Books And Stories That You'd Like to see Rewritten

[Teresa Edgerton]

A book that poorly written like the Castle of Ontranto It's pretty dreadful one the worst books I've ever read. It could do with a rewrite.

But why bother if we both agree that it's dreadful. Would you read a rewrite? I wouldn't.

 

[BAYLOR]

But why bother if we both agree that it's dreadful. Would you read a rewrite? I wouldn't.

If it could be made into better story , Yes I would read it. But certain elements would have to be changed.

 

[Overread]

You have to ask yourself though - is what you want a re-write or a re-imagining.
Because its very easy to say one when one ends up with another; plus a re-imagining can be minor changes that add up to a sudden huge divergence from the main story.

To my mind re-writing its purely about increasing the depth of a story along its original lines. You might elaborate upon certain glossed over elements; increase the descriptive content and flesh out characters a bit more. At a risk you can add some sub-plot, but one has to be cautious that the story doesn't end up trying to tell another characters story bolted onto the main, original story.

Anything much more and you're really getting into re-imagining. Changing so much that you're not deepening the existing story; but actively changing it.



Then of course there is the question of experience and perception of a story. By changing it you change how the reader/viewer interacts with it and what they pick up. Re-imagining or re-writing you can quickly end up changing the experience so much that its just not the same. Oft depends if you're increasing depth via description which might require a changing in the writers "voice" or by sub-events changing how the reader/viewer interacts with the story as a series of events (ergo add a stronger sub-lead and suddenly a once "heroic quest by famed hero" takes on a different tone when there's another, nearly, epic hero too.

 

[Bodhi]

Something funny – I had just imagined this with a recent read of A Wizard of Earthsea by author Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. The lyrical style of the writing was most intriguing at first, but it got tiresome well before the book was up. I was envisioning how I would write it a way that would allow it to be more appealing to more readers today. It could be done well, and should, because the story was so classic and good. Some sentences were just soooo drawn-out, which mirrored some of the long stretches of, well, moving and reflecting. I don't see it exactly as a rewrite because… it has to be written differently; it is not being re-written as the same story in the author's mind. I think @Overread was touching on this.

Some fantasy styles (and where the focus is placed on certain story events) are just more inviting, especially to readers now.

 

[Toby Frost]

You have to ask yourself though - is what you want a re-write or a re-imagining.

I think that's a very good point. It raised two questions: first, what has to be done to make the book good; and secondly, would the result be anything like the original book at all?

As an example, I'd take The Dumas Club by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. This is about a devious bookseller trying to obtain and decipher an occult manuscript. It is very learned, but exciting and sinister, and includes a lot of detail about antique books to make the occult tome more convincing.

However, as the book goes on, the story gets clogged down with increasingly absurd coincidences and references to other stories (as well as some whopping great authorial wish-fulfillment, I suspect). This doesn't just make the author look like he's showing off his knowledge at the expense of the novel, but, worse, gives the impression that he isn't taking his own book seriously, and that it's just a sort of game.

I would change it a lot. The core concept and the impressive research are great, but I'd ditch the peripheral stuff. But I'd be writing the novel that I wanted to read. The end result might be better or worse, but it would be a totally different book. Even changing the tone of work can make it very different. There must be half a dozen versions of High Noon, but they're all entirely seperate.

 

[JoanDrake]

Two types of books that might be good candidates for rewriting suggest themselves to me. The first is like the Castle of Otranto. Otranto is, if you go by the posts here, apparently not very well written for a modern book. It is, however, by one of the better known classicists and is considered, according to much of what I've read of it, something of a classic itself. (It is regarded by some as the founding work of the Gothic Genre)

The other category is Good Ideas Badly Handled. I think these books would be rather subjective and might involve the entire works of several authors, and the rewrites themselves might easily be the major works of several more, often not acknowledged or recognized as such, sometimes even by their secondary authors.

(I do hope that sentence makes sense when I reread it later )

Ray Bradbury once said that we're all plagiarizing the Greeks, and the more familiar I become with the Ancients the more I agree with that.

 

[Vertigo]

Sort of relevant to this thread, I have just read both H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy and John Scalzi's reimagining of it in Fuzzy Nation and thoroughly enjoyed both. Piper's original, though very good, does now feel a bit tired and dated, whilst Scalzi's 'rewrite' brings new life to Piper's excellent concept with a much more modern interpretation. Reading them back to back really does highlight the improvements - and I'm sorry but they are mostly improvements - that Scalzi has made. My full thoughts are here.

 

[K. Riehl]

I nominate The Mote in God's Eye. The ending specifically. It was such a letdown that I actually threw the book away. If they had found even a semi-plausible wrinkle then maybe it could be ok. But the ending is such a grrr... gnash... it still bugs me 20 years later.

 

[BAYLOR]

Sphere by Michael Crichton Interesting book and concept, poorly executed.

 

[kythe]

I liked Sphere up until the end. The final decision felt like a cheat, and it made everything else in the book completely irrelevant.

 

[Vertigo]

I liked Sphere up until the end. The final decision felt like a cheat, and it made everything else in the book completely irrelevant.

Agreed. I was staggered that such a renowned author could get away with a complete cheat like that. Almost as bad as one of Eddings' series which was ended by turning back the clock and undoing everything that had happened in the entire series.

 

[BAYLOR]

Agreed. I was staggered that such a renowned author could get away with a complete cheat like that. Almost as bad as one of Eddings' series which was ended by turning back the clock and undoing everything that had happened in the entire series.

Timeline is another book by him that had an interesting concept but ended up not being well executed.

 

[tylenol4000]

I've always wanted to see Lord of Light written by Philip K Dick.

 

[BAYLOR]

James Stoddard retelling of William Hope Hodgson's novel The Nightland is a huge improvement.