Vibe, tension, and resonance
Collect them all.
Vibe is genre. It is the feeling your audience gets from interacting with the story. Whether it is laughter, terror, enlightenment, understanding, or something else, it is the emotion you give them while they consume it.
Tension turns pages. It can be the conflict between characters or themselves, or it can be more abstract, such as between the reader and the story, or its own construction.
Resonance comes with time. Does your story stay with your reader or viewer for a day, weeks, or years afterwards? Or does it dissolve the moment they finish?
Ideally, you want all of them, and how you approach the work can shape all three.
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