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The Outsiders is a great book, and has also been one of my favorites since I was in like 5th grade (so almost 10 years ago)....Her new book, Hawkes Harbor is good....but a little disturbing...and partway through I was like: WTF? VAMPIRES?! Since I really wasn't expecting that sort of thing out of her. It was very strange. confused

Yeah I know...it REALLY threw me for a loop! But yeah, The Outsiders is best in my opinion as well. I was slightly surprised to find out that my mother read it when she was younger too. I just recently encouraged a friend of mine to read it, and she loved it as well! 3nodding

I only wish....

Are you kidding me? No absolute originality? That's a load of garbage, you're telling me I can't walk out into the middle of nowhere and just have an idea? Granted, much work is borrowed from and reused over and over again, sometimes tastefully, sometimes not. However, it is possible and by all means likely for someone to come up with something totally on their own without outside influence and yet, still have someone else already written about it. There's 6 billion people on the earth, originality is everywhere, and your classifying WAY too broadly as a term for poking at writers. I can take any story ever written, good/bad/ugly, and turn it into something original. How is that original, simply making different someone else's work? It is because when you combine object A with object B you get object C which is autonomous to both A and B. The only way something can't be original is if you copied word for word someone else's story, hell I could take Tolkien's work 30 some years ago, write it over and have Boromir snatch Frodo's ring and henceforth take over the lands of middle-earth. It would be original because it would have never happened before, just because something is borrow doesn't mean the spawn of that thing is the same.

And age I think does matter, I think I've said this already but what the hell I'm bored and have to wait 2 more hours for my train. Most young people can't write for beans, I couldn't write well when I was 15 and I'm not just poking at my own literal mistakes. It's called experience, and no 15 year old has any experience unless he grows up somewhere where survival and the need to actually live is key. Palioni's parents published his book for crying out loud, it was discovered later by a big name NY publishing company who wanted to make a buck so they bought the publishing rights for it probably because they hoped of another Harry Potter case. I watched the movie and I wasn't impressed, I think the old Dungeons and Dragons movie was better. Not that that is Chris' fault, its the director's, but the main themes in the book didn't stick to me at all, it was mainstream, Saturday morning cartoon cookie cutter themes, that's the only experience someone his age has.

And on a side note, I hate Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is an overblown work that only ever happened because she was dared to write a horror novel. The themes are fine and dandy for the time, it worked out great for anti-German propaganda in the 30's and 40's in the old movies but today its not comparable to current works at all. I hate that book so much, %$^& damn literature class! Making us read it, that vile, over hyped, outdated, over published... book!

And I agree with you Aeric about the characters being all important. A story can go a number of ways and still be good:

1. A story can be character driven with life-like characters that an audience can quickly and easily conform and relate too.

2. A story can follow a complex myriad, theme driven plot line where characters are secondary players.

3. The books environment can be done in such a way that character and plot may be forgivable if the setting is done well. Edenborn is a good example of this, the characters are shallow, the plot is based around 6 or 7 adults trying to raise something like 12 or 14 kids to be the new progenitors of mankind, those also being deftly shallow and boring to follow. However, their world is in ruins and the human population is them, less than 20 people, making the world something new and exciting for them to explore.

You may only like a book or story that has an exceptional character basis, but yours isn't the only opinion. I like well done characters too and I hardly read a book that doesn't contain at least one, but you have to consider the flipside argument.

the Demon

"i wrote a 100 page book for one of my teaches who copied it and gave it to people they really liked it and said i had talent for a 12 year old. i tried a few time but stopped but i have some good ideas

Young authors who know how to write, and do a good job at it, are a good thing. Though there are some, and Paolini is one of them, that shouldn't have been published.

I read a book once, though my memory sucks and I can't seem to remember the name nor the author of this book, all I can remember is that it's about a world mostly covered in water, there was magic, that there would be another book to it, and that the author of that book was 19 yrs old when it was published. This of course was several years ago, and I was impressed with that book.

The Paolini series of books though, is disheartning to me. My sister had gotten me the book to read, I'd never heard of it, so thought I would give it a try. While reading through it, I was disgusted to think that a published author would write that book. The writing itself is what I'm having problems with. There was no connection for me as I read through the book, and I was just frustrated severly with it. Needless to say, I never did finish the book. I was so upset over this though that I went and did some research on the author, and though it made me feel somewhat better that he was a young author, though, I still feel that It should have never been published. Maybe in a magazine feature or something, but not this way. My hope is though that he learns from this, and becomes a better writer, and that his work will improve. Though I'm not sure about that, as some of the hard lessons that we go through to better our skills is involved in the rejection stages of our manuscripts and trying to figure out how to make them better, and understand where we need to work on our style and skill at. Something hard to do when your parents print your book for you, and someone has the crazy idea to make it into a movie...


I've been writing since the age of 11, but that doesn't mean that the manuscripts I was churning out at the age of 15 or even 18 were book publish worthy. Though I am proud of some of those things I have writen, and the written articles I've done in our local paper (as a part-time news reporter) and of the articles I wrote in my college magazine class, my manuscripts are more a part of me than anything. They are my babies, and I want them to be sound, well recieved and well written.