chocoboat

chocoboat t1_jeexh7h wrote

I hadn't heard that before, and it explains a lot. Apparently Twain planned for the story to be about Huck Finn's development into an adult.

He worked on it for years, then gave up on it for several years, and only after making a trip on the Hudson River did he decide to make this book about an adventure travelling down a river instead. Still doesn't explain the contrived ending though.

I never did think this book was anything special. I guess it was creative and influential for the time, but it doesn't hold up well compared to other books from the time, including Twain's other work.

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chocoboat t1_jeeuwbz wrote

> Legit, new genres like romance, thriller, drama, action

Well by that definition, it's definitely impossible. There are only so many different types of stories to tell about human beings, and those very broad genres pretty much cover it all.

But it's absolutely possible to create new sub-genres. Fiction based on a Earth that has undergone significant climate change is a growing one. Same with the often-dystopian settings in a high tech world, like the stories seen in the TV show Black Mirror.

Fanfiction is a genre not seen much in the past, popularized once the internet made it possible to easily share fanfiction with other fans of the same series.

While looking for more info I found an article mentioning "Gran Lit", romances or adventures featuring seniors rather than the usual young adults.

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chocoboat t1_jeeqgwo wrote

Maybe I'm lucky, but predictable plot twists just don't occur to me while I'm reading. I'm just there to enjoy whatever story I'm being told, and it just doesn't occur to me to try to guess what will happen next or how the author will resolve the story.

I only think The only exceptions are detective novels where the whole premise of the book is for the reader to try to figure out what happened (I'm terrible at it), and stories with fairly obvious secrets that are extremely important to the plot (gee I wonder where that 7th horcrux could be).

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chocoboat t1_jed8ukp wrote

Reply to comment by Dana07620 in Thoughts on Forrest Gump? by Purple1829

While I hate that they did that, I don't think anyone was screwed by the lack of a Forrest Gump movie sequel.

The book is a kind of a mess, just more of the same adventures but worse and even more contrived. At best the movie sequel would have been forgettable, but there's a good chance it would just been terrible and felt like a parody of the original. I will say that Forrest creating New Coke was a good idea, that's the kind of thing that would have fit well into a movie.

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chocoboat t1_jed84wu wrote

The book has charm, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the movie. It really makes you notice every bit of how ridiculous and contrived Forrest's life story is.

The movie might just be the best adaption of a novel that was ever made. It does an incredible job of portraying these events as something that just -might- be remotely plausible, and keeping you entertained enough that you don't stop and think about it. They knew exactly what to get rid of (astronauts and cannibals were so unnecessary), and exactly what changes to make to Lt. Dan and Jenny to complete their stories in a more satisfying way.

If you hired 100 other filmmakers to adapt that book into a movie back in 1994, I doubt any of them could have made a movie that turned nearly this well.

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