is what makes SFF distinctive.  When he opens the book he wants to be taken somewhere ‘other’, but also ‘real’, ie the world must convince. And once he has “accepted” a world, then he will always want more stories set within it.

The woman, however, was adamant that it is the characters that are most important. If she isn’t interested in and convinced by the characters then she doesn’t care how fascinating or original the world, or how exciting the plot, she probably isn’t going to “rate” that book. She also felt that inconsistent details around either plot or character will always spoil an otherwise good book for her.

But we all agreed that the closer the overlap between having an excellent world, intriguing characters and a convincing plot, the more likely we all were to “rate” that book highly.

So how about you? What element drives the reading experience for you? Is it the ‘world’ (which might be setting/atmosphere with non SFF), the characters or the plot? Or something else again?