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Author Topic: Its fun watching stories trying to be other stories.
Darth_Mauve
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I enjoyed the Harry Potter series.

Recently my son had me read with him the Jackson Percy series. I laughed as I noted how it tried so hard to be "Harry Potter, but Greek Gods instead of Magic." Even to the point where a couple of twin boys were practical joke playing secondary characters. They reversed the "Magic School year good but summer at home is bad" with "School year is bad, but summer at demi-god camp is good."

It was trying so hard to be the more successful story.

Then last night my son pulled down "Avalon High" from Netflix. This movie is about a high school girl who goes to a special school where all the kids are reincarnations from the King Arthur myths. They were trying so hard to be "Percy Jackson" except being King Arthur instead of Greek Gods. Where Percy Jackson dug into Greek Myths that were rarely dealt with, this assumed that King Arthur was just a love triangle with a good king and his evil dark kinsman, and Merlin got headaches as he saw the future.

It was predictable, up to and including the surprise ending. It also fell short of Percy Jackson, which fell short of Harry Potter, etc, etc.

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Lisa
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Except, of course, that Avalon High and the first Percy Jackson book were both published in 2005.

Don't assume copying where it may not exist. Percy Jackson was really good, in my opinion (the movie sucked intensely). The new book in that world (The Lost Hero) is much better than the original pentology. My guess is that he was learning to write along the way, sort of like Rowling did.

Sometimes people just create similar things at around the same time. No one knows why. It happened with Swamp Thing (DC) vs Man-Thing (Marvel), Doom Patrol (DC) vs X-Men (Marvel) and Red Tornado (DC) vs Vision (Marvel).

You know, there are only so many plots. Someone once figured it was about 36. I mean, look at all the stories where the hero is raised by people other than his parents, in ignorance of his heritage. And then he learns who he is and becomes a great hero or leader. Moses, King Arthur, Harry Potter, Oedipus, Cyrus the Great (according to one story), Sargon of Akkad, Percy Jackson, Bean (in a matter of speaking)... the list goes on and on. Blayne could probably give us the name that TV Tropes has stuck on this particular theme.

I wrote a short story for an anthology (it wasn't accepted) in which the two main characters were running for their lives, starting from the very beginning of the story. One of the characters knew a bit about what was going on and the other was clueless. And actually started having suspicions about the other character. It turns out the clueless character was an alien who had wiped her own memory in order to protect herself against the guy they were fleeing from. The knowledgable character was the only one who knew how to restore the alien's memory.

Sound familiar? It's almost exactly the plot of the Doctor Who two parter (Human Nature, The Family of Blood), which aired in May 2007.

Except that I wrote my story in January 2006. But then, Paul Cornell wrote the Doctor Who eps, which he adapted from a Doctor Who novel he wrote in 1995. But I hadn't read a Doctor Who novel since back when Peter Davidson was playing the Fifth Doctor, and he only played that part until 1984.

Pure synchronicity. I didn't steal from Cornell, and he didn't steal from me. Despite the large number of plot points that are virtually identical.

Don't jump to conclusions. The world is a strange place.

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Xavier
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quote:
Blayne could probably give us the name that TV Tropes has stuck on this particular theme.
I'm not Blayne, but it's probably a combination of The Heroes Journey and The Chosen One.
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Bella Bee
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Except, of course, that Avalon High and the first Percy Jackson book were both published in 2005.

Except that the Harry Potter books were incredibly popular by 2005 (in fact, four of the movies had already been released by 2005). I get that these books would have been written in 2003-4, but the HP books had been best-sellers for about five or six years at this point.

And Lisa - yes that happens to me all the time, too. Every time I have a fantastic story idea, someone else with more talent seems to have thought of it about seven months previously.

J.K. Rowling 'borrowed' a lot of elements of her own story, including the wizarding school, a lot of the creatures, and parts of the plot from other sources. But she put them together in an interesting way - as did, as far as I can tell, these other authors ('Avalon High' is also a book by Meg Cabot of 'Princess Diaries' fame).

Having said all that - I don't see the problem with books or movies being similar to one another. There are a million and one vampire/werewolf books out at the moment because of Twilight, and a friend of mine who loves that stuff is incredibly happy about it and is buying it all, and she's not nearly alone.

Obviously, some of it will be better than others. But if there's a market, why not?

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katharina
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I don't think there are really any new stories - it's all the execution. Shakespeare ripped off almost every one of his plots, but his plays are the definitive. We say something is a Romeo-Juliet love story, not a Pyramus and Thisbe kind. That's fine. Stories will find a way, and the good ones will find an audience. The dross will fall out. It's fine.
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Speed
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quote:
Originally posted by Bella Bee:
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Except, of course, that Avalon High and the first Percy Jackson book were both published in 2005.

Except that the Harry Potter books were incredibly popular by 2005 (in fact, four of the movies had already been released by 2005). I get that these books would have been written in 2003-4, but the HP books had been best-sellers for about five or six years at this point.
I think Lisa's point is that Avalon High didn't steal from Percy Jackson. Could be wrong...
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Geraine
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Don't forget!

Narnia stole from the bible

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire steals from The Adventures of Willy the Wizard

The Homecoming series stole from the Book of Mormon.

Pretty much any fantasy novel stole from Lord of the Rings

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Samprimary
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I'm completely original. Don't .. don't shatter my conceptions. I'm a unique and precious snowflake.
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Scott R
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I didn't think Percy Jackson was at all similar to Harry Potter. I mean, beyond the obvious 'school kid finds out he's special and has a devious enemy.'
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'm a unique and precious snowflake.

http://tinyurl.com/48ttajd
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rollainm
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'm a unique and precious snowflake.

http://tinyurl.com/48ttajd
[ROFL]
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Jhai
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'm a unique and precious snowflake.

http://tinyurl.com/48ttajd
That's actually way fewer hits than I would have suspected.
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rivka
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Yeah, I was surprised too.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Speed:
quote:
Originally posted by Bella Bee:
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Except, of course, that Avalon High and the first Percy Jackson book were both published in 2005.

Except that the Harry Potter books were incredibly popular by 2005 (in fact, four of the movies had already been released by 2005). I get that these books would have been written in 2003-4, but the HP books had been best-sellers for about five or six years at this point.
I think Lisa's point is that Avalon High didn't steal from Percy Jackson. Could be wrong...
... but you aren't.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'm a unique and precious snowflake.

http://tinyurl.com/48ttajd
Heh. Rivka wins the thread.
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Parkour
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If I'm samprimary's alt, does that make me exactly as unique and original a snowflake? Or am I a derivative snowflake?
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Samprimary
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You're a taiwanese knockoff.
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Darth_Mauve
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OK. So I didn't check my facts. Avalon High did seem to be an attempt to catch the Percy Jackson band wagon. I guess this is just another proof of the power of personal bias.

As far as the similarities between Percy and Harry, its not in the plot, but in the character tropes. For example: Percy/Harry--young hero full filling a prophesy he doesn't get to know about until near the end of the series, always does the "right" thing, but has a tendency to anger. Hermione/Annabeth--young woman who is intellectually smart book reading, but not quite as brave and heroic as our hero. Ron/Grover--sidekick and comic relief who in the end has his own heroic part to play. They make a perfect trio.

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Flying Fish
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Here's a template for a sentence which will always get the attention of any philistine who has the power to greenlight financing for a project, be it a book or film or series of ya books or movie franchise:

"It's just like (insert name of current big moneymaker on the landscape), except with (insert whatever difference the project you're pushing has) instead of (insert characteristic of big moneymaker).

"It's just like Twilight, except with mummies instead of vampires."

"It's just like Harry Potter, except with grrek myths instead of wizards."

"It's just like Star Wars, except with all underwater instead of outer space."

"It's just like Terminator, except with a troll instead of a robot."

"It's just like Avatar, except these aliens are green instead of blue."

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Lisa
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Harlan Ellison writes about hearing a movie executive come up with what the exec thought was a brilliant idea: "Let's do the Wiz. White."
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Synesthesia
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Well, as long as it's not an out right rip- off like the Mortal Instruments Series or Eragon. If you're going to borrow from the big pot of ideas, be sure to add your own spices to it.
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PSI Teleport
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quote:
Percy/Harry--young hero full filling a prophesy he doesn't get to know about until near the end of the series, always does the "right" thing, but has a tendency to anger. Hermione/Annabeth--young woman who is intellectually smart book reading, but not quite as brave and heroic as our hero. Ron/Grover--sidekick and comic relief who in the end has his own heroic part to play. They make a perfect trio.
This is the most basic, easy-to-use trio in the history of noveldom, though. Why? Because the main character is the most well-rounded, and should also have the most morally ambiguous character (of the main three) so that you spend much of the story trying to decide if the MC even deserves to win. He has to overcome his "dark" tendencies for us to believe in him.

Then you need one girl, because a story about three guys is unbalanced, less interesting (supposedly) and somewhat chauvinistic. But the girl has to be worthy of the attention of the other two boys, so they make her indispensable to them. And, because she's female, the only way to do this is to make her so brilliant that they need her help with every problem they encounter. (Because character traits like courage and loyalty and the ability to encourage others are too nebulous and weird, and hard to assign to a woman, anyway. Intelligence is easier.) The other option would be to make her beautiful and the object of one of the guy's affections, but society doesn't like stories like that because beauty isn't deep enough to satisfy the female audience. So she gets stuck with the "smart" role.

That leaves the third member of the trio, and he obviously has to be a boy, because two girls and a boy is a little too progressive. But now that well-rounded [TM] and brilliant [TM] have been assigned as character traits already, the third guy needs something different to make him stand out from his peers. He needs to be cast in a new light...something unique...that's still interesting....

....ah! That's right! He can be a quirky, funny kind of character that always has the good comebacks and the brash attitude. But we can't make him too cool, or he overshadows the MC, so we have to dumb him down just a tad and get him into a lot of ridiculous scrapes.

It's been done thousands of times throughout history, and no doubt every author that uses these, dare I say, tropes thought he was being clever and thinking outside the box. The Japanese even have a term for this kind of trio, "The genius, the prodigy, and the idiot." The genius being a natural talent, the prodigy being well-read and book smart, and the idiot being the comic relief.

I'm not saying this is the only way to write stories; I'm just saying it's the most cliche, basic, easy way to do it and still think you're being creative. But, as Kat said, the dross falls out and the stories that are good anyway will stand the test of time. *shrug*

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Phanto
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quote:

quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'm a unique and precious snowflake.

http://tinyurl.com/48ttajd

Rivka +thread
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Flying Fish
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I think Nelson Bond used to say, "Give me three main characters - one to be, one to love, and one to laugh at."
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PSI Teleport
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Does any guy love Hermione?
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Anna2112
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The problem with Eragon, in my opinion, isn't that it copies Lord of the Rings. It's the setting more than the characters or plot that he copies (as far as I remember; I haven't read it in a couple of years). Eragon bothered me because I felt like throughout the entire series he grew stupider, rather than smarter, until I wanted to scream at him, "why aren't you getting this?!?"

I think part of the problem is what Flying Fish alluded to above. It's really hard to publish a book or sell a movie that people don't think will sell well, and the basis for what will sell well is what has sold well in the past. So studios and publishers push more derivative books. And that's not always a problem, except for when they ignore good stories to sell crap that they think will sell well (anybody notice the proliferation of vampire novels in the past few years?)

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BlackBlade
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quote:
(anybody notice the proliferation of vampire novels in the past few years?)
Change that to vampires in media, and you might have something even more true.
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PSI Teleport
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Past few years? Vampires are an evolving sub-genre that's always either "popular" or "extremely popular."
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