What is a good story?

A good story comes from a character and not a plot. A character whose ideosyncracies, desires, likes and dislikes makes the story. A plot is for entertainment, where the characters are like puppets on a string pulled by the storyteller. S/he makes the characters fit his or her plot. When you create a character out of the human charcteristics around us and set the character in a place or situation, it makes the character come alive in the story. In telling the story, you become the character, so to speak, thinking his thoughts, living his dreams, and suffer and enjoy with him in his pains and pleasures. The entertainer on the other hand is meant to titillate the senses with extraordinary events happening to soulless characters whose only reason to exist is to react to events romantically. A character in a true-to-life story reveals some aspects of life we have not hitherto known or did not consider them deeply enough. S/he behooves the reader to consider looking at life together in a sympathetic way in order to uncover things that have remained buried in the reader's mind. Expose the hidden and gray areas of life and reflect upon them: this is what a character does in a serious novel. A story driven by the plot does not share this sentiment, this invitation into a deeper exploration of life; it is content to remain on the surface, for its primary objective is to keep the reader entertained. Entertainment helps to forget one's troubles, though one must return and face them once again afterwards. A character-driven story on the other hand comes to grips with an existential question and invites the reader to take the difficult journey alongside the character; the reader is not promised a fantastic journey, but needs to pause often in his daily routine life and travel with the character - not necessarily at one go, but a few paces at a time.