Do you ever rewrite someone else's work? For fun or practice? I've been starting to take some old stories and write them in my own style to practice. When I learned to paint, I studies Money's lilies and Van Gogh's skies. When I learned to play guitar I practiced Clapton and Gilmour. I was bored earlier and wrote The Three Little Pigs and I'm wondering how many other people do that, and what you cover? I particularly like old fairy tales and old sci-fi stories.
Erm, er, well. I wrote a Victorian version of Sword in the Stone (Arthur's beginning basically not T.H. White's) and now I have a bloody mess. It exploded into WIP so I've decided not to that again.
When I want to write but am stuck on my main novel WIP, or need to switch to a different tone of writing or a type of scene that doesn't fit into my novel, I'll resort to fanfiction.
I'm not averse to knocking up a bowl of pastiche. I don't usually get stuck for ideas; my reason for doing so is either to pay homage or to adapt it to the current climate (or one's own interpretation come to think of it). I make a big point though of crediting the originator and expect little more than a nod for my efforts. I had a crack at fanfic once @FireWater , in my more juvenile days; it was an episode of the Irish farce-com 'Father Ted'. It sat published on a niche Tedite website for a couple of years (feck.net.splange or something like that). Along one day visited the authors of the original series. 'We're not going to read it," they put in the comments below my cherished piece. "Peeps should create their own characters! Besides, if we get ideas that coincide with what's in it...it could get legally messy." Anyway, a few years passed. Father Ted died with the actor (actually dying). Some of the plot devices/comedy I'd plonked in the fanfic lived on though in an episode of Black Books—by the very authors who'd dismissed me. Touché I guess.
When I was younger, I would adapt Shakespear comedies into modern times and write them as novels. It was only for practice, I never intended to do anything with them. Good thing, too! Now I can't stomach reading them - they're so juvenile and contrived. Back then I had no regard for quality, apparently. Sometimes I will write out scenes unseen from movies or tv-shows, the stuff they cut out, just as a writing exercise. Several years ago I was really into Bones, and I wrote several chapters about stuff that happened during the summer hiatus after a particularly shocking season finale. Posted it to fanfic.net and got such positive reviews that it was a huge confidence boost. I haven't done anything like that for a long time now. Still, I do believe it is good practice, especially when you explore genres and characters you might otherwise not attempt. And even if it does turn out to be junk, like my Shakespear attempts, it doesn't matter. It was just a muscle-building exercise and nobody has to see your shame ETA: Oh, I totally forgot about the period of time when I went about adapting old fairytales into novel format as well. It was only a couple years after the Shakespear nonesense, so they weren't much better. Still, a couple of them would be interest to revisit with my more mature style.
I covered the Book of Revelations (Christian Bible) for a class in college once. I thought I was being pretty damn clever, setting it in a nightclub with a glass dancefloor and all, but then I found it about a year later and just wanted to puke.
I know this isn't what you're talking about, so this is a tangent, but the trend for "retellings" of old stories being published irritates me. There are so many fresh stories in the world, why rehash old ones? /grumpy old woman
Can't say I've ever thought to do that. Don't think I ever would--I've got too many ideas already that are collecting dust in my noggin.
Yes, and always have. I am studying Agatha Christie's style. Her word choices and phrasings actually cause a form of addiction in a lot of readers. I am trying to figure it out myself, and writing a change in her stuff is difficult.
Yep. I do every morning before going to work. Right now, I'm doing copywork of Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan and Joe Hill's Horns. When I'm reading non-fiction, I love writing on the margins and underlining passages. But for fiction, I treat that as a holy relic so I don't write on them. With copywork, I can finally make comments on certain paragraphs and passages, and I can also deconstruct a scene better by using highlights in the doc file. A good rule is to limit copywork exercise to thirty minutes (20 minutes of copying, 10 minutes of analysis).
I was dared to write the Three Little Pigs in the style of Game Of Thrones (A show and book series with which I am not at all familiar with). Personally not all that big on Fan-Fic, or reinventing the wheel in that sense. Rhombuses make for a rough ride. When having speedbumps on my main WIP, I will write whatever nonsense that happens to fall out of my head.
If that drivel spouting GRRM wrote the Three Little Pigs, it would be far too long to read to a child, plus they would have ended up having sex with the wolf.
You guys talk about Three Little Pigs and stumbled upon this "reinvention": Code: https://www.amazon.com/True-Story-Three-Little-Anniversary/dp/0451471954/ Was thinking of buying it for my niece, but now I'm thinking of buying this book . . . for myself. P.S. Somehow linking to amazon is bugging out.
I have published some traditional children stories/fairy tales on my blog that were passed on to me from my mother and my grandmother. These stories, I believe, are part of oral tradition and I don't think they were ever written (that I know of). I wrote a couple and published them for fear that they get lost forever. I have a couple more to write and publish. It's not the same think the OP is asking but I always end up writing them my own way, a little different than they were told to me, ever though I want to stay as true to the original as possible.
