Prose, Plagiarism and Eragon

Somehow, in case you missed it, back in 2002 a guy named Christopher Paolini published (and by published I mean: Eragon was published privately by his parents Paolini International, LLC. To promote the book, Paolini toured over 135 schools and libraries, discussing reading and writing, all the while dressed in "a medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap.") a novel called Eragon.

It was pretty popular spawning subsequent novels, at least one film and a companion videogame. Christopher Paolini was 15 at the time he wrote the thing. He may be old enough to drink now which can only improve his writing skills and output I'm sure.

Problem is much of the novel, in concept at least was plagiarized from things like I dunno...Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and whatnot. No big.

It's not like he used words from Lord of the Rings and just rearranged some of the letters. Oh wait...(from amazon.com)

IMILADRIS>Imladris
VANILOR>Valinor
ARDWEN>Arwen
CERANTHOR>Caranthir
BIERLAND>Beleriand
ISENSTAR>Isengaurd
MELIAN>Melian
MITHRIM>Mithrim
ISIDAR>Isildur
TURIN>Turin (note: the "u," in the right "Turin," has an accent)
ERAGON>ARAGORN (comparison in pronunciation)

Eragon words on the left, LotR's words on the right. Oops.

Anyway, theft notwithstanding the site that points out many of the similarities between Eragon and Star Wars and LotR also has a pretty nifty section on some basic rules of writing fiction. It's worth checking out.

BONUS:

Here is an interesting passage from Eragon that someone noticed sounded VERY familiar to another book:

Below I elaborate my point with an amusing passage I’ve picked out from the 16th chapter. The characters are Brom (the story teller) and Eragon, who are trying to cross a bridge.

The Anora River flowed between them and the town, spanned by a stout bridge. As they approached it, a greasy man stepped (out) from behind a bush and barred their way. His shirt was too short and his dirty stomach spilled over a rope belt. Behind his cracked lips, his teeth looked like crumbling tombstones.

“You c’n stop right there. This’s my bridge. Gotta pay t’ get over.”
“How much?” asked Brom in a resigned voice. He pulled out a pouch and the bridge keeper brightened.
“Five crowns” he said, pulling his lips into a broad smile.
Eragon’s temper flared at the exorbitant price, and he started to complain hotly, but Brom silenced him with a quick look. The coins were wordlessly handed over. The man put them into a sack hanging from his belt.
“Thank’ee much” he said in a mocking tone and stood out of the way.
As Brom stepped forward, he stumbled and caught the bridge keeper’s arm to support himself.
“Watch y’re step” snarled the grimy man sidling away.
“Sorry” apologised Brom, and continued over the bridge with Eragon.
“Why didn’t you haggle? He skinned you alive!” exclaimed Eragon. He probably doesn’t even own the bridge.”
“Probably” agreed Brom.
“Then why pay him?” Because you can’t argue with all the fools in the world. It’s easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they’re not paying attention.” Brom opened his hand, and a pile of coins glinted in the sun.
“You cut his purse!” said Eragon incredulously. Brom pocketed the money with a wink. There was a sudden howl of anguish from the other side of the river. “I’d say our friend has just discovered his loss.”

Now compare it with the original (and much better written) passage from the 3rd chapter of The Ruby Knight. Our hero Sparhawk tries to cross the bridge with his traveling companions, the young boy Talen among them.

Beside the ford stood a small hut. The man who owned it was a sharped eyed fellow in a green tunic who demanded a toll to cross. Rather than argue with him, Sparhawk paid what he asked. “Tell me neighbour,” he asked when the transaction was completed “how far is the Pelosian border?”
“About five leagues” the sharp eyed man replied. “If you move along, you should reach it by afternoon.”
They splashed on across the ford. When they reached the other side, Talen rode up to Sparhawk. Here’s your money back,” the young boy said, handing over several coins.
Sparhawk gave him a startled look.
“I don’t object to paying a toll to cross a bridge” Talen sniffed. “After all, someone had to go to the expense of building it. That fellow was just taking advantage of a natural shallow place in the river. It didn’t cost him anything, so why should he make a profit from it?
“You cut his purse, then?”
“Naturally.”
“And there was more in it than just my coins?”
“A bit. Let’s call it my fee for recovering your money. After all, I deserve a profit too, don’t I?”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I needed the practice.”
From the other side of the river came a howl of anguish.
“I’d say he just discovered his loss” observed Sparhawk.
“It does sort of sound that way, doesn’t it?

There are a number of smaller idea’s borrowed from other books, The Belgariad and Malloreon being the first ones to come to my mind.

Double Returns and Spaces

I don't know exactly where all this is coming from, perhaps some secret literary lab deep in the heart of some active volcano but I'm getting tired of everything slowing moving up to two where there once was one.

Take an address for example:

123 Street
America, City 12345

Now, some people are adding a second space after the City before the Zip code:

123 Street
America, City  12345

What's the diff?

Likewise, now people are putting two spaces after periods.  Why do this?  What's wrong with just one? I dunno. I think one looks just fine. I suspect that people who place two spaces (and double space) are just itching to eat up more page with fewer words.   Yes, that's what I suspect.

I'll forgo complaining about double-spacing text; that's bugged me for years.

(Btw, the spaces may not show up correct as I have typed them in on your end. Blame technology. I do.)

Organizing Your Ideas Via The PATH Method

I don't mean organizing the elements to your story, I'll cover that in another post, but I mean literally organizing all the different story ideas you get throughout the day/week/month/year. If you're like me you have several writing projects going on all at once (or want to) but you're never really quite sure which project to tackle first and devote a majority of your energy on.

Here's what I do.

I made up a little system I call the PATH method (don't confuse it with CPM which is far more complex) to help me find out which projects should be tackled before others.

This PATH method I've devised and have been using is pretty simple but I'll admit it's far from comprehensive and yeah, needs a new name.

PATH stands for Project Analyzation Tool using Heuristics. Not the best name ever but whatever.



How it works:

Make a chart with six columns across the top. Label these:

TITLE | GENRE | RESEARCH/DIFFICULTY | MARKETABILITY | TIME TO COMPLETE | TOTAL

Underneath these put your story ideas, one story per row, and try to group them together into groups like Novels, Short Stories, Screenplays etc... Now, under the headings Research, Marketability & Time to Complete you're going to drop in a number from 1 to 5. These number are important.

Worst/Hard 1 2 3 4 5 Easy/Best

So 1 is something that's hard or has the worst attributes while 5 has the best attributes or is the easiest.

So, for example, if you're working on Novel A and it requires a lot of Difficulty or Research to write you may put in a 2, then under Marketability you guess that it's somewhat marketable so you put in a 3, and finally under Time To Complete you know it'll take a long time so you drop in a 1. Total them up and you get 2 + 3 + 1 = 6.

For the chart the lower the total the further down the list of things to write it is. You want high totals for your first projects. Lets try another one:

Novel B is going to be nearly completely made up so you score the Difficulty (since there's no Research) a 4, and it's going to be very Marketable you think so you give it a 5 there, finally the Time To Complete will only last as long as it'll take you to type it up and do one rewrite so you score that a 4. What's our total? 4 + 5 + 4 = 13. 13 is greater than 6 so knock out Novel B before you start digging into Novel A.

Not only will you get your projects completed faster but ideally, you'll have something out there submitted while you're working on the next project.

Remember, the higher the score the better off you are working on that project before others. I've used this with other things as well from non-writing projects to actual real-world things I need to do. It's not as detailed as the GTD method but it doesn't have to be. This is just a simple way to plot out your projects and get a big picture view of them to see which order you can finish them all up in, in the least amount of time and probably have more fun doing it.

Staying Motivated

For me one of the best ways to stay motivated when trying to write something -other than being in the thick of a story I'm working on- is to read, and read a lot.

So I've been reading a few books simultaneously for various reasons:

First, I've been reading Á Rebours, mainly because it's been on my list for a long long time and because it's about such an insular persona and really delves into the depths of someone's psyche. Kinda like American Psycho, only not in 1st person and not as violent.

Second, I've been leafing through H.P. Lovecraft's two shorts, The Lurking Fear and Beyond the Wall of Sleep. I chose these because of the tone, and the kind of, not level of, detail Lovecraft uses when describing things.

Third, I've been haphazardly reading Gregory McDonald's Fletch because it's not the most brain-straining novel ever and because it has a good mix of different aspects of written fiction. There's a nice mix-up of dialogue, immediate scenes and narrative summary.

And of course when time permits I flip through things like Self-Editing for Fiction Writers or something like that.

Not All Books Have Words

Thinking about Book Art, I remembered that sometimes books don't even contain words. Take these two for example:

The Voynich Manuscript and the Mutus Liber. Neither one has any legible text and the Voynich is written in some language that was either made up or has been lost to history. The Mutis Liber is thought to be an ancient book on alchemy.

While books exist to convey information and ideas, and even sway thought, they don't always have to or even try to do so with words.

The Outside of the Book

I'll admit that what's inside a book is far more important than what it's exterior looks like. But, like anything else people have focused their artistic energy on what's called Book Arts where they learn and practice the traditional (and sometimes nearly lost) methods of book binding and expand upon that to create contemporary -or otherwise- books that themselves are art.

From plain to completely non-traditional some of the Book Art people are creating are just really cool.

If you want to get into it, outside of some time with google, check out The Center for Book Arts.

Harry Potter Is Getting Out Of Hand

This is just getting ridiculous. If you're a bookstore you have to sign a huge agreement regarding secrecy and security about the 7th Harry Potter book. It gets worse:

Some of the more extreme clauses in the document, a copy of which The Sun-Herald has obtained, include that the cartons not be opened under any circumstances, nor can the boxes themselves be photographed or filmed before the on-sale date and time.

When you can't even photograph the boxes that contain the books is when this whole thing has simply gone from amusing to embarrassing. It's a book. All will be revealed in time.

I wonder how that works in the USA however, because if you can see it from pubic property, you can photograph it. That's the law. Maybe that explains this photograph.

Either way...

The boxes cannot be visible to the public until 30 minutes before sale time. In terms of promotions, some of the more bizarre rules include requiring written consent from Rowling's literary agent in order to read aloud from the book.

Quizzes, riddles and crosswords are strictly banned.

is just bonkers. Read the entire article. It's insane. Don't forget that a guy is still in jail right now because he tried to sell a copy of the 6th book a month before it's release. Right now, he's still in jail...for trying to sell a Harry Potter book.

Grammarians; and Yous...

I'm not complaining but if you can explain the differences between:

syntactical-deductive and syntactical-descriptive or appositive and segmental in regards to colon use, without looking them up and are concerned about them in your work of fiction, you aren't trying to write a novel.

Although, this is tempting me to put little grammar tips here and there now and again.

Forums for Writers

I've been keeping up with the general posts at some writer's forums and found some worth mentioning.

NanoWrimo has little activity outside of the actual month of Nano but the crowd there seems dedicated and friendly. During Nano though the place gets pretty busy.

LibraryThing has a forum too, although it seems most people overlook it. There are a ton of Groups here to post and read about in.

Writer's Cafe has some good forums too with lots of people and posts. It's worth checking out and seeing if you like it.

FictionPress has forums but they're sparsely populated.

Writing.com has a sizable forum and many members but I find the layout of the site and forums to be exceedingly messy. I never could get into it there.

GameFaqs.com has a board for books and such but mainly a younger crowd posts there and there's not much substance for writers overall.

If you have any other recommendations let me know and I'll add 'em to the list. Of course there are many other forums out there and probably many I've never heard of but these are some of the first I've run across. And naturally they all have their share of posting-hogs and Creative Typists who consider themselves Artists rather than Authors.