The New Yorker has a fascinating article about a plagiarism case between two romantasy writers and the publisher and agent of one. It is not so fascinating to me because of the plagiarism angle but rather because of what it says about art, creation, creators, and the age of AI slop.
I cannot do the article justice with a brief summary, so I really do encourage you to read the entire thing. The story is amazing and crazy all at once. A writer got an agent and then failed to sell the novel. That is a story as old, and disappointing, as time (though, bluntly, I would love to have an agent feel my work was good enough to represent, even if they could not sell it. I’m a writer — I crave any kind of praise, after all.). A few years later, however, said writer, Lynne Freeman, picks up a book by Tracy Wolff and is startled to see her own work reflected back at her. She does a bit of digging and finds that her old agent represented Wolff, and that the book had been sold to a publisher that had received but passed on her novel. Lawyers are then rounded up and set upon the publisher, author and agent.
The publisher, Enchanted, seemingly offers an odd kind of defense: since the book is romantasy (a romance novel in a fantasy setting, sort of like Tolkien meets Harlequin. So, yes, the hobbits fuck. You are welcome for that image.) and romantasy is largely a collection of tropes, it would be impossible to plagiarize because everyone is writing essentially the same books. Books are nothing more than another consumable product, like Pringles or Tide detergent. In the words of the publisher “the problem with traditional publishing is that they just let writers write whatever they want, and they don’t even think about what the TikTok hashtag is going to be”. Everything is the same, so nothing can be stolen.
I am not a copyright lawyer, so I cannot presume to say who will win the case. I can say that there is plenty in the article to suggest that some plagiarism did in fact occur. Amazingly, the editor, the agent, and the author wrote the book together. They apparently were so deep in each other’s work that they literally could not remember who wrote what line. In a genre where having multiple books is required to succeed (Wolff wrote 60 books in eleven years before finally becoming a bestseller), this might actually be required to produce enough to stay relevant. But it does seem likely that people who were in that much of a rush could dust of an old text for inspiration and perhaps copy some of that old text into the new. Regardless of the merits of the case, I don’t think that tropes make a defense.
Tropes, for those not familiar with the term, are items in a book that are standard for the specific type of genre. Romance books have certain beats, for example, and certain motifs that appear over and over. Friends turn into lovers. Enemies turn into lovers. Friends or enemies turn into lovers only after long, drawn out period of unrequited sexual tension. All genres have tropes, even literary fiction. Some genres lean more heavily into tropes, and romance and romantasy certainly have that reputation, as can sci-fi. Trope heavy writing, though, is one of the reasons that so many people think that AI slop can be commercially successful.
The uncharitable reading of the success of trope heavy books is that they are mere content. Mass produced words for people who don’t want to be challenged or think too much or, to be less of an asshole about the whole thing, who are seeking out certain kinds of books for the comfort of familiarity. Since these books are so similar and even formulaic, the reasoning goes, imitative AI can produce them at a quality level necessary to sell faster than any human author can. Voila — profit without having to pay any irritating artists. Except I don’t think it works that way.
Amazon has put in place rules meant to limit the amount of AI slop that shows on its Kindle Unlimited and self-publishing platforms. Kindle Unlimited thrives on tropey books. If they are trying to cut out the AI slop, that very strongly suggests that such slope does not, in fact, make them money. And the only reason that would be the case is if readers want books written by humans, whether they have conscious understanding of that preference or not. Because even the tropeiest of books written by a person still has something at least somewhat unique to add to the world.
There is nothing wrong with tropes. They can mean that plots and characters can seem similar or repetitive, but they can also allow readers and writers a common language upon which stories can be built. That can allow the readers and authors to engage in discussion about the tropes or merely save the words they would have used to explain the world and story and use them for other goals. As with all artistic expression, the execution matters, even when the scaffolding is familiar. Every writer, I think, adds something of themselves to the work, and other people pick up on those bits of uniqueness and respond to them.
Now, I may be completely wrong. I am a failed writer, after all. And the book I am working on now is a political thriller — one that pretty much follows the tropes of the genre. What makes it interesting, I hope, is my voice, my sense of humor, and the themes and real-world injustice driving the plot (I will discuss this a bit more in the next section). Execution, in other words. To a certain extent, only I can write this specific version of these tropes, and as such, the book will be more than just the collection of common tropes. It might not be good (note the “failed writer’s journey” on the door), but it will be something only I could produce.
And that is what makes books, even the most formulaic and trope heavy, worth reading.
Weekly Word Count
9200.
Yeah, a pretty good week for me. All of the words were in the new thriller I mentioned. Sometimes, when I get good characters defined and a good outline, the writing comes easy. I know where I am going, and I understand the characters who are coming with me and it all just flows. I am not stopping to figure out how to advance the plot or understand the characters’ motivations and so I can focus on the words.
The book, as mentioned, is a political thriller. It’s actually under development for a small press (no, I have not sold anything yet. Still a failure. They have to like to final product before we get to that point.) The current pitch is:
"WHO IS SARAH SMITH? When an elder millennial programmer finally gets her big career break as the only woman working on a woman's health app, she discovers the company is selling user's menstrual data to law enforcement in anti-abortion states. They warn her that if she whistleblows, they will fire and doxx her. She has to choose between her own safety and that of all women living in red states. A darkly funny, high-tech thriller in the vein of 'The Future' and 'We Are Watching, Eliza Bright.'"
So, yeah — gonna be pretty tropey. But I hope the subject matter, my voice, and what I can bring to the story with my life experiences, especially in tech, make the book human enough to be worth reading. It won’t be the tropes that sell the novel — it will whether or not I tell a story humans can identify with and love. Well, I’ll settle for like. No need to be greedy ….
Have a great weekend, everyone.
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