Eragon

[Sam Smith]

i havnt red any of the Pern books myseld although i have een asked to read them but Christopher has been influenced by fantacy books and has based his book around lots of peices or unique work. Christopher is still a great author and his work will mature in time but i dont think his motives to write a book were right,but that is my opion

can someone plz tell me about the Pern books i am intrigued

 

[Sam Smith]

totally. though for me, it was mostly that he got published because of his age that annoyed me. not because he wrote something that wasn't that good, or the fluke aspect, because that's life. for me it was the whole, he's 19, he wrote a book, YAY he's amazing, attitude.

BUT i do look at him (and mark Robinson on here) and think, wow. ok, so they marketted themselves, they worked hard, and look what they have to show for it. i could do that. i can be where they are. because despite eragon kid being accepted mostly because of his age, he had to get attention in the first place, and the fact he did that is admirable.

the only reason he got it published was that his mother and father own a publishing company which gave him a huge advantage. He probably would of got it published anyway (because of his age) but he took the easy was out of things. This is realy mean as we authors have to fight our way to get it published. he just simply went to Mum. Is this Fair

 

[Sam Smith]

There has been a lot of descussion about eragon and LOTR. i hav read this and believe that Paulini must of been intrigued by Tolken as his work seems similiar. i have read both eragon and eldest twice (i read them twice cos i fogot a lot and wanted to no more before the movie cam out) and believe Paulini's work isnt genuine. At the age of 19 it would be hard to write a genuine book i no but he will hopfully mature in time.
sam smith

 

[Scriven]

At the age of 19 it would be hard to write a genuine book i no but he will hopfully mature in time.
sam smith

I disagree with you on that point. Just look at Mary Shelley - she wrote Frankenstein at the age of 19. I think at that age you can either do it or you can't, and Paolini was just one of the latter party.

I do hope he improves, though. It would be nice to see how he writes in a few books' time.

 

[the_faery_queen]

louise cooper had a book out when she was 17. her style hasn't really changed in the years, so it doesn't mean he will. and i tend to think he won't. writers don't actually always get better. i mean, look at eddings, brooks, in my mind, they got worse. jordon too and goodkind. i think when you get big, you have less reason to try hard, and this kid has made a mint off of other people's ideas, what reason does he have to improve? especially when, by the sounds of it, he thinks his work is brilliant and is rather arogant abotu it. i think that it's the struggle to get into print that helps a writer get better. having to try to be good enough, practising your craft, that is what improves your skill. if you're already famous, do you really need to try to get any better? if he really cared about improving and being a good writer, he would have been harder on himself and not allowed his parents to self publish

that's my thoughts.

and sam, no, it's not fair. life isn't fair. life sucks! there's no eivdence he would have been accepted anyway because of his age. a friend of mine, who worked for a small print place, said that his parents sent her a copy of his book to consider. and apparantly did that with a lot of places. it was rejected. so it could well be that without teh marketing and drawing attention to himself, he wouldnm't have made it at all

but then again, he may. who knows.

im not sure what is meant by a genuine book. unique/original? mine, at that age, was original ish. (it was about a dead prince who wanted to return to earth and destroy the world by inhabiting a dragon he had killed, just a skeleton of it. and his two sons, who had died but were reincarnated, had to stop him with two powerful swords. and there was this girl who was trying to bring back said dead prince and had an owl that had corrupted her brain to make her want to do that) i was young. it was rubbish, but the concept wasn't taken from anywhere. i was inspired by teh dragon bone chair to have a dragon carcus and probably to use the swords as well. and could well have been about having the evil lord come back from the dead. but most of it was my own silly thoughts i think original can be written at a young age. i nkow how easy it is to see something cool and want to copy it, or act on it, but you have to make it your own.

 

[The Upright Man]

writers don't actually always get better. i mean, look at eddings, brooks, in my mind, they got worse.

you can add Feist in there as well, he started off brilliant, wrote the empire lot (his worst IMO) then crawled back with conclave saga and now Darkwar saga.

i do hope Paolini changes as he writes like a teenage novelist, i no he's 19 but if shelley can write a horror novel at 19 aimed at adults, then at least Paolini can try. if he still wites like a child in 10 yrs time i wont read the books

 

[the_faery_queen]

i hope he changes too. just because we don't need more rubbish on the shelves than we have already. im just pessimstic about it. he has no reason to improve. he has a movie out already, lots of cash from the books, there's nothing to drive him. in fact, he may not write any more series. it really depends why he wrote this lot in the first place i guess.

 

[Majimaune]

Um people he wrote Eragon when he was 15 not 19.

Some more similarities between Eragon and LOTR.

13 dwalf clans. Is that a coinsidence to the 13 dwarves in The Hobbit?
Hrothgar and Dain Ironfoot. They are both old and use a hammer as a weapon.
Tronjheim and Minas Tirith are both large and are vastly underpopulated.
Elessari and Elessar. The names.
Vol Turin.
Cave bears call Beorn.

Those are just a couple more things. You might have to be a massive Tolkien nerd (like me) to know some of them (like Turin and Beorn).

 

[Triceratops]

Do you suppose that the kid's publisher bought his work partly to showcase a child prodigy? After all, it almost worked for Curtis Brown when they tried to debut Opal, with that (rumored) $500,000 advance. There are some disturbing similarities here. Both writing styles (crafting) were not all that and a bag of chips. Plus their plot lines were both obviously mirror reflections of other works. MORE than a tad derivative. So what kind of angle are they trying to cut here? If the writng is mediocre, what's left? If the world forgives a beautiful woman, then they sure look the other way when a kid starts banging on keys and composing manuscripts.

Kids turning out full-length novels--Now isn't that special? I think the editors were basically ignored in these cases, and marketing stepped in to wave the magic "Let's make a Star" wand. Fresh young things fighting it out in the trenches with the older, more seasoned writers--what a hook. What a tag line, eh?

Why is it that the popular author's names are always several fonts larger on the jacket cover than the title? They're selling authors--the fan base. Young authors are easy to empathize with, and they're a lot cuter than us older slugs. It's a people thing, me thinks.



Tri

 

[Thadlerian]

Tronjheim

Heh, I forgot about that one. That is actually my hometown!

At least he's old enough to use an atlas

 

[the_faery_queen]

i said he was 15, he was published with the big house when he was 19 tho
and i think it is a trend. i did read somewhere (another article i haven't kept) that said publishers were activly seeking younger writers. and someone on another forum posted an article about a girl who was 16 i think, who had been accepted and her book had such a cliche plot basis.

then of course there was the 18 year old (or so) who was published and later sued and her book dropped because she had actually copied huge chunks from another book

 

[The Upright Man]

Um people he wrote Eragon when he was 15 not 19

actually you're wrong, as he had the idea for Eragon at 15 and finished writing at 19. so technically it was both ages.

 

[the_faery_queen]

and all the ages in between

 

[Sam Smith]

Do you suppose that the kid's publisher bought his work partly to showcase a child prodigy? After all, it almost worked for Curtis Brown when they tried to debut Opal, with that (rumored) $500,000 advance.
end





um well Paulinis publishers was his Dads company so of course they wanted to make a prodigy. He also actualy thanks his dad for editing and publishing it in the "acknolige ments" so yes they were tryin to show off his age.

 

[the_faery_queen]

yeah. i imagine the big publisher accepted him to market him and say, well look, he's so great, he wrote a book at this age. hurray! but someone isn't really a prodigy if wht they wrote isn't anything special. a prodigy is someone with talent far beyond their years, at least, that's how i believe it to be. like mozart, playing the piano, composing things at a young age. writing a novel that's a lot like star wars and lord of the rings isn't that great an achievement

words get flung around all over the place now, without being used properly. i also saw eragon, the film, described as a blockbuster. it's been out for a week, it's been slated everywhere, i don't thik it can be called a blockbuster. at least not yet! if it makes millions, then yeah ok. but not in a week.

 

[Majimaune]

Eragon was published by his fathers publishing company when he was 17 so he cant have finished the book when he was 19.

 

[the_faery_queen]

it was reprinted in the bigger publisher when he was 19, i think. so therefore it wasn't completely done when it came out when he was 17, as it hadn't been proffessionally edited and so on. so we don't count that version printed by his daddy, because of the errors and rewrites that may have been required by the bigger house.

some may say that it still hasn't been editted properly, of course.

 

[Majimaune]

I say it hasnt been edited properly. Have you seen all the grammer and spelling mistakes he's got in there. A pro editer is meant to pick up on those things. Also there is alot of unnessissary stuff in the book that could be cut out.

 

[Scriven]

I agree, the final work is poor. I can't help thinking the editor was very lenient with Paolini...either that or they didn't know what they were doing. I find it quite funny that Paolini was upset over having to cut a few pages from Eldest - that book has more filler than anything I've ever read.

 

[Kitera]

Hm I've just got a copy of it. Hoping to read it some time soon. Come of the comments made on Amazon regaring Eragon were a little harsh.

But you have to acknowledge the fact he has published 2 novels at a young age. I envy him for that.