Which is your favourite?
- Thread starter Honza
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MrBob
Well-known member
I've never read LotR and haven't seen an entire movie of the trilogy, though I have seen a lot of each of them so I can't truly rate that book.
Narnia is a very good series, but it lacks the world building and has sometimes confusing canonical timelines.
Harry Potter does a great job at world building and a good job with characters. However, Rowling has admitted she is terrible at math and ages of adult characters are off based on what she envisioned.
Narnia is a very good series, but it lacks the world building and has sometimes confusing canonical timelines.
Harry Potter does a great job at world building and a good job with characters. However, Rowling has admitted she is terrible at math and ages of adult characters are off based on what she envisioned.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
Sometimes I just get really passionate about one or the other. It changes regularly.
Harry Potter is diverting, but the whole "He's the chosen one. Nobody can touch his performance. We oldsters bow before your young wisdom" thing gets tiresome after a while. It's easy to be interesting when you're the best at everything. It's much harder to be interesting when you're the most loving, most considerate, and most loyal. I like a balance.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
Yeah I’m not a huge fan of chosen one stories where they get everything and they basically can’t fail because they’re destined to win, but it does have other things that are worthwhile.
MrBob
Well-known member
In universe? That never happens. Nobody believes him in the first book that the stone was in danger of being stolen. The result was that Harry was nearly killed because no one believed him. The second book, nearly the whole school was against him when he was revealed to be a Parseltongue. It took Hermione nearly dying for people to figure out he was not the antagonist. Now at least Dumbledore and likely McGonagall didn't believe it was him behind the attacks.
This was a repeating pattern, The adults did not truly take Harry seriously. In fact, a number of plot points would have been resolved had the teachers listened to him more.
What I'm trying to say is, well, there are tropes and there are tropes. I'm an academic writer and I understand general categories of plot devices, and Harry Potter relies on them as heavily as he does his wand.
Give you an example. I'll compose a story on the spot for your benefit. Rudd never got respect, though he worked hard. Yet somehow he believed himself to be different. His grandmother used to say he was special and had a great destiny. One day he was met by a stranger who took him by the hand and told him he would deliver his people from the evil. Why should I? Because it is your destiny, and you will save yourself and your loved ones by extension. So he dropped his pail and followed the man. They encountered a trickster.... well let's skip to the point past where the trickster's quick thinking saved the day twice, but now he was revealing his ultimate dark intentions. Rudd went on with the stranger, and they encountered the big baddie, someone who, ironically, was vulnerable to the very strength that villagers thought was Rudd's weakness. He is overcome. Rudd returns to the village and is not only hailed as a hero but viewed differently. He wrote his memoirs.
I couls literally blow out a plausible novel based entirely on tropes and purple prose in the first week of NANORIMO and go home.
But would I want to? Absolutely not. It is the creative equivalent of AI storytelling.
Give you an example. I'll compose a story on the spot for your benefit. Rudd never got respect, though he worked hard. Yet somehow he believed himself to be different. His grandmother used to say he was special and had a great destiny. One day he was met by a stranger who took him by the hand and told him he would deliver his people from the evil. Why should I? Because it is your destiny, and you will save yourself and your loved ones by extension. So he dropped his pail and followed the man. They encountered a trickster.... well let's skip to the point past where the trickster's quick thinking saved the day twice, but now he was revealing his ultimate dark intentions. Rudd went on with the stranger, and they encountered the big baddie, someone who, ironically, was vulnerable to the very strength that villagers thought was Rudd's weakness. He is overcome. Rudd returns to the village and is not only hailed as a hero but viewed differently. He wrote his memoirs.
I couls literally blow out a plausible novel based entirely on tropes and purple prose in the first week of NANORIMO and go home.
But would I want to? Absolutely not. It is the creative equivalent of AI storytelling.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
That's why you have to make tropes your own. It can be difficult to not use any tropes as they exist for a reason, so you need to put your own take on them and make them feel unique.
Agreed. You have to realize the same thing happens in composing music, and people tried to write music that didn't follow ANY set patterns and invented the hideous atonal music of the 1920s/30s.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
If at first you don't succeed
MrBob
Well-known member
As does the Chronicles of Narnia. The first book is merely about the chosen ones and the black sheep who must learn to atone for what he did wrong. The second book is the usurped prince who must fight his way back to the throne, unfairly taken from him by his evil uncle. In the book, everyone bowed to his leadership before the Pevensie's return. And then Peter and Edmund were bowed to as infallible leaders.
Every story in the series was actually a recycled plot device that has been used since ancient times. However, it doesn't mean it wasn't a good series worth reading.
MrBob, the problem isn't with merely using tropes, but in what you do with them.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
It becomes about how well you can tell the story that you are trying to tell through the lens of a framework that has been used many times by many different authors in many different ways.
I realize this. I also realize that just as AI tries to copy how people write, people can also copy AI unintentionally by relying on formulas and common practices. Same result...competent but never exceptional.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
It will be a symbiotic system eventually, for sure.