No -- it was way more than just the sex scenes. Several people (including me) found the sex scenes boring and repetitive. There was something more. Even though you couldn't stand it, an incredibly huge number of people did -- just look at all the 5 star reviews on amazon. I don't think you can say it's great writing, but it sure did have something. It was published in a very unusual manner -- it was already a success when the publisher bought the rights to it. She had self-pubbed, and could not keep up with demand. The book was *backordered.* It was a no brainer for the publisher, because the demand was already there. All they did was print it up and deliver it to the booksellers.
To me it was all about the tone. For Ana being nineteen or twenty (granted she was supposed to be intelligent) it just sounds like a letter from a lawyer more than a young girl telling a story. I think it may have flowed better in past tense as well, but that's just my opinion.
I think one should always be careful when criticizing so-called "bad writing" to include that it's personal preference. Why? Because otherwise it's very easy to get the "readers are so dumb!" mindset - which is never a good base for a writer. One should always respect their potential readers. A best seller may not be to your liking - that doesn't mean those who did like it are stupid.
On the other hand, if your goal is to be a professional writer, please the readers and make your living from your writing... I hear this a lot. I'd be interested in hearing a few of those "rules" that are so often invoked as a reason to "just write." I ask because in my experience, virtually every course or book on the subject begins with the admonition that if you're seeking a set of rules you're wasting your time. Every profession has its own set of knowledge that must be learned. They're not rules, they're knowledge. There is no way in hell you're going to learn what a publisher finds appealing, or unappealing in a submission, for example, by guessing. In support of that I offer a 99,9+% rejection rate for submissions. Is learning how to avoid that and shaping your work for publication learning rules or being smart and informed? Publishing, like any other business, has one goal: to stay in business. They sell stories, not paper with print on it (or files with alphanumeric characters in it). So they need stories that people will pay to read. We all deserve success. We all deserve to be rich. But the publisher is our customer (yes, I know there's self publishing, but the success rate of going that was is statistically insignificant given the number of offerings). That means they tell us what they want. And that is the world we live and work in.
The way you often portray it, one would get the impression that they are "rules." I mean if anyone dares to go against the plan laid out by someguyI'veneverheardofwhoapparentlywroteseventy-fivenovelsI'veneverheardof in his "How to write fiction in ten easy steps!" books, it's almost always shot down as being somehow wrong. Sorry to have to be an asshole, but that's just the way I see it.
I have to disagree. Many writers, especially less experienced ones, will be likely not to too see the flaws in their work. I believe there's an expression/quote or some such along the lines of "every writer thinks he/she has written a masterpiece" and the same sort of principle applies. Another person will be far likelier to spot a plot hole in my own story than I am, that's a fact. And yes, there is the risk of plagiarism when discussing your ideas, but you shouldn't be discussing such things with people you don't trust not to steal your ideas, just as you wouldn't discuss elements of your personal life with strangers. There's nothing wrong, and something right, with bouncing ideas back and forth between yourself and other like-minded, trustworthy literary friends. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, among other writers, did exactly that whilst writing their own novels and their shared ideas can be seen in their works. For example, in one of C.S. Lewis' works, there is a civilization which is very similar to Tolkien's Númenor and the events relating to them are similar as well.
The word "originality" comes up a lot in this type of discussion. So does the understanding that there are no original story ideas, that every story concept is only a variation on one that has been done many times before, and that even the variations aren't very original. So what makes a story original? Not the story idea. And not, as many new writers suppose, in using a different writing style or POV. It's that elusive quality often referred to as the writer's voice. It's not a forced style, or a carefully blended melange of favorite authors' styles. It is certainly influenced by authors the writer has read, but it doesn't come from a conscious adoption of them. I believe that originality only comes out when the writer is confident enough, and secure enough in the mechanics of writing, that he or she stops trying, and is able to speak from his or her core. Soul, if you will. Originality comes when the writer is speaking from within, and not reworking it to death. I don't mean not editing or proofreading, I mean not filtering the flow to make it fit some preconceived notion of how it should come out. There's no way to accelerate this process. If anything, the harder you try to hurry it along, the more you delay its emergence. In the words of the (nearly) immortal Yoda, "There is no try. There is only do."
You cannot plagiarize ideas. Ideas are not copyrightable. Some ideas may be patentable, but that's a much more complicated topic that has no application to story ideas. Story ideas are, in fact, worthless. All that matters is what you do with the idea, the tangible product in the form of a short story, novel, ballad, film, or painting, Or some other manifestation in a durable medium.
Certainly. Which is part of the reason why one sees so many successful authors saying (in interviews, and so on) how much they've benefitted from bouncing their story lines off other people. I'm thinking specifically of one or two Man Booker prizewinners who studied on the famous creative writing MA course at the University of East Anglia (UK) and have commented repeatedly on the value of doing exactly that, but of course the same point is also very widely observed at "less public levels" of fiction success than that.
I'd say write the story you want to write. So what if it's lame? You'll learn things about the craft even writing those not-so-great-stories. Things you will need in your future writing. You mature as a writer. I'm still rewriting my very first attempt of a novel, 3,5 years after I came up with the first seed of an idea for it (and after having it rejected by at least 10 publishers). And for every version, every rewrite, every tweaking of the original idea, I learn things, that will make the novel - and me - even better. And the next novel too.
Let's not nitpick the meaning of the word here, you know what I mean. Replace the word "plagiarism" with the word "stealing" in my previous post then, the point still stands.
Then pay attention to the key message: Story ideas are worthless. The only value is in what you do with the idea. A writing prompt is nothing more or less than a story idea offered for creative instantiation. And how different the interpretations invariably are!
I see Cog has already responded, but I agree with him. So let them "steal" your ideas. The story they write will be different from the one you write, so why worry about it?
Nearly every current idea circulating about is "stolen." Like some films for example: Avatar = Dances with wolves in outer space. Titanic = Romeo & Juliet on a boat. And so on...
So if I write a story about a young teenage boy who turns out to be a wizard and destined to save the wizarding world from an evil, powerful wizard who tries to kill my MC/take over the world at the end of every school year, then there won't be an issue? I won't say I know much about the world of publishing and of copyright, because I don't, but I find it hard to believe you'd get away with this.
And Nancy Kathleen Stouffer sued J.K Rowling claiming that work was stolen from her book The Legend of Rah and the Muggles along with another called Larry Potter and his best fried Lily... Of course Schoolastic publishing won, but the point is no matter what you write there's going to be something in there someone claims is stolen.
Every once and a while, I hear of a writer suing a movie studio because a movie is very similar to the writer's book or script. Is it different if it involves a movie?
I'm not sure on that. What people don't seem to get is that there's nothing truly original out there anymore. Literature has existed for thousands of years, and in that time close to 3,000,000,000 (yes billion) works have been published. Maybe more. Almost everything, if not everything has been done before in some form. Hell, even my own book: Irish heroin addict shoots up in a drug den. My God I must have completely ripped off Trainspotting or Skagboys! Oh wait... those were Sottish. Oh well. Either way I bet someone would try to make a connection.
As with any prompt, 100 people could write this story and you'd get 100 different stories. If everything about the story is almost exactly the same, there could be an issue, but from a general idea, there's too much that goes into the story for them to be really the same.
You might be taken to task from critics for being very similar to HP, but if you don't grab gobs of her actual work and claim it as your own, you're not plagiarizing. Or you could move more towards The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I think you'd probably come up with something in between - or off in left field - by the time you were done.
Two groups are in deep conflict. A boy from one group and a girl from the other fall desperately in love, with tragic consequences. Am I referring to Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story?
no, it's no different... and the big guys almost always win, because in the creative world, it's not uncommon for more than one person to come up with the same idea... the little guy/gal with no clout doing the suing has little chance to come out a winner against the 'dream teams' of attorneys the other side can afford...
