3 ms·

True originality will be so different that barely anyone will like it. Evolution is the way to go. I'm an aspiring writer and when a random internet person co

True originality will be so different that barely anyone will like it. Evolution is the way to go. I'm an aspiring writer and when a random internet person comments on my short stories, they're focused on "oh it is like X Y" "oh it is like Z movie" They're obsessed with finding which story it relates to rather than enjoying the story (and it isn't like I'm a pathetic writer) I'm not saying I'm the best writers ever, but why I don't like such morons is that they don't have any otger constructive criticism like "your character sucked ass" or "dogs don't fall in love with cows" No. Their entire problem is "oh I saw a movie like this and that's why this is a shitty story" These morons fail to realise that LoTR derives heavily from Mythology, GoT is literally a fiction version of War of Roses But these snobs will love and swear by LoTR because "that's original" and other books are "copy cats" The idea doesn't matter, execution does. Sure Gone Girl came first but girl on the train is also a good book. It isn't "copy cat" just because it has a untrustworthy narrator. Gone girl wasn't the first one to have untrustworthy narrator, I think

kranner 6y ago
The Unreliable Narrator is an old trope. [1] Gone Girl has stellar writing. I don’t think commercial success in fiction has much to do with being first to market with a novel idea. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
- thewhitetulip 6y ago
  Yes that's the point. Now that Gone Girl is a phenomenal success, every unreliable narrator book will be "copy cat" of gone girl That's my issue with snobs who claim to like "originality" like LoTR when is is clearly inspired by loads of mythology. He certainly didn't invent elves!
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > I don’t think commercial success in fiction has much to do with being first to market with a novel idea. Commercial success in anything doesn't have much to do with being first with a novel idea - in general, but also in "first to market" sense. Video games: before Minecraft there was Infiniminer (by none other than Zachtronics Industries). Before Portal there was Narbacular Drop. Mobile: before iPhone and iPad, there were other devices with a touchscreen on the market (and they had a stylus, benefits of which people are slowly rediscovering today), and the concept dates all the way to Alan Kay's Dynabook, and in parallel to Star Trek (not just 1960s communicators and 1980s PADDs, but Star Trek in 1960s also portrayed tablets with a stylus attached). Etc., etc.
mercer 6y ago
I can empathize with your comment insofar that simply interacting with others for me has been difficult at times because of the whole 'how does that thing you say relate to that thing I saw online'. There are times where it feels like every observation I make is related to a reddit comment. The comparison is not inaccurate, but it destroys or at least harms the implicit contract of me having a conversation with someone else. I can definitely imagine this problem is even bigger for a creative writer, when both parties have more time to compare things to other things. I hesitate to say this is /bad/. Perhaps I'm just getting old. But it's definitely /different/ and quite often unpleasant to me.
- thewhitetulip 6y ago
  It is not bad, it is annoying. People these days don't read a new thing and try to express the issue in it, they HAVE to relate it to something they saw or read. I had written a scifi short story and people told me "Oh yeah it was predictable, very much like the movie X" Sure harry potter too was predictable, Harry was going to win and Voldemort was going to die, but the same peop don't say that to HP! There is a social contract, an implicit one to praise famous books. A person I knew got mad at me for pointing out obvious flaws in HP like why don't they use time turners more before they're broken during Order of Phoenix or a somewhat gray area Elder wand is the most powerful, Dumbledore had all 3 deathly hallows at a point in time and despite being a master of death, he didn't kill voldemort. The last one is a bit vague yes, but instead of discussing with me and saying "maybe Voldemort hid from Dumbledore for that reason" this person went like "you are posting this to get attention" There was another idiot who kept on bugging me that I don't write good English, I think in my mother tongue and translate it to English And this moron didn't even know common idiom I had used was also a common idiom word-to-word in English as well He kept on insisting me to think in English. I studied in a convent school so I know how to not think-translate mother tongue into English As a novelist who was trying to write for the first time, the man was toxic, as were almost all morons I met on the site. They didn't encourage, didn't have any single constructive criticism, "oh you don't know x y"

kranner 6y ago

The Unreliable Narrator is an old trope. [1] Gone Girl has stellar writing. I don’t think commercial success in fiction has much to do with being first to market with a novel idea. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

thewhitetulip 6y ago
Yes that's the point. Now that Gone Girl is a phenomenal success, every unreliable narrator book will be "copy cat" of gone girl That's my issue with snobs who claim to like "originality" like LoTR when is is clearly inspired by loads of mythology. He certainly didn't invent elves!
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> I don’t think commercial success in fiction has much to do with being first to market with a novel idea. Commercial success in anything doesn't have much to do with being first with a novel idea - in general, but also in "first to market" sense. Video games: before Minecraft there was Infiniminer (by none other than Zachtronics Industries). Before Portal there was Narbacular Drop. Mobile: before iPhone and iPad, there were other devices with a touchscreen on the market (and they had a stylus, benefits of which people are slowly rediscovering today), and the concept dates all the way to Alan Kay's Dynabook, and in parallel to Star Trek (not just 1960s communicators and 1980s PADDs, but Star Trek in 1960s also portrayed tablets with a stylus attached). Etc., etc.

mercer 6y ago

I can empathize with your comment insofar that simply interacting with others for me has been difficult at times because of the whole 'how does that thing you say relate to that thing I saw online'. There are times where it feels like every observation I make is related to a reddit comment. The comparison is not inaccurate, but it destroys or at least harms the implicit contract of me having a conversation with someone else. I can definitely imagine this problem is even bigger for a creative writer, when both parties have more time to compare things to other things. I hesitate to say this is /bad/. Perhaps I'm just getting old. But it's definitely /different/ and quite often unpleasant to me.

thewhitetulip 6y ago
It is not bad, it is annoying. People these days don't read a new thing and try to express the issue in it, they HAVE to relate it to something they saw or read. I had written a scifi short story and people told me "Oh yeah it was predictable, very much like the movie X" Sure harry potter too was predictable, Harry was going to win and Voldemort was going to die, but the same peop don't say that to HP! There is a social contract, an implicit one to praise famous books. A person I knew got mad at me for pointing out obvious flaws in HP like why don't they use time turners more before they're broken during Order of Phoenix or a somewhat gray area Elder wand is the most powerful, Dumbledore had all 3 deathly hallows at a point in time and despite being a master of death, he didn't kill voldemort. The last one is a bit vague yes, but instead of discussing with me and saying "maybe Voldemort hid from Dumbledore for that reason" this person went like "you are posting this to get attention" There was another idiot who kept on bugging me that I don't write good English, I think in my mother tongue and translate it to English And this moron didn't even know common idiom I had used was also a common idiom word-to-word in English as well He kept on insisting me to think in English. I studied in a convent school so I know how to not think-translate mother tongue into English As a novelist who was trying to write for the first time, the man was toxic, as were almost all morons I met on the site. They didn't encourage, didn't have any single constructive criticism, "oh you don't know x y"