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Originally Posted by SDNess So it doesn't bother you that many fantasy novels are other writer's versions of LotR or volumes of unending sagas that become ridiculous in their length and too complex?
It is not boring to read rehashes of magical races drawing the line between good/evil and battling it out? Or perilous quests for magical items? |
Not really no. It doesn't bother me that most mystery novels have a bad guy and a good guy and a mystery to be solved either. It is the nature of the genre. The closest I've ever seen of a 'LOTR' knockoff was Terry Brooks' Shannara series and they were good in their own right as they had characters that were different, situations and moral questions of their own to ask and have answered...etc.
As an avid reader, I'm going to come accross an unoriginal idea or two. However, if those ideas are presented in a manner that is new and unique - why shouldn't I enjoy them as well as the one with the original idea?
To look at it another way - why are series' so popular? Because readers become familiar with a place, people and worlds and want to revisit, like an old friend.
I read an author's note to her readers once that really said it well. She gets complaints from people that read each new book in the series because new characters are introduced and new situations visited, and they don't like them as much as the original or the last book. Yet, after the next book comes out, that last one that everyone was complaining about is now their favorite. She called it the 'familiarity quotient'. Each new book was challenged because of new characters or places, but once they became familiar with those new characters and places, they became friends.
So there is a sort of yearning for the familiar, which keeps us going back to favorite authors or series' but we also can assimilate the new as well. So whether you write a fantasy set in the usual European-like setting with dragons and elves or something unique that takes us to a new reality that nobody has ever visited before - as long as the story is engaging and well written, it will be accepted.
That's the only advice I would have for an aspiring author - make sure the characters are well founded, the story is engaging and that the writing is well done enough to not cause the reader to stop reading and think about the actual writing. The best thing for a reader is to not have to think about the story structure - they should be thinking of the story only. When it is well written, the reader gets caught up in the story and won't be thinking about technical issues at all.
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