From a newsgroup post dated April 10, 2007:<\/i><\/p>\n
Down in another newsgroup a couple of people posted pitches for their unpublished novels. I wasn’t impressed — in fact, I thought both were pretty lame, though the novels might not be.<\/p>\n
I should have just let it go, but I didn’t — I rewrote ’em both.<\/p>\n
I pretended this was an educational effort, but I’m pretty sure I was just showing off.<\/p>\n
The thing is, though, that the reason I bothered to do it was that it was so easy<\/i>. I mean, both pitches contained, as originally written, all the elements needed to make a good pitch — plot, setting, character — but they didn’t make it sound interesting.<\/p>\n
One of them spent too long explaining how a disaster happened, when the novel is about the after-effects of the disaster. Who cares<\/i> why it happened? The cool stuff is what the survivors have to do afterward!<\/p>\n
The other had long unpronounceable names all over it, when what matters is the romantic triangle of a mad lord, his loyal henchman, and the courtesan secretly plotting the lord’s overthrow.<\/p>\n
They could both be great stories — but alas, I’ll bet they aren’t. It’s a shame.<\/p>\n
And it demonstrates a couple of things:<\/p>\n
\tThat it’s not the idea that matters, it’s the execution.*<\/p>\n
\tWhy I stopped trying to teach writing — it’s too frustrating, seeing all this potential that’s never going to be properly used. That romantic triangle could be a classic, done right, but the odds that it’s done right are mighty slim.<\/p>\n
\tFeist’s Corollary: There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently untalented writer can’t fuck it up.**<\/p>\n
==<\/p>\n
* My great-great grandfather was born on an estate in Maine named Execution. It’s kind of a family mystery why anyone would name a house that, but it almost certainly has something to do with the concept that it’s the execution that matters.<\/p>\n
The house is now a hole in the ground in the middle of a forest; the only part of the estate that hasn’t gone back to wilderness is the family burial plot, which is maintained by veterans’ groups because there’s a Revolutionary War hero buried there. They consistently put the Memorial Day flag and flowers on the wrong grave, though — there were lots of Goodwins with the same few names. So much for execution.<\/p>\n
** This corollary to Watt-Evans’ Law is the only time I have ever seen Ray Feist use the word “fuck.” I think I cleaned it up for the version on my webpage, but this is the original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From a newsgroup post dated April 10, 2007: Down in another newsgroup a couple of people posted pitches for their unpublished novels. I wasn’t impressed — in fact, I thought both were pretty lame, though the novels might not be. I should have just let it go, but I didn’t — I rewrote ’em both.… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalities-rants","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}