The challenge

[marguerite]

So can I. But you can find a formula for any series. What we were talking about was a formula for a Best Seller. But consider; how many Best Sellers have withstood the test of time? Tastes change. The JKR formula might not work ten years from now. And the formula itself does not exist in a vacuum. It is not only time and culturally sensitive, how it interacts with the writer's style is crucial. My formula might not work for you. Yours might not work for me.

Shakespeare is formulaic. He stole plots, too, by the dozen. The trick is to make the formula seem fresh and exciting, even when it's not. Or at least to cloak it in iambic pentameter.

Are you proposing a Turing Test for A.I. Novelists?

Weeping over my misspent youth,

-Thoth.

Oh, goody, just what the world needs, more bad romance novels. Like we don't have enough trouble already filtering through the 5,867 crummy books on the shelves to pluck out the 10 or so good ones. (The publications of Forum members/Storyist users are, naturally, in the latter category. We're all friends here.)

 

I'm with Steve, though. The thought of someone compiling medical information at random on the Internet and publishing the results without fact-checking is much more horrifying than the possibility that the river of bad romances will turn into a torrent.

Marguerite

[Steve E]

I'm with Steve, though. The thought of someone compiling medical information at random on the Internet and publishing the results without fact-checking is much more horrifying than the possibility that the river of bad romances will turn into a torrent.

Steve said "unbelievable". I said "horrifying" for I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Even in the news industry the mantra is, "better to be first than to be accurate." The lack of fact checking has become epidemic so expect more such books, and as Steve suggests, more related lawsuits.

 

The Shadow-uh, I mean-

-Thoth.