I'll be curious to see what level of success this movie ends up achieving. My son's opinion on the way out of theater: "That should have gone straight to DVD." I don't think I felt as upset as he was about it, but as I said I haven't read the book.

I'm curious what others think about the storyline? Was it just me on a cynical day? (A strong possibility, given the day I've had...)

My conclusion is that Eragon is junk food. It's not great reading, but it's not really trying to be. All it's trying to do is cover all the little things that make fantasy good, even if they are cliche. And people pay money for it, so it must be satisfying some hunger for fantasy.

To the well read, or even the poorly read, fantasy genre reader, the book is crap. Well, maybe not crap, but not very good. Eragon would have failed miserably that fantasy test that was posted here a while back. The story is about a farm boy who discovers that he really is a royal dragon rider raise by his uncle, as his parents were killed by the evil king. He find a dragon egg, Eragon, and then magically discovers that the last surviving dragon rider of old is the town drunk who takes him under his wing and ... you get the point.

The movie I will avoid. Planned on avoiding it the second I heard it was coming out.

Though the fact that a poorly written Eragon could make a fortune on sales and movie rights is a boon to aspiring writers everywhere. Turns out you don't need to write a masterpiece to make a fortune afterall.

Nothing of late tends to irritate me more than hearing that somebody who's having a success of sorts--any sort, any arena---is the "son of" or "daughter of" or "relative of" somebody well known. (Or "went to the right schools" or "is part of the old boy's network," or somesuch.) It makes me devalue my literary talent and efforts---would I have made it if my parents had worked in publishing?---and makes me think the whole game was stacked against me from the start. And that depresses me no end.

There are plenty of "relatives" who've done things I've liked. For example, I like the early novels of J. O. Jeppsen, better known as Mrs. Isaac Asimov. (And I voted for George W. Bush, who's certainly a "son of"---depending on who you talk to and what end of the political spectrum you're on.)

I'll be blunt - the movie sucked. I wanted to slap myself when I got out of the theater. I'd keep most of the actors, but change everything else about the movie. It was like they were trying to get the entire movie into a certain timeframe and so they kind of glossed over or completely skipped certain parts of the story.

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Eragon got published, I think, because of the writer's connections, parents involved in the publishing industry.

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This is not correct. I just read the story of how it transpired, and what really happened is that the author, Christopher Paolini and his parents (keep in mind he was still a teenager, living in Montana) self-published his book. He was home-schooled so I'm sure the folks considered this a good lesson in economics, marketing, and the publishing industry. The family promoted the book heavily for over a year, giving 135 presentations at libraries, schools, bookstores, etc.

In the summer of 2002, a published (Carl Hiaasen) author's stepson bought and read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana. Hiaasen then brought the book to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, who bought the rights to the trilogy. The rest is history.

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Ah, but how and why did Carl Hiassen's son buy and read a copy of it?

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Ahem... did you read my post? The family lived in Montana. The book was heavily marketed in Montana. The kid made 135 personal appearances promoting his book, dressed in medieval style clothing, at bookstores, libraries, etc. The book was all over the place... IN MONTANA.

Hiaasen's stepson bought the book while they were vacationing in MONTANA. It was easy to buy at the time. The stepson LOVED the book and raved about it. Thus, Hiaasen, got it into his hands, and apparently felt it was good enough to alert his publisher about it.

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I'm attuned to SF and fantasy.

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Apparently that wasn't enough. You would have had to also be attuned to the self-published industry coming from the state of Montana.

Things like this can happen due to a combination of lucky events. Something like that happened to me the other day; I work at a newspaper in Oregon. We got hit by a giant windstorm last Friday --it clocked wind gusts of 137 mph on the Oregon coast, although we only got gusts up to 69 mph in our town. Anyhow, the wind blew a trampoline into a tree, and our photographer got the shot. I was replying to an email to the regional Associated Press Bureau chief, who is due to come pay us a visit soon, and casually mentioned the trampoline picture. AP calls us, asks us to upload photos, bingo... our pictures are on national news. It's not manipulation of the system, or a case of getting unjust advantage... that would be a cynic's point of view.

It's just a matter of being in the right place, at the right time, following a hell of a lot of hard work.

In my opinion, the kid who wrote Eragon DESERVES his success, to some degree, because dang it... he did everything right; he applied BIC (butt in chair, for you newbies), he edited, he and his family paid self-publishing costs out of their own pockets, and they heavily and agressively marketed the book for over a year before "luck" coincided with them.

He believed in his book, and so did his family. Regardless of the fact that the story is pretty simplistic and full of cliches, it's still an admirable story of success, and one Christopher earned through hard work alone. Had he not been so agressive with his marketing, the book wouldn't have been in the bookstore in Montana for Hiassen's stepson to buy, and fall in love with.

The book itself, however....let's just say, inspiration to writers everywhere. If that can get published and on the NYTimes bestseller list...

Granted, I read the first, self-published edition. Knopf edited out approximately 20,000 (if my memory serves) words before publishing it, which would have improved it greatly. I also feel like some plot and unpredictability would have helped, but you can't have everything.

Here we go, trying to salvage our writerly dignity and self-confidence by denigrating something successful. I wonder how often it occurs to us to figure out what this book is doing right rather than submitting it to death by a thousand paper cuts.

If hundreds of thousands of people can't get enough of the story, it doesn't freaking matter how it got popular. I mean, it's nice and all to use its publishing history to trash it, because, you know, that lets us entertain the conceit that if only it had been our stories that had that extra bit of help...

Nah. Under the mounds of bad plot, predictable story, and stilted dialogue that are somehow more cliched than this thread, it's doing something terribly right. I wonder what it is?

Yes, I'm going to lurk on Hatrack forever just to make sure this gets brought up in every one of these kinds of threads. Take off your writers hats and look at the story as a reader. What is it doing right?

My problem with figuring out what the book is doing right is that it isn't doing the right thing for me. There are other books that I do like that are also successful, and I would rather study those.

I don't mean that to sound close-minded. Writers should try to read and understand everything. I've tried to understand why Eragon is popular, and I have some theories, but since Eragon is not my idea of a good book I am simply going to file my knowledge/guesses away and try to emulate the books I do enjoy.

And I don't think explaining the book's publishing history is in any way an attempt to "trash it," at least it wasn't for me. Remember, Paolini himself DIDN'T have any real connections. What happened to him (book randomly picked up by child of other writer) could happen to anybody who self-publishes and puts the right kind of a marketing push behind their work.

I will say that I don't really care whether the plot, idea, story, or even dialogue are trite, cliche, one-dimensional, or simply silly on the face of it.

I care about craftsmanship, about which nobody here has said even a word. Maybe the book has it, maybe the movie doesn't. It could turn out the other way round. I don't really know one way or the other. But by "craftsmanship" I don't mean literary contrivences or innovative use of light and shadow (though I'm not really opposed to either). Taking the film, I mean stuff like being able to tell not only that something is a poorly done special effect but also being immediately aware of the technique used to create it. Things like actors who are barely in character (this is not about whether the characters themselves make any damn sense) and takes that simply couldn't have been the best out of more than one take. Scenes that add nothing but prurient interest or cheap viscerality.

Moving to writing, it's harder to define. Wonky usages and confusing language, poor use of POV so that I don't get involved with the characters, outright stupidity or gross ignorance on the part of the writer, these are all part of it. I suppose that I want the text to convince me that the writer cares about the story, whether or not I've read dozens or hundreds of similar stories.

It reminded me of Terry Brooks; I like Brook's writing and started out loving his Shannara series, but with each sequel I picked up, I felt that I'd already read that story before. The talent was there, but it wasn't capturing my interest anymore.

The same thing happened with Eragon. I started out enjoying the story because Paolini knew how to string more than two words together. My enthusiasm died about halfway through, because I realized that I'd read the same kind of story before. He could write; I just wasn't interested anymore.

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I also feel it should've gone straight to DVD, but we all can't get what we want.

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Show business is a business after all.

Now whether or not people should be paying $14 to see it... Well that's a different question. To be rational then you must expect the experience of viewing it to be at least equal to the cost mentioned. About 2 hours and $14. So, at the end of the day, ask yourself why you paid that cost to see it. Then there's your answer. Personally $14 seems high to see any movie. Where I live it's commonly $4 for an early show.

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This is not correct. I just read the story of how it transpired, and what really happened is that the author, Christopher Paolini and his parents (keep in mind he was still a teenager, living in Montana) self-published his book. He was home-schooled so I'm sure the folks considered this a good lesson in economics, marketing, and the publishing industry. The family promoted the book heavily for over a year, giving 135 presentations at libraries, schools, bookstores, etc.
In the summer of 2002, a published (Carl Hiaasen) author's stepson bought and read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana. Hiaasen then brought the book to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, who bought the rights to the trilogy. The rest is history.

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EVERYONE is misisng the big point here...
Who the hell would go on vacation in Montana?

The book got published and sold lots of copies. Now it's a movie. It was written by a kid for crying out loud. A kid from Montana.

I say hats off and congratulations.

If I ever have 10% of Pauolini's success, I'll be thrilled beyond measure.

As for the book, it was a fun read. Yes, it was full of cliches and a tad predictable but a lot of movies and books are.

I liked Eragon when I read it (to a point; by the time Paolini's somewhat-engaging world of Alagaesia faded into the background, I was reading because I was holding out hope it would get better, and because I wanted to see if there was a cliche he wouldn't whole-heartedly embrace), looking back, actually remember very little of it.

The movie was great for my kids, who were engaged by the dragon and mysticism. Beyond that, it did little to impress.

I don't mind the predictability of it, and the complete failure to develop a character could be the result of many things, including the need to condense several hundred pages of story into a 120 page script.

What dissapointed me were all the inconsistencies -- a given type of warrior is nearly impossible to defeat mano a mano, and yet this kid battles them without even a scratch. We're told of the "price" for using magic early on, but never see this cost to the hero after the magic is used multiple times. There were many such problems that left me feeling a bit cheated.

Perhaps that's different in the book, I only read a few pages of it, but I have a feeling otherwise. I don't mind formulaic storytelling or Cliche fantasy (let's face it, most genre fiction is riddled with cliche at one level or another); so long as it's done well I can appreciate the same story in any number of different incarnations (how else does "the Nativity Story" manage to sell tickets?). But the movie and/or book has to be consistent and told well.

Okay, let's throttle back a little and say it's just a bunch of strawberries. I don't just munch them unappreciatively like a cow eating it's own cud (yuck!), I savor each individual one. If not, then what is the point of eating them?

"Characters are born out of necessity" - Christopher Paolini

Any person who has ever spent more than a week on a story can understand why this statement is so infuriating. He represents many of the things that we as writers work so hard to avoid being. His characters are one-dimensional, uninteresting, and sometimes unnecessary Mary Sues. His plot borrows completely from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and contains many elements that break our suspension of disbelief, which are things that we discuss about on this board and try to avoid doing. Finally, his writing process did not seem to be anything like ours as he simply woke up one morning, started writing, finished, edited a few times through, and got published with "no" problems (Being 19 years old, still living with your parents, and appearing before dozens of youngsters in a goofy medieval costume may equal the arduous process of getting published...I'm not sure) Finally, he wasted this wonderful opportunity by selling a book, that given a few more years of polishing, could have been excellent. I mean I see thousands of places in his books where he could have done a better job with more experience in writing.

As for borrowing elements from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings...neither story invented the core concepts that made them really great stories. I've never once suggested that anyone should try to avoid emulating the plot elements of such archtypal works in the fantasy genre, and I don't know that anyone else has seriously suggested it either.

As for being published with "no" problems, that "no" definitely deserves to be put off in quotes. Yes, I think that literally betting the farm on your novel does count as putting a real, if unconventional, effort into it. More importantly, I think that even to suggest that there is anything wrong with an author's work simply because that work was written and published before the author spent a certain number of years trying to break in...it largely invalidates everything else you say, because that criticism is so fundamentally flawed.

Then you finally admit, in the most backhanded way possible, that the story had serious potential.

I haven't read any of his writing, so I can't really say nay or yea to whether or not it's all that good or bad. What I will say is that the quality of the criticism I've seen persuades me that almost nobody is really put off by the text itself. It seems like simple envy is the predominant motivation behind almost everything negative that's been said thus far.

I may be an individual who prefers character development to a linear plot, but I have never read a book in my life where the main character never wavered in personality and was not punished for it. It just throws off the balance of the universe when a person can behave in a self-destructive manner and not see the consequences of those actions.

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With Saphira the dragon, Paolini had an excellent opportunity to do what few other writers had tried and actually give a dragon a personality. But instead, he goes the easy way and makes her this all-knowing being from birth who saves Eragon just in time everytime he is trouble.

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I've read Eldest, the sequel to Eragon. In that Paolini actually explains why Saphira is the way she is.

I think he called it the "Blood Memory" of dragons or something like that. I haven't read it in a while, but I do remember that one piece of infortmation.

Remember MICE? How about Atlas Shrugged, or any of Clarke's fiction?

It seems like Paolini's writing infuriates critics and writers mostly. I can't think of why that would be, except that he did spectacularly well by ignoring things that writers hone for years and years and things that critics spend years and years looking for. I suppose this would be especially bad for people who make those things he ignores into their pet specialties and magnify them beyond all reason.

It only reinforces in my mind that we too often hone the wrong things. So again, without the backhanded envy nonsense: what did he get so terribly right?

How did this guy get "in" and you can't?

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Paolini's Parents own a publishing company , he said his father helping him edit his work . Sister doing the cover art etc.
Whats infuriating is that people don't appreciate good art, what is presented to the masses as 'popular' sells better usually . Look at how well Paris Hilton's music did.

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They don't own a publishing company, they self-published. I'm guessing it took a lot of work. And then they still had to sell it. Say what you will about the writing, I haven't read the book, but he didn't just fall into his success.

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It just throws off the balance of the universe when a person can behave in a self-destructive manner and not see the consequences of those actions.

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Really, you're getting frustrated with the wrong people. Publishers just offer the selection, and the readers take what they want. Eragon still could have flopped despite its publishing connections. But the audience paid for it and enjoyed it.

Yes, that connection allowed him to do an end run around the dreaded slushkillers who guard the usual entrances to publication. But the fundamental nature of the connection was based entirely on his work, not on some extrinsic factor like having "had relations" with someone.

Now, I'm not going to say anything in favor of "connections", though it occurs to me that aspiring writers (writers who wish to become famous, or at least published) often do themselves a disservice by positively cultivating antagonistic (or otherwise unharmonious) relationships towards working editors and established writers. But a "connection" that was based solely on contact with the text itself...that cannot be dismissed as "favoritism". Otherwise you have to say the same of every story which an editor buys because he happens to like it (we will presume that female editors always have more mysterious reasons for their decisions ).