"Room for Improvement" is a Relief.

This one's about characters and progression. Stories are interesting because something increases from its starting quantity, even if that something is considered negative. By negative, I mean 'hey, the glass might be half empty, but at least that puddle on the floor is growing!'

Children grow up, detectives compile clues, monsters add notches to their hatchet handles, Walter White gets closer to making an incredibly stupid mistake...

Really, Walt? Why would you put that on the toilet? Also, why'd you tell the white supremacists where you were, then proceed to NOT warn Hank of that fact?

We're getting off topic, but you get my point. Whether the goal is good or bad, the story builds on (or towards) something.

We can see how much we like progression by examining the common complaints people make. Harry Potter gets criticized because whenever the budding wizards learn a new trick, the reader knows it's going to conveniently solve every problem later on in that book. That would almost be okay if they didn't proceed to forget about that trick the next time it would come in handy.

More examples: after a few seasons, Lost was more the 'status of the writers' than the title of the show because you can't keep answering questions with more questions. Dragonball Z gets criticized because it's a loosely-connected series of the heroes and villains exchanging ridiculous and imbalanced power-ups; they essentially take turns being invincible, really. 

I guess we can just call that 'anime' at this point.

The only way Bleach could disappoint me more is if this nozzle survives it.

My point is, all these criticisms point to flawed progression. Harry Potter was obviously really successful, but the lack of old tricks in new books hurt our ability to believe. Lost tried to deepen the sense of madness and conspiracy and mystery as it went along, which would have been progress if it weren't for the fact that the writers didn't have any sort of vision for where they were taking the viewer. And we may as well face it, the only reason we kept with DBZ is because we had a guarantee that the bad guy would get what was coming to him in a really cool-looking fight. It wouldn't ever make real sense, Goku would just come through because he's Goku.

 Give us a break, we were in middle school. It worked in middle school.

I think we like stories because they're parables. They're life lessons in bite-sized packages; hard lessons the reader can learn more easily because of the protagonist's struggle. In a story with a happy ending, its audience likes it because good behavior is rewarded.  Alternatively, because the Montagues allowed themselves to remain caught in the cycle of revenge, they got their Leo killed. To be fair, Leo's deaths lose some impact as they keep happening, but it's still a tragedy! The Montagues are an example of how NOT to act. In either scenario, should the story continue, it's important that the characters remember what happened in earlier episodes of that series.

If the character forgot about an old conflict, then it's like you're telling the reader that the old event must not be worth remembering.

Most any story that receives any praise whatsoever has an obstacle that the protagonist can't overcome at the beginning of the story.They either have to progress and persevere, or succumb to the struggle and fall into a progressively-worsening downward spiral of consequences. The protagonist progresses or the consequences do. Either way, we need a big contrast between the situation at the beginning of the story, and we need a logical progression of events to tie those two together. 

Right now, Arbiter's taking something of a coming-of-age approach. I don't think it's the cliche version, though. Step one is to expose the audience to a world so huge and harsh that even the adults have to cooperate just to have a chance at surviving; the kind of Darwinian environment that really makes you appreciate having a bed and blanket to hide you from the monsters out in the night. Step two is to have a monster wander into the protagonists' safe place, let it rampage a little bit, then have the adults handle it with a little help from the protagonists. From there, we slowly increase the flow of 'monsters' and slowly ween the 'help from adults' factor until the new generation becomes strong enough to stand on their own and, ultimately, become the protectors of the last generation.

Nothing sounds new about this; where I want to deviate a little is really emphasizing society as the character that's constantly improving (with each generation learning hard lessons easier than the last through the merits of both generations, both as great teachers and great students), and also by going much more into the difficulty of cooperation. I really want to highlight how difficult it is to create a cooperative relationship between a team of very different personalities, then drive home just how much of a constant struggle it would be to maintain such a relationship. Good teamwork doesn't continue easily just because things clicked once.

Even that doesn't sound very new, but I guess if I could really convey the ideas in two paragraphs, writing fiction wouldn't serve any purpose, would it? "Show me, don't tell me." We'll get there. Regardless of how I want to apply it to Arbiter, you get why progression is important in a story.

So tell me: which stories have presented the most satisfying sense of progression for you?