frantic_scribbler

One thing that always worries people is that by writing a story about long journeys or a quest they are afraid readers might think that the author is copying the Lord of the Rings and as some people said before it is hard not to copy LOTR. However when I did a report on Tolkien for a project at school, one of the judges told me that there was an author, James Campbell I believe, who came up with the assumption that all stories involve the hero minding his own business, he gets stuck in a quest or picked up by a duck or something and goes on this quest, and at the end of the quest he brings back some boone or some object of significance. He wrote a book that I'm looking for entitiled Hero with 1,000 Faces Look at The Hobbit for example, Bilbo was swept up in a quest by Dwarves and Gandalf and the object he brought back was The Ring. In the LOTR trilogy Frodo was minding his own business when he learned The Ring was dangerous and that Sauron was looking for it so he went on a quest to destroy it. He did not bring back any boone though and that is how Tolkien differed from other authors. Anyway, that is my two cents.[/u]

Vixen

Many times, somone will say that all stories fallow one formula, or that the good stuff has been written before. I read somwhere that there are only two stories.

1. A quest.
2. A stranger comes to town.

So, why should this worry us. When Terry Brooks was in highschool he wrote a story about two small people, who go on a quest for a magical object that could be used for evil, thanks to the interferance of a druid. It screamed LOTR, yet sold well. The Shannara series, as it became, still sells well, and is ever continueing to atract new readers.

You can prolably one up him by writing something well, with no cliche characters, or sentances, and even if people do compare it to LOTR, at least they will want to read it.

Gladiator_008

That's the problem with most of what I write: it will probably be compared to Lord of the Rings. In my opinion and my opinion alone, that's definitely not a bad thing. When compared to one of the greatest books ever written, you obviously have something good in your writing that it is compared to the LOTR.

Tolkien is definitely one person I know I can't be compared to, and not too many can be, but if you're called a 'LOTR Imposter' just smile and say, 'That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.'

RachelEvil

Of course, that sounds really, really, really absurd, unless you're working with an incredibly loose definition of the term "quest".

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Rachel Evil McCall
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