Whinin' bout storytelling

[kanna]

I've been wondering about the practice of taking a well-worn concept or familiar setting and making it fresh. Obviously, since I'm writing Narnia with teens, it's something that I think about a lot. I read a "kid goes to a fantasy world" story lately that sounded like it would have a new perspective, but ended up actually feeling a little tired in

Comments

[yuushi]

The whole "kid goes to a fantasy world" premise has been done COUNTLESS times in anime and manga, but people still watch/read. All depends on how it's executed and, like you say, if anything new is offered.

Though "wacky sitcom stylings" sounds like it is something new in the whole "kid goes to a fantasy world" genre XD

[ahvia]

i dunno, i imagine for novels it would be a lot harder to hook someone on premise alone, whereas comics have art style as an additional grab. or at least, with novels, it's harder to showcase with a blurb if you DO have a fresh take on an old story.

once you have them reading though i don't think it matters, and it becomes all about the individual characters and storytelling. old concepts don't matter if the characters and storytelling are good, you just have to bring them into it first.

it's so ironic that fantasy, which should mean that the story and world could go ANYWHERE and be ANYTHING ends up being such a tired genre

rrjkgfkj i don't know why i'm commenting here i don't know anything about storytelling

[modsandrockers]

"I'm sure I've passed over some perfectly good books because they don't grab me, and I know I've picked up some pretty lame ones because they sounded like they had a cool concept

[kartos]

It really does come down to how you present it and the characters involved. Since you have two children, that are older, and the entire start of it isn't remotely close to Narnia... while the breakdown plot is the same, as in "children travel to other world via family heirloom, and become saviors, etc," it doesn't remotely feel the same as Narnia.

[kartos]

it helps they aren't British. lol

[thehenchcroft]

old familiar stories with personal flair are exactly what audiences want most. It wouldn't be a trope if it didn't have universal appeal and long lasting endurance. Shakespeare wrote plays based on stories everyone had heard, and he filled them with words he MADE UP, and he is considered the greatest author of all time for it. Originality isn't a virtue, and i'm not wholly convinced it truly exists. 89% of all characters in fiction are cleverly disguised versions of Hamlet or Han Solo(bureau of labor statistics 2005 census). Furthermore in a visual medium like comics (or paintings and statues) the artist's style and approach is often much more important than the subject matter. how many paintings of "lady, semi-nude, half standing" have you seen? yet when Renoir does paints one (or a hundred) it is miles apart from Picasso (though his would be more accurately titled "rhombus, flesh-coloured, devoid of any frame of reference")

In art, story-telling (a kind of art), and landing airplanes, the approach is everything.

[thehenchcroft]

I took the LSAT this morning and (it is a crime to divulge this) a very similar question to the one you posed was the writing topic. I pretty much answered the same way ( i hope the scorer likes han solo and hamlet or my plan B is in jeopardy). thanks for inadvertently forearming me!