FairerStillTheMoonlight

I know that reading fanfiction can leave scars. Stumbling upon a particularly rancid piece can keep me disgusted for hours. But I didn’t really think, until recently, about how it has affected my ability to enjoy regular fiction.

Maybe part of the reason is that I now read fiction critically, thinking about plot and characterization and how effectively the author is or is not using them, instead of just enjoying the story. I realized this when I read Eragon the other day and found that I could neatly sum it up as ‘Lord of the Rings, with dragons and a touch of Star Wars’. No offense to the author intended; it’s still an incredibly well-written novel for such a young author. Even though the characters are a little flat and don’t really change at all. (On a side note, I really want to see the movie now just because the actor who plays Ba’al in Stargate is in it. He is the classiest alien villain ever!)

One more little recent story and then I’ll get to the point. Today I asked my little brother why I should read the Septimus Heap books. He rattled off something about wizards and seventh sons and the Darke side and time travel. I thought, Harry Potter meets Star Wars meets Artemis Fowl? Is anything original anymore? Why does everything eventually end up sounding the same?

Once again, no offense to the author. But this, along with trying rather unsuccessfully to come up with some spectacular Alex Rider-esque stunts for a chase scene across London (which may or may not end up happening), made me think: do I really write original stories that leave my readers gasping? Do I take my characters on grand adventures with new twists and turns, or do I just combine old elements in slightly different ways?

From the mathematical perspective, chances are that I haven’t really written anything new. And not just because I’m writing fanfiction. I mean, there’s only a limited number of elements you can have in your story, and usually they follow the ‘build up conflict then resolve it’ pattern. So that’s even more limiting. True, there’s a very very large number of combinations that still make sense, and creativity is (in theory) unlimited – but then how come so many stories are, when you look past the different characters and worlds – the same?

I once read somewhere that there were only 44 (or maybe 17, I can’t remember) types of stories you could write. Not very encouraging, that. So maybe while no one has taken the particular characters I use and put them in the situations I create, at the heart of it all it’s about adventure or discovery or love. That doesn’t sound too bad, to be honest. But sometimes it frustrates me that whatever stunts I try have probably been done before and whatever plot twist I think is clever was really the same as someone else’s idea years ago.

So I apologize if none of my stories are truly new or spectacular. I suppose if they were, I would be getting paid to write =)