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Comments
If I may point you towards the article I linked again, I think it makes a good point about many people not giving a fuck about cliches, or even liking cliches quite often.
I read it. Thanks. I'll keep it in mind, but I still value at least a bit of originality in a story. Even if it's just combining familiar concepts together in a different way.
It depends on how it's done.
Eragon attempted to do just that, and was terrible for it. It would have done better to stick closer to cliche in some aspects (the traditional hero archetypes), and strive for originality in some others (the plot, not sticking soc lose to the traditional hero's journey, not being so typically fantasy in the setting.)
I actually remember liking Eragon, but it has been a very, very long time since I last even picked up the book, and I never read any of the sequels.
I liked its version of magic somewhat, but I felt it was a bit too vaguely described.
The first book was not all that bad, except for some questionable acts ("No Murtagh! You can't kill people just because it's convenient!" *fifteen chapters later* "Yeah I know we're in the mountains and there's a giant desert between us and Galbatorix but these slave traders saw us so I'm going to kill them before they can get us in trouble"), but it was derivative as fuck, to the point that you could match it up, point to point, with Star Wars.
The later books were less derivative, but more awful in terms of the characterization of the protagonists, the speshulness of the characters, and the events.
If I remember correctly, there was a scene in the third book in which one of the characters nearly tortured a servant girl for very fucked up reasons that didn't ultimately relate back to their goals.
That's fun.
Yeah I dunno. Never read the sequels and barely remember the original. So *lolshrug*
I just remember the movie being crap.
I don't think it's possible to claim that Eragon was in any way original. The plot is Star Wars, the magic is from Earthsea and the setting is Middle Earth. There's a lot of lines in there, in fact, that were ripped directly from The Lord of the Rings. Eragon is bad because it's poorly written and considered, reading much like a 15 year-old's idea of a fantasy epic, but that's certainly compounded by its lack of originality. But I suspect that's what allowed it to succeed, too; its dedication to inoffensive, riskless cliche provided its target audience with a launching board from which to experience fantasy. The Lord of the Rings, for instance, requires more effort on part of the reader, and there are certainly plenty of fantasy books that have content inappropriate for a young teenage audience, or aren't widely known enough for that audience to just pick them up at a book store.
A bit of freshness goes a long way, but there's also value in keeping the audience rooted in the familiar. I think the trick is less to do with originality in the setting details (although overt cliche is perhaps worse in many cases here), but more to do with the ideas that are explored through the characters, and the way in which this is accomplished. At face value, Terry Pratchett's Discworld is hardly original, and it even revels in its indulgence of cliche. But Pratchett uses these cliches, with a wink and a nod, as a means of post-modern discussion. A great example of this is The Hogfather, which amounts to an analysis of faith, fiction and folklore using a Christmas story as window-dressing, and then relating that to our social constructs. Terry Pratchett essentially argues, through that book, that fiction is a means of imposing systems of order over an inherently chaotic cosmos. And he uses the Grim Reaper dressing up as Father Christmas to do it.
I think originality is one of those things that can easily boil down to a non-factor. Some stories have originality at their core and thrive on it, whereas others work precisely because of their lack of it. It makes a solid judgement on the value of originality impossible, so the best advice I can give is to go with what feels most correct and expressive. Stories are more than characters and plots, after all -- they express wider ideas, themes, that bring them greater depth and relevance. Many of the most well-remembered and celebrated stories have survived because of how their themes speak of the real world. The Lord of the Rings isn't really about midgets on a wizard's black ops mission -- it's about how hope makes the seemingly impossible possible, and about how mutual trust is a force of universal empowerment. At its core, the Lord of the Rings is about things that pull us through dark times.
That's really why it survived. Not because of its (admittedly excellent) worldbuilding, its linguistics or its attention to detail in medieval history. Those things are all brilliant, but none of them are the central point of the story. Without that thematic core wherein something very human and relatable is discussed, The Lord of the Rings would be nothing. It's that core that gives the worldbuilding, linguistics, poetry, history and everything else relevance.
The great thing about originality? It can be a new way of expressing a theme, irrespective of whether that theme is well-trodden or generally goes unremarked upon. So the most important thing, I think, is to identify what one's own work is about beyond its surface elements, and then to use writing techniques that support its essential core. That's probably the best guide I can think of.
Well, saw a longpost coming there.
Well, it's a good thing nobody said that it was then.
I said that Eragon was an attempt at combining familiar concepts in a new manner. It failed miserably, turning out to be just a cliched, derivative mess. That's why I used it as an example.
I've heard many things that stories need to succeed, one often contradicting the other.
Ultimately, I find the thing that fits here most is this; For a story to succeed, it needs to be honest.
Not in terms of honesty in real life, where you take an event, exactly as it was, change names, and write it as is for your tale. That is not honest, as you're filtering the tale through the lens of reality.
No, I'm talking about emotional honesty.
Write people that you believe in your heart-of-hearts is how people would think, act, and believe, even in the face of almighty wizards and spaceships.
Write something you know could be true with all certainty, even if it isn't.
Tell a tale that pulls others in and replaces the audience's reality with your own because it's so believable.
That's what I mean by "honesty". That will give you the resonance you need to tell a great story.
Honestly, I think all of you are forgetting that writing a screenplay you intend to sell is not necessarily going to be guided by the same principles you would be pursuing if you were interested in telling a story.
That's the idea I was thinking on this whole time, Juan.
That said, the screenplays I am working on at the moment are less with the intention of selling and more with the intention of showcasing my talent as a screenwriter.
Craig Mazin said recently "Studios want screewriters who can write original, well-written and fantastic stories to write the screenplays they think will sell."
He has been talking about wanting to write a screenplay to showcase his talent at telling stories in order to break into the industry.
Breaking into the industry doesn't really require talent so much as the ability to pander to the right desires.
Agree to disagree.
I'd actually say it's the exact opposite. To get in, you have to be good. To stay in, you pander.
As much as they want the 'fantastic' stories (Or at least ones the PR department can spin that way), it's still a business to them. It's about the bottom line.
There are at least 70+examples that prove this wrong.
What are you implying by the quote and bolding? I'm not sure.
Fixed.
You will always see different accounts about what goes on behind the scenes.
In my own experience pitching and trying to sell scripts as well as from accounts from screenwriters who I know, both as professors and classmates, though, there's an unspoken truth and it's that you'd have to get really lucky if you actually manage to sell a script that was not pitched or idealized by a producer previously.
fourteenwings, I say there are way more examples that prove what I said to be true. I might be wrong though.
I've having trouble finding anything new to be said about these themes I'm working with. I don't know if that's bad or not.
Your themes being?
The effect technology and the internet has on both society as a whole and our relationships. Specifically, the drive and ability of technology to better the lives of all people conflicting with the selfish desire to use it for ones own purposes. Plus, some minor things in there about things like texting affecting communication.
Instead of taking a side, I'll be having different characters all have their own outlook and story related to the theme, which I think is usually best.
You need to say it in your own way.
Well, seeing as I just wrote a paper about this topic, I think it would be neat to make you bastards feel my pain see what you all have to say about: self-publishing! Here, have some links to look at if you're bored.
Self-publishing is fairly simple, in my opinion.
It's a great concept that can end up producing some great stuff, but without passing through editorial staff or having to be run through some strict standards, piles and piles of rubbish will be published through it.
It does solve several problems with regular publishing (namely, a number of good books never get published because publishers will not pick them up), and regular publishing does produce a surprising amount of rubbish itself.
That's basically how I see it. I can't think of anything that isn't fixed, or at least improved upon, with this rise in self-publishing. It is a little too easy to pass rubbish through the filter, but the middleman is now significantly less expensive (Amazon's expenses vs. the expenses of petroleum and paper), and people can now profit (if lightly) off of the sorts of stories that people were already reading. In the end, the onus that's on the writers doesn't really change - though it could become more lax; I haven't read much self-published stuff, so I can't comment on the percentage of crap versus traditionally-published crap - and this new level of authorial independence could force higher interactive standards in the medium as a whole, in traditional and self publishing. If everything advances, it's win-win, right?
Advertising becomes much more painful, as with no budget you pretty much have to rely upon word-of-mouth to carry word of it.
It depends on how independently an author pursues his craft. Not all of them go as far as purchasing their own publishing presses and ISBN codes; some of them still hire copy-editors and advertisers. The way I see it, it's still the sort of thing where an aspiring writer will need a day job to get by and build up basic funds. So, I guess you're right, in that this isn't an aspect of a writing career that is fixed or improved upon, but at least it's not a step back? ^_^;
Or, in a sense, it could be seen as a fix, because the simplification of the whole process, and the decrease in time between completion of a work and publication (as well as the cost of actually publishing the story in the first place), mean that an author has more control over how everything goes.
tl;dr: In the end, the beauty of this system (assuming it works as well as all these articles are leading me to believe) is that it gives so much more control to the writers. I'm probably coming off as really spergy, though.
With the advent of self-publishing, especially on the internet, that is becoming less and less of an issue.
These days, self-publishing requires as little as turning a word document into a PDF, coming up with a synopsis and cover art, and putting it up for sale on various sites on the internet.
Second parties in publishing are becoming increasingly irrelevant as self-publishing becomes more and more prevalent.
So, I would say that it's not quite a step back, but it is heading in that direction for that one aspect of it.