Now come on, Nigel, surely you can think of *something* I said that you can disagree with. I don't know *anyone* in my life who agrees 100 percent with what I think - on any subject. If anything, people tend to disagree with me on things.Moonraker wrote:I have just started to reply to your post in the Soper/Maxwell thread - started, that is, by getting the box up, but couldn't think of anything to say! As I agreed 100% with all you said there, I couldn't think of anything to add, and didn't want to write, "I totally agree with all you said, Michael".
It would be a remarkable thing if I ever found someone who fully agrees with me.
Well, it seems I did - once at least - nearly twice - but if you read that novel I think you would probably think I shouldn't have written it - or at least should have burnt it later on.Moonraker wrote:I too tried writing in a Blyton style when I was younger, but to be honest, I couldn't think of anything that she hadn't already written. I also didn't have the stamina to write a full-length novel.
As for things Blyton had already done, it depends on how specifically you define that. Maybe I was writing the same general kind of story as she was (although not nearly so well) - but I think I came up with settings or ideas or plot twists that weren't exactly like anything Blyton did. (One, for example, was a haunted-house story, and there were secret passages and rooms in the roof-space (if I remember correctly) of an old house. I was trying to write what I thought at the time was a definitive haunted-house story, although nothing had a supernatural explanation. Another had its climactic scene entirely on a long-distance overnight train - probably not very plausibly.)
So the thought that I was not thinking of anything new was never a factor for me.
I'm not sure if I'd go quite that far back. Anyway, I wasn't born until 1954, and have few memories before 1960 or so, so I don't think I'd be able to write with credibility about the 1940s. I guess to me the 1960s are my ideal period of time, and I would probably instinctively think in terms of that era in creating a story setting.Moonraker wrote:However, I am certain that there is plenty of room for a series of books set in the 40s/50s about another group of kids.
Actually, I've always found things like this to be an issue in writing. Anomalies in both time and location do seem a bit problematical to me. If society changes too much, especially in certain ways, I find it very difficult to accept that as the new mainstream way of things, and am tempted to quietly ignore it - yet if I became *too* anachronistic, I might start to find that a problem, too.
I also find specificity of location problematical, too. And in my writing (when I was writing), I found that I tended to avoid too-specific references to either time or location, and tended to create settings that were in some generic kind of ideal setting. Obviously this was an Anglo-Saxon-based, English-speaking Western setting (since I know nothing else), but I was reluctant to indicate what country it was in. I guess it was my kind of ideal amalgam of Australia, U.K., U.S., Canada, New Zealand, etc., without the drawbacks I see in each - and even without details I simply found uncomfortably local. (I am aware of at least one instance in which I created a geography that probably cannot be placed plausibly in any existing country, especially if it must be English-speaking.) Along with this, I have always tried to avoid slang or local styles of speech that would pin down either time or location, so I ended up with a kind of standard "Queen's English" that could belong almost anywhere. And I also tend to avoid details that pin down the year or decade too much.
If I were to try to write a Blytonian story now, I don't know how I would resolve all these issues; but I would certainly be aware of them.
(To some extent, this wariness about details is a pure story-writing issue, designed to avoid anomalies in the story as well as to create a setting I find pleasing; but maybe it's partly personal to me too, because in real life too I tend to avoid local slang, specifically Australian terms (even when not slang), try to avoid an accent which sounds "Aussie", and so on - yet in real life there are no issues of anachronism that I have to be careful about. I am just somehow vaguely repelled by those specific features of culture - I don't know why.)
I don't think you can copyright (or even claim artistic ownership of) a whole style of adventure story. It would be one thing to deliberately copy Blytonian mannerisms or stylistic features, and would look either like pastiche or plagiarism. But to just write adventure stories along similar very broad lines is surely something anyone can do.Moonraker wrote:The difficulty is in not unintentionally putting any Blyton settings/characters into them that would make them appear too heavily influenced by her stories.
It may be that my childhood stories did copy Blyton's mannerisms too much (if very clunkily); but the kind of adventure story I would do now, while following the same general kind of plot-line, would *not* use specifically Blytonian mannerisms. I'm not sure I could now, since I think I have my own fictional style now (even if a bit rusty now from a couple of decades' non-use).
Yes, I kind of feel the same way - and that is one reason (but, as indicated above, not the only reason) I would be very unwilling to overtly set it in the present day.Moonraker wrote:Quite frankly, the era that we live in now wouldn't interest me. As you say, H&S, PC and all the rest of the Nanny State rules would stem the flow of any writing that I would want to produce.
Regards, Michael.