What makes a good story?

What set me off thinking about stories was watching The Time Traveller's Wife on television the other night and really not liking it, but seeing The Lakehouse the previous night and really liking it. And I wondered - Why? They're both love stories with fantastical twists and The Time Traveller's Wife arguably has better credentials.

So I arrived at a kind of philosophical question. What makes a good story?

OK - this is subjective, but not entirely. Often when we're left with a disatisfied feeling at the end of a book or movie it's because there is a fault in the story telling. I recently reviewed an action sci fi script, which is completely not my thing, but it was a good story. It is only partly a matter of what you like, because I should have liked The Time Traveller's Wife.

But here is why I think I didn't

a) The story has a time travel plot, but is nothing to do with science fiction. This is a romance. The time travel is explained as some sort of genetic disposition. That's not the problem. The problem is time travel should have some sort of meaning in the story. It doesn't beyond what a bummer it is when your husband keeps disappearing.

b) The two main characters are creepily manipulative. The time traveller, as a mature man, deliberately goes back in time to meet his future wife as a child and keeps meeting her, in secret, until she grows up enough to fall in love with him. Later he has a vasectomy without her agreement, so she hooks up with a younger him just passing through on a time travel in order to conceive. Further, he disappears on their wedding day so she marries an older him.

Contrarily, in The Lake House, which in theory is just as odd, the two main characters get together in one time zone and presumably live happy ever after. It was based on a French movie, which may explain why it seemed both more romantic and more plausible.

It is OK to have creepily manipulative characters, but I think it has to be clear that their behaviour is seen to be creepy and manipulative and is in some way, condemned. In The Time Traveller's Wife we are meant to think that these are two star-crossed lovers, not a paedophile and a control freak.