: Re: Can Originality Sell a Book? I am currently occupied with the all-too-familiar pursuit of banging my head against a brick wall. In this case, I am attempting to make my novel original. Here's

Originality is almost impossible to achieve. All modern works of fiction have predecessors who have worked in similar settings, showing similar themes. Rowling may be the best-known example of the magic-in-a-boarding-school setting, but there are many well-known (and perhaps not-so-well-known but still worthy) predecessors. Hunger Games may be the most popular example of its kind, but there were certainly predecessors of that too (e.g. Among the Hidden and its sequels). And as pointed out in the comments, have been a thing just about forever, and the romance between Buffy and Angel in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series was arguably even more popular than Twilight was (at least in terms of sales of the book before the movie was released -- movies are great marketing).

The important thing is to do what you do well, which all of these books did, and to be original enough for the reader -- but possibly not too original as the conventions of a comfortable, familiar genre often provide the best marketing of all (and is probably at least part of why genres with strong conventions -- romance and crime fiction, for example -- sell particularly well).

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: Can I use "fuck" as a non-vulgar verb in a fantasy/steampunk world? I've been sending my fourth-ish novel through the my writing group. It is about a trio of teenagers running away from some

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: Re: Can Originality Sell a Book? I am currently occupied with the all-too-familiar pursuit of banging my head against a brick wall. In this case, I am attempting to make my novel original. Here's

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: Can I use "fuck" as a non-vulgar verb in a fantasy/steampunk world? I've been sending my fourth-ish novel through the my writing group. It is about a trio of teenagers running away from some

: Is my character an intellectual or detective or both? My character has a habit (or running gag) of pointing out plot holes in conversations with her friends who lie a lot.

: Term for writing mostly in first-person, but switching to third-person for things the POV doesn't yet know? What's the term or name of the literary device/technique employed when a novel is mostly

: How can I write a character whom I have no knowledge of? In my current novel, my main character has a rival for whom he has a deep personal hatred. Think Harry Potter and Malfoy, but with

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