Hatrack River Writers Workshop   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Open Discussions About Writing » Ask Mr. Writing Person: Deathly Doppelgangers

   
Author Topic: Ask Mr. Writing Person: Deathly Doppelgangers
trousercuit
Member
Member # 3235

 - posted      Profile for trousercuit   Email trousercuit         Edit/Delete Post 
[I just finished Deathly Hallows, took a peek here, and felt inspired to head off some criticism before it got started. Plus, the blog is dead and I'm shameless. Sue me.]

Welcome back to another sporadic but still painfully useful Ask Mr. Writing Person! Joining us today is Hebert Cloude, who is consternated by the fact that lesser authors are getting more women and fame and glory and advertising revenue than he is.

Q. So I've been busting my butt slicing adverbs from my dialogue tags and twisting my prose into terrible twisty shapes to maintain active voice and active verbs, and this Rowling woman gets millions of advance copies of her book printed, but she's a horrible writer! It's all crap like, "'Hurry up, Harry!' shouted Ron loudly and hurriedly." Don't even get me started on Dan Brown.

A. In a possibly historic turn of events, I'm going to do most of the talking today. This has been on my mind for quite some time, and I've got a lot to say.

Q. Actually, I was hoping to ask--

A. What you need, dear grasshopper, is complete immersion in my three-step program, which is guaranteed to not only lift your spirits, but get you producing very saleable novels in a very short time.

Step one: Recognize that what you feel is not jealousy: it's righteous indignation! These authors pollute the culture and defile our sacred craft! Feel the hate flowing through you, turn down the path to the dark side and let it forever dominate your destiny!

Q. Are you drifting, here?

A. I never drift. Step two: Trash! Trash trash trash! Best is if you can publish a book that trashes these dreadful doppelgangers of real artists, because you'll make some cash on the side. But it's important to trash anyway.

There is a well-kept secret among the good and great that I deign to bestow upon you now: trashing another author in a public place steals a bit of that author's soul. In fact, I have an author friend with a lightning-shaped scar on his buttocks that he got from trashing J. K. Rowling.

Q. On his buttocks?

A. Let's just say he went a little stalky and juvenile at the end. But the important part is that he's claimed part of Rowling's soul for his own, which will help him with step three: copy the heck out of them.

Q. Copy them?

A. Yes, you great prat, copy them! For every "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the market has room for a "Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo" and a "John Smith and the Supernatural Rock" and a "Peter Jones and the Contrivedly Protected Magical MacGuffin" and ten more! "The Da Vinci Code"? Answer with "The Galileo Cipher" and "The Pythagorean Puzzle"! Once you've collected bits of these sham artists' souls, they'll flow from your pen quite easily. Plus, you can never die.

Q. Don't readers catch on?

A. Readers are dumb as bricks, especially children. All magical teenagers look the same to them--they couldn't tell Harry Potter from Eragon if their lives depended on it.

I've been copying them myself. Behold this synopsis: In their first year, Barry, Hon, and Geronimo, three friends at Pigboils School of Sorceressry and Sorcery, discover a secret that could unravel the entire Ministry of Sorcery, a secret that a secret society of sorcerers and sorceresses have been dying to protect for thousands of years! It all starts when the trio, walking the school corridors late at night wearing Barry's invisibility pants, discover a dead house-gnome, who has apparently spent the last two hours drawing sudoku puzzles on the floor with his own blood rather than seek medical attention for a fatal paper cut...

Q. Sounds very secretive. And sorcerery.

A. Quite. Secrets and magic sell very well these days, you know. And orphans. All of my characters are orphans. Even my characters' parents are orphans! It also helps when your oppressive regime, like mine, very closely resembles the Catholic Church, and oppresses the poor and downtrodden like house-gnomes and overweight symbologists.

Q. You've got this all figured out.

A. Remember who you're talking to.

Q. Right. Um, shouldn't we try to figure out what they're doing right?

A. Who cares? We know they're evil charlatans, so we're out to saturate the market and make a profit on the side. Is this not a noble endeavor?

Q. Doesn't sound like it to me.

A. That's because you're an illiterate Philistine.

Q. I knew it would come to that eventually.

A. It always does.


Posts: 453 | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
InarticulateBabbler
Member
Member # 4849

 - posted      Profile for InarticulateBabbler   Email InarticulateBabbler         Edit/Delete Post 
Thanks for the laugh.
Posts: 3687 | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
kings_falcon
Member
Member # 3261

 - posted      Profile for kings_falcon   Email kings_falcon         Edit/Delete Post 
Nice. I needed that laugh today.


Posts: 1210 | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Lynda
Member
Member # 3574

 - posted      Profile for Lynda   Email Lynda         Edit/Delete Post 
ROTFL!!! Well-done, very well-done indeed! Full marks!

Lynda, still chuckling


Posts: 415 | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
trousercuit
Member
Member # 3235

 - posted      Profile for trousercuit   Email trousercuit         Edit/Delete Post 
I need cheerleaders more than critiquers at the moment, so your comments are most welcome.

It was nice to get this out of my system. Writing a thesis proposal doesn't cut the mustard.


Posts: 453 | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Robert Nowall
Member
Member # 2764

 - posted      Profile for Robert Nowall   Email Robert Nowall         Edit/Delete Post 
Much as I'd like to get published ripping off somebody else's work, I don't seem to be able to manage it. I can (in Internet Fan Fiction) take somebody else's character and situations, but I still have to write it my way.

Right now I'm inclined to let my likes and dislikes influence what I'm writing, but it's gotta become mine in the process.


Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Rommel Fenrir Wolf II
Member
Member # 4199

 - posted      Profile for Rommel Fenrir Wolf II   Email Rommel Fenrir Wolf II         Edit/Delete Post 
sounds like things my squad leader would say if he were saine or not in the army.
but we are still S#(% Bags, Good S#(% Bags.
Rommel Fenrir Wolf II

Posts: 856 | Registered: Nov 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2