: Re: Traits of Bad Writers - Analysing Popular Authors I realise that this question can fall in the scope of personal opinion but I am looking for something concrete. Very often, not only on this

My complaint about Paolini was that he took a reasonably generic plot idea and... wrote it generically. His worldbuilding wasn't original, in any capacity. His characters were boring. His elves were cookie-cutter, if you'll pardon the phrase.

It particularly ticked me off because he was writing about "boy finds dragon egg, hatches dragon, raises baby dragon" and it was just. so. generic. I threw the dang thing across the room. The book I had finished prior to Eragon was the gorgeous Joust by Mercedes Lackey, which is also about "boy finds dragon egg, hatches dragon, raises baby dragon," but with thoughtful worldbuilding and distinct characters and beautiful descriptions and a real sense of time passing and an actual plot and real stakes.

There's the old saw that there are only like forty plots in all human literature, and what makes any particular telling good is whether it is original and relatable. Paolini's sin was that his version was neither.

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: To quote Batman: "The hammer of justice is unisex." Your hero isn't fighting the villain because she's a woman. He's fighting her because she's a villain. And since she isn't a femme fatale

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: 1) Related to Secespitus's answer: Are you familiar with Rory's Story Cubes? they are dice with little icons on the sides rather than pips or numbers. They might be stick figures doing something,

: Re: Traits of Bad Writers - Analysing Popular Authors I realise that this question can fall in the scope of personal opinion but I am looking for something concrete. Very often, not only on this

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: To quote Batman: "The hammer of justice is unisex." Your hero isn't fighting the villain because she's a woman. He's fighting her because she's a villain. And since she isn't a femme fatale

: At what point does a POV character noting their surroundings go from showing/telling to an infodump? In a story I'm working on, at one point one of the main characters (also the POV character

: How to write recommendation documentation? I was asked to prepare an overview of an existing IT architechture and provide a document that consists of weaknesses analysis and suggestions on how

: 1) Related to Secespitus's answer: Are you familiar with Rory's Story Cubes? they are dice with little icons on the sides rather than pips or numbers. They might be stick figures doing something,

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