[ SECRET POST #2889 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2889 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #413.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[misslucyjane]

Neil Gaiman once said (in a Q&A in a reading, so I'm not sure if this is written anywhere) that writing is like a pot of stew, and when you're a young writer you ladle things out; as you get older and more experienced, you start ladling things in.

So, yeah. I'm pretty forgiving of writers who are just starting out and imitate their heroes. They're still learning.

(Plus, most modern high fantasy is a ripoff of Tolkein. He pretty much founded the genre.)

[a_potato]

I came here to say something similar to this.

To add: it's pretty common for beginning writers to copy the stories that they like and that have inspired them. I recall Stephen King saying that the first story he ever wrote was nearly a word-for-word replication of a baseball novel he'd enjoyed.

Of course, most of those stories don't get published.

Still, like you said, a lot of high fantasy rips off Tolkien. He set the standard, and a lot of writers are loath to deviate from it (although that seems to be slowly changing).

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, The Sword of Shannara is more than just derivative versions of Tolkien's characters, it's also Tolkien's plot. The parallels are glaringly obvious and Terry Brooks got heavy criticism at the time of its publication from reviewers and people in the fantasy genre.

[(Anonymous)]

When I read SoS, I'd JUST finished reading LotR for the first time, and SoS was, with few exceptions, almost a find-replace with names (Allanon for Gandalf, etc) of the main plot of LotR.

The two things that bothered me the most were that it was such an obvious work of plagiarism (calling SoS an "homage" to LotR really is undeserved charity), and the fact that Brooks didn't even bother to change the blatant misogyny in LotR--if anything, there were FEWER women characters in SoS than in LotR. Like, if all you're doing is name-swapping, you couldn't gender-swap a character or two as well? And I knew Brooks was capable of writing good female characters, because I'd already read the Nest Freemark novels.

+ 1

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, this.

It's hard to find generic fantasy that *isn't* influenced by Tolkein these days, tbh.