Message-ID: <3B277C71.C1E8C216@csi.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 10:45:05 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: PrologueComp results
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"Dennis G. Jerz" wrote:

> "Adam Cadre" <grignr@cascadia.drizzle.com> wrote in message
> news:9fut4o$nib$1@cascadia.drizzle.com...
> > we've *all* got hundreds of ideas.  The people who actually *are* willing
> > to put the work into fully implementing them should be the ones granted the
>
> > honor of using them first.  If one of the ideas I have on the back burner
> > were scooped by, say, a comp game, well, that's life.  But if it'd been
> > spoiled by a 2K text piece that someone cranked out in 45 minutes, well,
> > I'd be pretty darn ticked.
> "There truly is nothing new under the sun."  -- Ecclesiastes 1:9
> From a certain minimalistic perspective, all stories have already been told
> before.  What matters is the telling.

Well, yes, one can reduce all stories--or all technologies--to a mere riff
based on some previous concept with only superficial alterations.  My personal
favorite version of this "game" is to reduce all of fiction to a small set of
plots when, really, "the number of existing plots" are all a matter of
perspective.  I mean, I can espouse my system of "two types of fiction":  One
in which the protagonist survives, and one in which he doesn't.  Someone else
might talk about the shape of the journey (stay home, travel among friends,
travel among enemies, or travel far away), the nature of the quest (ascension,
vengeance, creation, or survival), the numbers of protagonists and antagonists,
or any number of other specific details of the plot which can be easily
pigeonholed.

In my personal opinion, though, while they're all valid, it's all irrelevant.
The plot (and I'm being very careful where I step, here) is not the most
critical part of the story.  The setting isn't, either, nor is any particular
feature of the story, itself.  The reason is because no one of these things can
stand on its own, though many writers have tried, in many types of media.

I mean, quick quiz.  Which stories am I talking about (by plot)?
- Kid grows up to be the hero his father was meant to be, through the dual
mechanations of an unknown family friend and the villain once opposed by the
heroic father.
- Hero enters a deadly place to save the life of a friend.
- Protagonist snaps due to the death of a loved one and seeks vengeance.
How about these (by setting)?
- People stuck on a deserted island
- Explorer stuck in a fantasy cave system
- Cowboys in the American Old West

We could go on, but I'm guessing everyone who actually considers the different
examples can think of at least three stories each to go with them.  The
critical piece is something that's easy to overlook:  The relationship between
these things, and the way they fit together to tell the whole story.
"Gilligan's Island" is very different from "The Swiss Family Robinson," despite
similarities in setting.  Batman, Hamlet, and thousands of other figures have
the same superficial plot, but are (perhaps surprisingly, in some cases) very
different stories.  Heck, even the Zork games amongst each other and with
respect to other cave crawls are quite different, despite overwhelming
similarity.  Star Trek could be pretty much the same show on a cruise ship, a
submarine, or a truck cruising the Australian outback.  Well, you'd probably
want to change the name, but the stories wouldn't be significantly impacted.

This is, in fact, why I once said that originality and novelty often didn't
work for me.  It's because the novelty often becomes the centerpiece of the
work, putting everything else (including the aforementioned relationships and
construction) on the backburner.

So, while I can see the potential pain of being "scooped" on a new(ish)
concept, I'd suggest taking a good look at the work in question.  If it really
doesn't bring anything interesting to the table besides the handful of
novelties, then, yes, it perhaps should never have been created in the first
place.  However, if there is anything else to it, then there's absolutely no
reason to discard it.  As has been said before, science fiction is almost
exclusively based on the premise of exploring new places and meeting aliens.
People have been exploring and meeting foreigners for millenia.  This does not
make the newer stories any less good.

Hmmm...I think I've typed up more than enough on an issue I'm not really
involved with, at this point, so I'll quietly step back out...


