4 ms·

As an author, a lot of this bugs me but not for the reasons listed in the article. Trying to patch over old stories just ends up making them worse most of the t

As an author, a lot of this bugs me but not for the reasons listed in the article. Trying to patch over old stories just ends up making them worse most of the time. I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better. (IIRC, this is what happened in Shakespeare's time.) But no one is going to do that. It's more work and everyone is looking to do this as cheaply as possible to make more money.

Aloha 3y ago
Editing is supposed to be a collaborative process - and these people are dead - there is no author to collaborate with - it just makes a worse product in the end (in ever example cited in the article) - a good editor can make a good work great, a bad one can make a great work bad.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> But no one is going to do that. It's more work Actually, most of the refusal is because of copyrights.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Copyright doesn’t apply to ideas or plots. It’s perfectly legal to take something someone else wrote and write something similar. Otherwise Star Trek Deep Space Nine would have infringed on Babylon 5.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    There are some of us who say that it definitely does, and that it was reprehensible of Paramount executives to sit through a pitch, reject it, and then direct their writers to create exactly the same concept for their own existing franchise. It cost the Babylon 5 makers considerable money and reputation. It was abuse of privileged information.
blooalien 3y ago
> "I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better." Isn't that what happened with the more famous version of "The Princess Bride" (the one that ended up made into a movie)?
- z0r 3y ago
  The original story in that is just a metafictional narrative device - the original "The Princess Bride" is the one written by William Goldman

Aloha 3y ago

Editing is supposed to be a collaborative process - and these people are dead - there is no author to collaborate with - it just makes a worse product in the end (in ever example cited in the article) - a good editor can make a good work great, a bad one can make a great work bad.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> But no one is going to do that. It's more work Actually, most of the refusal is because of copyrights.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
Copyright doesn’t apply to ideas or plots. It’s perfectly legal to take something someone else wrote and write something similar. Otherwise Star Trek Deep Space Nine would have infringed on Babylon 5.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  There are some of us who say that it definitely does, and that it was reprehensible of Paramount executives to sit through a pitch, reject it, and then direct their writers to create exactly the same concept for their own existing franchise. It cost the Babylon 5 makers considerable money and reputation. It was abuse of privileged information.

blooalien 3y ago

> "I'd rather see people retell the story without the stuff they see as problems. Get at the heart of the story and tell it better." Isn't that what happened with the more famous version of "The Princess Bride" (the one that ended up made into a movie)?

z0r 3y ago
The original story in that is just a metafictional narrative device - the original "The Princess Bride" is the one written by William Goldman