How do I do what she did? Did she just get lucky?

>>8620308
You need both luck and a good idea

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In a way, she updated The Chronicles of Narnia for her present day audience: school age escapism.

Find a similar work that is a generation or three out of date and refresh it. Just don't try to reach the same market segment yet; the time isn't ripe like it was for her.

>>8620312
I think more than a good idea you need to be fundamentally entertaining. Your stories need to have that page turner feeling where there is little to no wasted space. Near perfect tempo in the interesting parts that keep the reader constantly stimulated. And to do that you have to predict what your readership will find interesting to a pretty impressive degree.

Also tapping into the aesthetic spirit of the times would be cool. There is something near universally comfy about Hogwarts, and Rowling knew and harvested that. The masses were secretly hungry for that particularly brand light fantasy and, again, Rowling was one of the first to serve something up.

>>8620312
and persistence. rowling was rejected a truckload of times before someone took a chance on her.
too may writers get one rejection letter, have a hissy fit and give up

>>8620394
>>8620419
You are all forgetting the industry has vastly changed since Rowling, she would most definitely NOT get published today. The only way to do it is through self publishing now. Basically a work that stands out too much from the crowd is considered dangerous.

>>8620308

she filled a niche moments before it became stagnant. Her books came before the internet took over, that meant that by the time that mass-communication was available in every house-hold she had already developed a foothold in her industry. This gave her the worldwide boost in marketing.

I honestly believe that if she didn't get popular at the turn of the century that she would be stuck in North American markets only.

>>8620419
1 would be silly but after the 10th consecutive rejection or so for one thing it starts feeling a tad pointless. Though she had an agent and was still getting rejected. Just getting signed on by one in the first place is a huge pain in the ass.

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>>8620438
>The only way to do it is through self publishing now.
What did you meme by this?

>>8620419
True, but her story has something that makes kids magnetically drawn to it. A writer could go fifty stories without hitting that. Part of it is her female privilege. Most of it is pure luck. Why can't you all admit its only luck? She lucked upon the exact right story.

>>8620308
she got real lucky. her books are trash but they came out at the right time, just when teens were about to become young manchildren. you can tell that she got lucky because everything she has written after the harry potter books has only served to destroy her legacy with the public and her fans. even hardcore harry potheads disregard the cursed child as pure fan fiction because the characters do and say things that are totally out of character.

She's good, tidy. No more than that. Her post Potter novels give veracity to that.

I don't know if I'd call the Potter phenomenon "luck" exactly, more serendipitous.

>>8620308
Has nothing to do with luck and mostly to do with having the right looks and personality to get attention and form the right connections. She fulfilled a niche, too, but that part is extra.

>>8620308
You can't. She took the best idea and the rest are not as good

You can try anyways. It has to be a monomyth starring a young white male with no personality or agency

>>8620917
>the right looks and personality to get attention and form the right connections
Are you hinting at her sucking and fucking her way to publication?

>>8620372

Do what this anon says. Rewrite Little Women or Huckleberry Finn.

>>8621079
This shit is all political. All that early stage of locking down an agent, taking editors, publishers, etc. One wrong move and you're gone. JK comes off like a sweet little mom, someone all the dykes that work in publishing would have coffee with and talk about their sons. They expect their client to bring out some shit which sells 5000 copies and they move on to the next one, no harm no foul. As long as you give them facebook likes and retweet their SJW articles. It's a scam. If you have the wrong look or background, and for instance, are a filthy fat neckbeard named burt rodriguez that emails them cryptic shit, it doesn't matter what book you came out with if you give them the yuks. The first thing you learn in the business of the arts is the work is the least important part. That JK managed to smuggle something so popular through the system is a fluke that they have since tried as hard as they can not to repeat. Again they don't want the best seller, they want the coffee mate and re-tweets.

>>8620308
Luck is the residue of design.

>>8620308
She used her milf powers

>>8621150
I basically agree with you, but wasn't her first agent, the guy who eventually sold Harry Potter to Bloomsbury, a 70-something year old man?

>>8620438
unfortunately your first point is a bit moot because HP and its films changed the publishing industry in a drastic way.

>>8621079
Basically what this guy said >>8621150 it's political, not necessarily sex related.

A clever publisher knows that big budget marketing means nothing if the author does not look or act representational of the demographic being targeted at. If you have the looks and you can pull off the right act during interviews, photo shoots, etc., that's all you need... that's really all that's needed to make shit sell too. Who the hell knows how many bestsellers were even written by their "authors" and actually by ghost writers.

>>8621150
So how many agents have rejected you so far

>>8621150

>>8621150
>sweet little mom
More like sexy mom.

Come on, "sweet" doesn't really sell. She looks like a widow you'd want (or at least, all the guys in the writing industry want) to romance the fuck out of. The women that like her secretly wish to be like that, they want to be modest and sexy and have a successful book series under their belt because in their minds it increases the sex appeal with down to earth, romantic writerly dudes, so they support her and her books out of instinct, because women are simple like that.

I don't know why /lit/ keeps posting about her.
I know that it was my dream as a kid to have a YA book loved by all the kids, have big budget hollywood movies made, and make all of the money.
It's still my dream.
I think the point is though, that most writers have toiled in silence and despair and ended up poor and miserable before finally dying. Maybe I'm so drawn to her, Stephen King, and the like because they seem like they are enjoying life, and I'm not.
What's it like for you guys?

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>>8620308
She got lucky. Her rightful place is around someone's dick. I bet a ballgag would look good on her.

>>8620656
>they came out at the right time, just when teens were about to become young manchildren
Yeh, it's not like teens turning into adults is a neverending process or anything. She published at that crucial point when 13 year olds existed.

>>8624321
He means culturally at that point in time, not literally.

>>8623582
i don't think you understand the implications "sweet" starts carrying when you get older than 15

>>8620308
If you don't already know, you don't have the talent to do what she did.

>>8620372
Nonsense. Absolutely nothing alike. Not alike in structure, not alike in writing style, the categorization you've given is ludicrously vague - why are you even on this board?.

>>8623729
>seven books
>lucky

You, my friend, are an idiot.

>>8623729
JESUS CHRIST THAT PIC

>>8623652
Yep. No one can do what she did. It cant be forced. It is creating a book that captures readers imagination and makes it cool to read. We will not see anything like HP again in our lifetimes. It surpasses even LOTR as the 20th centurys most important fantasy.

>>8624977
>It surpasses even LOTR as the 20th centurys most important fantasy.
what doesn't though

Tolkien's educated enough for his writing to automatically be approached as actual literature, yet it's SO FUCKING BAD in every way imaginable that it actually becomes a curse that it can't just be treated as unlasting scribblings of an uneducated worker (and still secure some sort of place in history in this pomo age via the meme treatment)

>>8625195
complete nonsense

>>8623729
Who is she and do you have more?

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>>8625822
Anzu. And yes I do.

>>8625195
Keep reading, Tolkien got better over the years. Return of the King is actually good.

>>8620308
Damn, is her necklace made of flumps?

>>8625827
Very cute, too bad about the anorexia.
Post more~

>>8620308
You're probably too self-aware to do it. I doubt she filled her time and her head with memes about 'genre fiction' and 'YA' and the pleb-patrician dichotomy. She just wanted to write a fun story and wrote it.

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>>8625841
She's bulimic actually, but eh, same thing

the amount of mascara that she uses...

>>8625856
Ah too bad, she could've been a goddess

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>>8625864
I dunno, there's something hot about the fact that she's probably unattractive af IRL and needs to rely on internet autists to maintain her fragile ego.

>>8625873
Hot is not the word i would use, but sure.

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>>8621150
GRRM is a fat neckbeard though, and he's almost as successful

>>8620465
This image makes me depressed

1. Because I've always thought (hoped) that people are capable of relatively good grammar but just don't take the time in day to day stuff

2. I still will never even have retards like these mourning for me when I die. Nobody will care

>>8624977
>>8625195
LMAO. No it doesn't.

Tolkien almost single-handedly birthed the modern fantasy genre.

Not to mention, the complexity of his work is far, FAR beyond ANYTHING in Rowling's slop.

She's one small step above Stephanie Meyer, Christopher Paolini, or any of the other mediocre child/teen novelists out there, and many, MANY flights of steps below Tolkien.

This board is so overrun by you pseuds.

>>8626550
>almost single-handedly
who was the big guy that got him preggers?

>>8620308
Aren't her works comparable to LNs in content?

>>8626626
Do you mean, "Who are the others who contributed to the birth of the modern fantasy genre?"

If so, I'd say, predominantly Tennyson and T.H. White - there are probably others I'm forgetting.

>>8624780
>Rowling has said she was a fan of the works of C. S. Lewis as a child, and cites the influence of his Narnia chronicles on her work: "I found myself thinking about the wardrobe route to Narnia when Harry is told he has to hurl himself at a barrier in King's Cross Station – it dissolves and he's on platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and there's the train for Hogwarts."[15]
>notes the similarity between Dudley Dursley, the obnoxious son of Harry's neglectful guardians, and Eustace Scrubb, the spoiled brat who torments the main characters until changed by Aslan

Okay pal.

>>8626445
>he's almost as successful
>almost
Song of Fire & Ice series = 58 million sales
Harry Potter series = 447 million sales

As much as I like the fat bastard, he's nowhere close. His series doesn't have universal appeal.

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>>8626626
> almost single-handedly birthed the modern fantasy genre.
>>8626626
who was the big guy that got him preggers?
George MacDonald is the actual father of the modern fantasy genre.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald
Both Tolkien and C.S.Lewis acknowledged huge debts to him.

>>8626494
It's pretty shamelessly ripped off from that whole Mitchell Henderson (kid who committed suicide allegedly due to losing an ipod) incident that spawned the An Hero meme. Though it's also meant to show how the internet makes a total mockery of everything and how the kinds of people who think facebook memorial pages and the like are a good idea are complete retards.

>>8626831
C.S. Lewis more than Tolkein, but yeah MacDonald is the man.

>>8626831
>>8626871
Had never heard of him before. Thanks.

>>8625885

How about cute?

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>>8626711
>>8626831
wait so does that mean that the modern fantasy genre is part clown part human

>>8628473
hehehe i like you

>>8626550
Tolkein defined epic fantasy and many of the associated features but this is all he did, his influence is purely in the art itself. Those who came after Tolkein imitated aspects of his world and writing.

Rowling has, in her own way, completely shaped the industry itself by blowing the lid off the YA novel craze, ever after there will be people writing as she does to do what she did commercially. To replicate her process and her success, not necessarily her novels themselves.

>>8628522
They're both mediocre hacks t b h.

>>8626796
better than what most of us get paid tho

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>>8625873

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>>8626550
My boy, you have fallen for the bait.

I am rather disappointed, although not unamused.

>>8629876
what elicited this completely offtopic, absolutely reddit-tier autism comment?