Gentlemen,

My name is gunswordfist and I wish to write movie scripts one day. I am EXTREMELY far away from being a professional writer though. I read a couple of screenwriting books and wrote down a bunch of script ideas. Yep...that's how far I am. lol One day when I finally get my life together, I hope to take this writer thing seriously.

gunswordfist

Where do you think anybody started? The minute you set your mind to it, you were a screenwriter. So there.

Welcome to the cluster****, have a nice day! :P

(@flash: Symbolism is hard work. You can't hold a ladder and compare the lightbulb to Jesus at the same time!)

Looking at you I see her face
Through all these years, just waiting
It all catches up to you when you slow down

I'm back in that yard, tasting that shame
Of pushing her down, Of kids and her games
...their strongholds

We had a bigger world - we had a better view
I guess I never fully realized then
What she lost when I cut that loss

So she filled the void with unearthly friends
Voices of hers - greater... than us

We had a bigger world - we had a better view
I wish she'd never told us about her voices
We were strong, we were much too strong

Never forgive - never forget

We picked and pierced, we ripped and we tore
We hit and we scratched to make in her a hole
Glares and eyes - whispers and notes
Attached to her every pose

We fed her shouts
For the collection of her voices
I was too weak to collect
But so, it turned out, was she
Both paid in soul for the cutting of that loss

Their ugly truth
Outnumbered by far her beautiful dream
And I closed my eyes
Were her eyes in yours already when we met?
Am I still paying debts to recover Life?

Now I can see she proved to be right
As she was called down
It's sad though...
...that I turned out to be one of her voices.

-Pain of Salvation's "Her Voices," which is among the best songs I've ever heard in my entire life.

If Inheritage is really Star Wars with dragons, then it is still a diferent story.

waZelda

So I could take the exact same plot, characters, and lines from, say, Lord of the Rings and put it in the year 2278-X, and it would be a different book? I disagree. Gangalf as a robot sounds pretty amazing, though.

I can see it now; Luke Skywalker will be a emo farm boy who can control the force, er, I mean, dragon magic. It'll be awesome.

How hard is that? Eragon's the son of one of the evil bad guys, he has some special force powers, his mentor dies in the first book, etc. There are some changes, but the changes are so subtle or pointless that it rarely matters (Luke/Eragon has a brother, not a sister).

Again, I will say that Paulini writes better than most. But I was really, really disapointed by Eragon. I felt ripped off when I bought it.

How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Foolz3h

Three. One to put the bulb in, one to hold the ladder, and one to find some symbolic meaning behind the bulb's replacement. I mean, no good lightbulb changing doesn't have symbolic ties! You have to have symbolism!

A little more organisation would have made the passage a better read. I had keep referring to previous paras or read the same limes a cpuple of times to realize that you had changed scenes. And the ending was also a little confusing. What was it supposed to mean?sandyqbg

I'm going to change the ending anyway, so just hold on. I'll post again when I make a few changes; this first draft is a little rough yet.

[QUOTE="gbarules2999"]

Star Wars + Dragons = Inheritence.

He stole everything from Star Wars. EVERYTHING. It's not even a question. Some of the dialogue is exactly the same, it's just fantasy-spun. The force is now Dragon Magic, the lightsabers are now real swords, etc.

You can tell I'm not a fan. They're fairly well written (he has a good writing style), but the rest's stolen garbage.

Foolz3h

But Star Wars is stolen from Gunga Din among other things, and apparently Harry Potter is stolen from Eragon or something.

Well, that's the problem when you write cliches without much of a new take on them: it's already been done so people will look down on you. :P

At least present it in some way that makes you think it's a different story. You could argue that all literature today is based somewhat on any holy book in the world.

But Harry Potter and other good books like that don't make it obvious; they cover it up by twisting the story enough so that you're surprised by what happens. See, once you figure out who every character in Inheritence is, and you've seen Star Wars, you know what will happen.

Brom will die. Eragon will be the son of one of the evil bad guys. Eragon will be horribly injured in some way, but he will overcome it. You know the drill.

[QUOTE="gbarules2999"]I look forward to the fresh faces' new works. This place could use a bit of a lightening up. :PFoolz3h

It was a misunderstanding I tells you!

When I tell you to change the lightbulbs like thirty times and you ignore me, and then the light gets darker and darker everyday, don't you be sayin' that you can't see the text. I told you. That ain't no misunderstandin'. That's misguided management, there is.

I misunderstood his question; I thought he meant a top-down super sarcastic review, like ZP. I reread his post, and these are my initital thoughts.

They take skill that very few writers have; this is why I suggest not overdoing it, or trying too hard.

You have to know how to balance your opinion with the humor that you are trying to get over. Again, I have tried this. I have seen people try this. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

If you're confident that you can pull it off, go for it. But that doesn't mean that you should broadsword through it just because it sounds fun; if it's not working, drop it, and come back to it later. It's a tricky tactic, but it's one that works well if used correctly, and doing something like that correctly takes years of experience that very few people have (even in the video game journalism industry).

But don't let my apprehension take away from your writing; explore what you feel you want to try. Just don't feel like you have to get in too deep.

@foolz: I disagree with you on ZP.