How original

[mrissa]

The book I just finished reading for contract work contained a hero who:
--discovered, to his howling chagrin, that the medium-level bad guy was his father
--abandoned the training/quest he was supposed to be on in order to try to save someone he cared about, and only partly succeeded, but -- lo and behold oh my oh my -- did not manage to wreck his quest completely as everybody wise said he would
--discovered that the parentless female of about his own age, who had been wandering around with him acting a bit like a love interest but not in a nakedy way, was his sister.

You just can't do that any more. You just can't. You should never give the reader the opportunity to mutter, "Luuuuuke...I am your father..." or "There is...another...Sky...walker...." Ever ever ever.

I have often given the "you must educate yourself in your genre" speech, and I still think it's true. But this is worse than that. When this author was ripping off Prydain, he could at least hope that his young readers had not yet gotten to Lloyd Alexander. Nobody in our culture has not yet gotten to Star Wars. Even my godfather Joe, who has never seen a Star Wars movie, knows the references to Star Wars. It's just lame. Lame, lame, lame.

I'm going to retreat into my own book now, where everybody's parentage is known and nobody is assigned quests externally. And then I'm going to have Leftover Fest '04 with dd_b and lydy (yes, sdn, this does constitute rubbing it in -- sorry). And then I don't know what. But it will not involve me muttering, "You have hibernation sickness. Your eyesight will return in time." And that is final. (This character did not have hibernation sickness, but he did have to recover sight from blindness. SIGH.)

Comments

[palinade.livejournal.com]

*snicker* I'm so sorry. *snort*

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Best quote from yesterday:

"I love you all very much, but most of you aren't going to be eating here tomorrow."

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

I drummed my heels on the floor, hooting with laughter, when I read this--

and I had to read it to the people who wondered why I was howling--

and they howled, too.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

*snicker* Heehee. I think I know what you mean.

I've read books that read like ripoffs of famous works before. Of course, the irony is that most of those famous works were themselves "borrowing" from earlier works. Plenty of myth and folklore about the "evil guy is my father" thing, or the "you're my SISTER?!" thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, there are elements of these particular books that could be read as ripoffs of Prydain if I didn't know the source mythology for both. But there are also situations and characters that are not in the source mythology and are way too close and are also not done better. And I think doing it better is key here.

Except for the Star Wars references, which just have to go unless they're explicit.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I think that doing it better is indeed key. However, in the case of Star Wars, it's not that hard to do it better. However, it's too soon. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. But.

I think "better" in this case may be "in a way that resonates more with the audience," rather than "in an objectively artistically superior way." And while it may be easy to surpass George Lucas's dialog, it may not be easy to unseat it as the most vivid or dominant or resonant example of its type.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I'll give you that. Actually, the dialog in the original trilogy wasn't so bad. It's this new stuff that's awful. I think it's because Lucas is believing the hype about him.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Probably in part. It sounds to me like he never understood what he was doing right in the first place. Also, I read an article that said that Harrison Ford would stop him and say, "George, I can't say this line, it's too awful. You gotta fix it." And Hayden Christensen, we all may have noticed, is not Harrison Ford.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I can believe that Harrison Ford would say that. He is a real actor, after all. And Hayden Christensen, I did notice, is not.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I'm figuring I can get away with the evil person being her mother if it's flat-out stated on page one (and also she's not the main character).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. That is a different thing entirely.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My contrary side can kind of see how someone might be tempted to want to do something with the same elements as Star Wars but better; but that at least is not turning into a story for me, thank goodness.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Somehow doing it deliberately and clearly strikes me as a different beast.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

So, seriously, how does someone rip off Star Wars and not expect to get caught?

Do they think that they're so sneaky that nobody will notice?

Or do they think that the reader will find it a creative re-telling of the movies?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If it's in a really, really different setting, some people don't notice.

But a lot of people don't think in those terms even if it's not in a different setting. A very bright friend of mine had to have it pointed out to him that Terry Brooks was doing some significant ripping off of Tolkien. Some people just don't want to think about that sort of thing.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Terry Brooks did do significant borrowing from Tolkien, but there are some major differences. In the setting, I mean. For one thing, the Shannara books are set in a world that comes AFTER our own; you can pick up on hints of this throughout the first three books. There's also the fact that, unlike in Tolkien's world, all of the Shannara races (except elves) evolved from humans. And, of course, Brooks has more than one strong female character, and they actually get decent pagetime.

That doesn't dispute the fact that Brooks was borrowing significantly, if not necessarily from Tolkien (and sometimes he was, certainly), then from some of the same sources Tokien used. This is with the Shannara books, of course. I'm not exactly sure if anyone else has done something along the lines of "Magic Kingdom For Sale -- SOLD!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This kind of discussion always points out to me how fans of a sub-sub-sub-genre can see distinctions where people who are not so much fans see more of the repetitions.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Stands to reason; people who care greatly about a subject will always understand (and care about) the finer distinctions than people who are not interested. I, for instance, could care less about football, so when someone points out the merits or drawbacks of a particular team to me, I just have to shrug and say "meh".