Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,617
edits
(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.StratemeyerSyndicate 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.StratemeyerSyndicate, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
mNo edit summary |
||
(4 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{
The
Edward Stratemeyer, the head of the syndicate, took a rather direct role in the creation of many of his books, which may be rather surprising considering how basic they are. He invented the primary characters of his stories by listing little more than a name and a basic description, and letting the ghostwriters fill in the personality blanks to flesh them out. He created rigid plots, but left enough blanks in the details to be filled out by a creative writer. Stratemeyer's books were super formulaic, and the man himself tightly controlled the formula.
Virtually all of the book series were about teens going on adventures or solving mysteries, with slight variations on the concept. As such, the books contained very similar themes and portrayals. Characters had platonic love lives, if any at all (rather humorously, this led to the [[Alternate Character Interpretation]] that the [[Hardy Boys]] were gay, due to their lack of interest in their nominal girlfriends, preference for male friends, and one brother's close friendship with a boy who disliked girls). Suspense was used to heighten tension, but violence was
Stratemeyer was a marketing genius if nothing else. He noticed the changing times and applied them to his new book series. When the adventures of undersea diver Dave Fearless were losing popularity, Stratemeyer created the Hardy Boys to take their place, with a greater emphasis on dialog and character. When the women's lib movement started, [[Nancy Drew]] came into existence, and became hugely popular. The addition of Jewish and Italian characters to ''The Hardy Boys'' was a response to America's growing tolerance for diversity at the time. Notably, the characters' only real personality traits in Stratemeyer's original description was that they happened to be Jewish and Italian; the ghostwriter had to give them actual personalities.
* ''The Rover Boys''
* ''[[The Bobbsey Twins]]''
Line 17:
* ''The Dana Girls''
* ''[[Trixie Belden]]''
----
* [[Adults Are Useless]]: Done intentionally by the most prolific ghostwriter, Leslie McFarlane, who believed that kids should be exposed to corrupt and incompetent authority figures in fiction, so that readers didn't become too reliant on them in real life.
* [[Bound and Gagged]]: Often in lieu of "real" violence.
Line 30 ⟶ 31:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:
|