[ SECRET POST #2182 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2182 ⌋

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

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[incorrectly labeled a repeat]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
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

Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

We had a Graceling secret not too long ago, which got me to reread those two books. I think they're entertaining, but average. That said, I noticed a ridiculous amount of similarities, which I'll post in a reply to myself so I don't clog things up with people who are talking about what I'm saying.

Any of you noticed books by the same authors that seem to follow a pretty specific pattern?

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Beautiful girl who devalues her beauty and sees physical attractiveness as a burden is a part of a culture that has groups of special people that are generally disliked by the regular populace. Girl is even more disliked for some reason than the rest, which gives her big self esteem issues. Main love interest is a patient, warm, loving person who is in a unique position to look past their reputation. Girl has secondary love interest they have known for a long time who is one of their only friends, but is far too possessive, jealous, and angry to suit the girl.

Girl over the course of the book comes to find out not everyone hates her for who she is/proves herself regardless, and collects a group of warm, happy friends who respect and value her. One of them is going to be an older woman who is frank about feminine things, one of them is going to be an older man who is honest and blunt as well, one of them is younger female who is shy but ultimately respects and adores the girl.

At some point in the book, there is going to be a long, disjointed part where the character is suffering and is going through agonizing pain and this part is very poorly written.

Oh, and both won't have children and cannot be a part of a normal, classic relationship. Both are nobility, both have noble (princes, in fact) love interests, but who are not in a position to inherit anyway. Both of them believe they are stuck in their fate and do not believe themselves worthy of it. Both of them eventually grow confident in comfortable in their abilities which are otherwise lethal.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[jaydestarlight]

what other books use this similar pattern?

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

i think it's most likely the publisher that demands a pattern be followed rather than necessarily it being the author, but when it is the author i always wonder how incredibly bored they must get churning out the same lame formula

what you described above is very obviously YA fiction...not everyone can relate to a girl who is attractive, but if you also write her as disliking herself, with few friends, and a burdensome power or gift, you've quadruple your audience...adding 2 love interests who are the opposite of one another covers most teenage fantasies about male 'types', and a mildly problematic family structure where the parent(s) are divorced/dead/too busy at work/don't appreciate your ~speshulness rounds out the gamut of teenage 'problems' which young girls can relate to

*fun fact - in Australian bookstores, a YA category doesn't actually exist and all these books are labelled "children's fiction", which i think is more indicative of the genre...by naming it Young Adult, the adults reading think they are keeping "young at heart" and the youngens think they are reading "grown up" fiction, so just like the formulaic dramaz within, it covers more bases

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[inkdust]

While not completely breaking from these themes, Bitterblue has some clear differences in character and plot.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Every book by Simon R Green is basically the same book. He has the same prose style (to a fault - everything is "so very, very dangerous" or "so very, very dark" or "so very, very lonely", everyone is exceedingly dangerous, there's the same exact style of humor), similar main characters, similar plot, and above all a similar aesthetic in terms of the worlds he creates. I'm sure plenty of authors do this, but for some reason I really, really notice it with Simon R Green, and it really bugs me.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[oroburos69]

I'm pretty sure he copy pastes chunks, because they are LITERALLY identical from book to book.

*tell us about that trench coat again, Simon*

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man, was THAT the guy I read who did that? I read one of his books and I picked up that damn tic from him, even my betas noticed.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[masu_trout]

Haruki Murakami has a tendency to reuse specific plot elements and details a lot; someone actually made a (very accurate) bingo card for his works. The thing I like about him as an author, though, is that his repeated plot threads are all so varied- any story that involves vanishing cats, weird sex, cooking and parallel worlds has to be pretty interesting!

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[shortysc22]

very much this!! I just started reading 1Q84 and I do love Murakami but I feel because he uses a lot of the same stuff, you either love his work or can't stand it.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[caecilia]

omg this bingo card is perfect

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

I love Chuck Palahniuk. I LOVE Chuck Palahniuk. I would do petty labor for him for free just for having written (some of) the books he's written. But they totally follow a pattern, and none of it says anything flattering about Palahniuk's psyche.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[mekkio]

Yep, everyone is messed up from the get go in Palahnuik books. And it's not the usual drug addict, alcoholic or loser spiel. No, it's teenaged girl who finds herself in hell because she let herself get strangled in a sex game she didn't fully understand because her parents were too busy adopting another foreign born child while flying across the world to talk about carbon footprints while burning enough fuel to choke a herd of elephants to be real parents to her.

Thing is, that's why I love about Chuck too. I want to see what sort of grab bag, Jerry Springer meets Jim Rose's Circus Sideshow misfit he can come up with next.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Robin fucking Cook, not only follows the same pattern but uses the same fucking character.

(It's ridiculous, specially when Jack is clueless to something he should NOT be clueless about, not only because he seems smart enough at other times but because he has already *lived* this SAME plot a couple times!)

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, I don't believe that anyone here knows the man, but Victor Pelevin. All of his books are one book. There're just no differences between them. It's like a very, very long philosophical monologue where characters don't matter, plots don't matter all that much, relationship don't matter at all.

Then I do think that C.S. Lewis has some ideas he's slightly obsessed with (thus, in Space Trilogy he continuously explains the idea of limiting oneself deliberately when given a source of unlimited pleasure - take the scene with Ransom and the fruit on Perelandra, for example; then there's this image of earthly Christ, of course, which appears in both Ransom and Aslan).

And Garcia Marquez seems to think that sex looks hilariously funny :D

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

that's just because CS Lewis is kind of just reiterating the same Christian allegory over and over (and also he's kind of a bad writer) (yeah i said it)

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

This is why I only read one Pelevin book (Buddha's Little Finger), because either you write a book like that and write total crap otherwise, or it is ALL YOU WRITE.

I love Garcia Marquez, but that is definitely a hilarious motif of his. I literally do not own a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude just because I'm afraid I'm gonna write all sorts of weird crossovers and fusions of it with other mediums that no one will read.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[mekkio]

Ken Bruen is ridiculous at that. Oh, look, another on the wagon, off the wagon semi-thug who likes country music, quotes detective novels and has horrible luck with "friends."

Still, I read him because, god, I love the way he writes.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Mercedes Lackey, particularly with her urban fantasy series that has elves.

It pretty much breaks down as: Take a cult*, make the leader evil and being manipulated by the Big Bad [either demonic, or 'bad elves']. Now make them be doing...something bad to a child [or children]. Now, add in a hero - either an elf or a human with a very strong connection to the elves, He'd best either be raised by elves, or trained by them - and make them find one of the children. Now, have them come up with a plan to infiltrate the group, and destroy it while rescuing the child/children.

It's pretty much wash, rinse, repeat with the rest in that series - though, thankfully, she only had one book where she phoneically spelled out the various southern accents. [Oh, and the human bad guy is more likely than not to be southern.]

*If not a cult, it's a business.

Re: Happy Sunday/Monday ...

[carma-bee.livejournal.com]

most of sarah dessen's books are pretty similar, doesn't stop me from loving them though

Re: Happy Sunday/Monday ...

[jaydestarlight]

i don't particularly care about sarah dessen as an author but i agree, she writes pretty similar plots in her books. thankfully her writing's decent enough that it doesn't suck.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[dethtoll]

William Gibson tends to write things in trilogies and he likes to revisit or reintroduce characters in the third book, often with some form of huge baggage acquired from their experience in the other book they starred in.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

Nora Roberts. She's written over 200 books, but they're basically the same 4 plots recycled over and over with different characters. Lol.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[sachiko_san]

Francesca Lia Block. Not all the time, but I did notice it in two of her books: girl's dad dies, she's suffering from an eating disorder, she does things, goes on path of self discovery, finds out dad did a horrible thing or did not value the girl in some way, she finds her path, she gets the guy, and all is well. Also, LA is some magical land or some shit.

Re: Authors that follow really similar trends?

[(Anonymous)]

This is not exactly the same, but I always notice a few things that Stephen King reuses in his books, or at least his earlier ones (haven't read enough of his new stuff to notice). Recurring elements include:

1. A male protagonist/narrator who is either a writer or a teacher - I always read this character as a bit of a stand in for King himself, The Shining being the most obvious example.

2. A (usually) male character who is controlled - the degree to which he is controlled varies story to story - by an overbearing, overprotective, significantly overweight and/or obsessively religious mother or maternal figure. This usually ends badly for the controlled party, who either goes mad or never manages to escape their mother. Whenever King reuses this dynamic I always do a little wtf moment, and wonder whether he has mommy issues he hasn't dealt with.

3. Freaky prophetic dream sequences - I know dreams are pretty commonly used devices in fiction, but still, sometimes he goes overboard.

4. His fondness for Magical Negroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro).

There are a lot more, but those are the ones that particularly stick out to me - particularly the overbearing mother one. Any King fans are welcome to add more they've noticed :)