Being original vs stealing everything

[Hex]

Let me begin by quoting TS Eliot (things will go rapidly downhill after this): 'immature poets imitate; mature poets steal'.

I've been worrying about that quotation for a while. And also thinking about the way everyone encourages beginner writers to read lots and widely. I'm all for it -- I do read lots, and fairly widely -- but I'm still wondering about the reasons.

So I know that if I read tonnes I'm more likely to know where a storyline has already been used/ is completely cliched, but what about the other direction -- what if what I read doesn't just help me avoid things, but also influences me to um borrow them?

I've been spending a lot of time on my new wip recently (30,000 words so far. Yey!) and it has occured to me that bits of it -- many bits of it -- are, well, borrowed/ stolen/ [insert synonym of choice] from other books.

So: I have a conversation influenced (stolen from) Pride and Prejudice, a plot element borrowed from Persuasion, a name stolen (unconsciously, in fact, but it kept annoying me so I looked it up) from Jane Eyre, a section in an environment heavily influenced by Hexwood/ The End of Mr Y and rather less so by The Matrix. A romantic hero borrowing from White Cat/ City of Souls/ Tithe.

I'm going on rather, so I'll stop listing influences. There are many other stolen things I can see in this wip, and I'm sure before it's finished there will be more.

My question really is -- is this pathetic stealing or is it writing within, and referencing, a cultural framework? Is it OK to do it? I know JK Rowling got shouted at rather for nicking things (although she also made tonnes of money and got really famous, so every cloud has a silver lining). Isn't that what everyone does? or can some people be really truly totally original?

What do you do?

 

[Mouse]

There's nothing new under the sun.

Don't worry about it, as long as you're not stealing stealing and directly copying stuff, it's perfectly okay to be influenced by things.

All my early works are pretty much re-writings of Brian Jacques' Redwall books. But I didn't like the animal racism (rats = evil, mice = good) so I had a mix. Clever eh? (Oh, and instead of an abbey, they all lived in a mountain.)

 

[Phoenixthewriter]

Ever had an idea that you thought was all your own... then turn around and read a book that has four of the six original ideas right there on the page that you thought you'd created from thin air?

It's a sobering feeling. It also makes me want to stop reading that particular book lol.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Oh, I'm afraid I'm very guilty of this, and I don't think there's many who aren't. I think providing you're using it to influence rather than unashamably nicking something it's fine.

In fact, a nod in the direction of your influences is something a reader might quite like from time to time; I know I put them in sometimes.

Sadly it also depends where your influences lie; I have a mix of Emily Bronte - I do like a nice byronic hero - mixed with a bit of Blake's 7, 'cos it was my earliest sci fi exposure (they have a lot to apologise for ) and a few more even more obscure ones.

When you think of it like that, the mix of influences might actually make it original; no one else is going to have the same mix as you.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I think it depends on each instance. If you have a medieval tale about Loke Skewalker who goes to rescue rescue Princess Loia from the Dark Knight, Sir Dorsh Vayner, you may be in trouble. However, if you have a plucky farmboy that goes on an adventure to rediscover magic, you'd be ok (if a little trite).

Sometimes the idea itself can be ruined, though, and while not really any knid of plagiarism or theft, if it feels that way to you then you may as well stop what you're doing, because the magic will have faded. I remember how disappointed I was when I read the last few Dark Tower books by Sai King. Not in the books, but in an aspect of them. Here there be spoilers.




Spoilers (Highlight text to read)


I had been toying with the idea of writer as god for long time, and then when I read Dark Tower I was annoyed that Sai King had done exactly that, working it in very well. On the other hand, I was also pretty chuffed that the two of us had shared an idea.


End Spoilers

While not technically any kind of plagiarism or theft, if I did something with that same premise, albeit a completely different story using it in a completely different way, I still wouldn't feel happy about it. I just look at each instance on its own merits (or otherwise).

 

[The Judge]

I think there is a difference between being influenced by something --and whether we realise it or not, we are all influenced by everything with which we come into contact -- and ripping off someone else's work, though sometimes the line between them and "homage" might get a little fuzzy.

If you are taking specific scenes/scenarios and simply altering the names of the participants and updating the dialogue a little, then that is stealing. If you are writing a story about a woman who was forced to give up her penniless boyfriend because of her family's disapproval, only for said boyfriend to become fabulously wealthy and come looking for a wife among her friends -- well, yes, that story's been done before but it's how it's done that is important.

These elements which you think you have stolen, are they carbon copies? Is the milieu exactly the same, are the things they do and say all but identical? If yes, then I think you have a problem. Not necessarily a legal problem (though never underestimate that) but a credibility problem -- if an agent thinks "Rip off" when he reads the book, you won't get very far.** But if not, if you have merely taken generalities of locale and relationshipes and used them to build something that is different and unique to you, then that is fine.

If you're worried about it, then my advice would be to alter the things you think you've taken, and work from the ground up -- examine why the environment is as it is, and whether it should be different; examine whether her reaction to his proposal is actually the one she would give, or indeed whether he would make such a proposal in the first place. If you are true to your characters, the stealing issue is less likely to be a concern.


** though thinking about it, that didn't appear to worry the agents/publishers of all the Twilight clones which suddenly appeared (though having read none of them, I don't know how clonish they were in fact).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

You are going to be influenced by what you read. You are going to take parts of what you read (or, how you react against what you read) into everything you write. You can't help it. It's entered into your subconscious mind, and it's going to come out in your stories. One hopes it will undergo some sort of sea change while it is there. (Though not grow barnacles.)

Story element go into the melting pot of literature (Tolkien addressed this in his essay "On Fairy Stories"). Certain ideas, themes, situations resonate for readers. It wouldn't make sense to ignore them entirely in your quest for originality. I read several books by Stephen Palmer in October to prepare for the interview (subtle suggestion here that everyone reading this seek out the interview) and the stories are so original that they make the New Weird look antiquated. And yet, at the core of these stories, there are basic human values, hopes, fears, needs, etc. The stories (which are challenging as they are) would be unreadable without them, just as all stories would be unreadable without them. Not only that, they would probably be unwritable.

The reason why you must read widely and take your inspiration from a number of sources is because if you don't, you will be overly influenced by the few books you have read. That's unavoidable, too, if you don't feed your imagination with a healthy and varied diet.

(The reason some people have a problem with the way Rowling borrows, is that other people present her books as somehow groundbreaking, a work of pure genius so original in its conception and execution that nothing else approaches it for brilliance. And because Rowling does not admit to any of the influences she has obviously drawn on, and thereby indirectly encourages this viewpoint. If, in interviews, she listed a string of writers who have influenced her, no one would care that the books aren't original. She does not, so other people have to mention the obvious similarities to other books for her. Her books are not original, but she has a genius for writing page-turners. If she had the humility to admit this, if she would step down from her pedestal, others would not feel the need to knock her off of it.)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I pinch ideas from all over the place - sometimes it is deliberate, sometimes I recognise it after the fact and other times I am totally innocent.

My planet being at the heart of the universe and people turning into birds comes from He-Man. I have a race of ogres who are based on Jo March and Papa Bhaer from Little Women etc

 

[Dozmonic]

An idea is not a story. Repeat that mantra a million times over and a million times again. An idea is not a story.

The story is the resolution of conflicts and discovery that someone makes during a book. The ideas play their role, but they are not the story. The story is always able to be boiled down to fundamentals and those fundamentals sit right across the vast majority of stories out there that, ultimately, copy each other because it's the stories that we as humans enjoy.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Cultural influences are hard to avoid, but there are also archetypal figures and themes, and basic plot settings. If you read something and a part inspires, there's nothing wrong with that.

But details in your own work you can relate to others I think needs to feel like inspiration other than direct theft. Otherwise it's going to be hard to feel you are genuinely involved in the creative process essential to be a writer or artist of any kind, IMO.

 

[Varangian]

Hex,

I'm not sure Eliot meant to literally steal work. My interpretation of that quote is, for instance, an immature poet sits on a park bench and can't appreciate what is taking place around him. The sights, the smells, the fresh air, the gentle warmth of the sun on skin, the loving embrace of a couple as they look out over the water. But the immature poet knows this is important, so he simply imitates it.

The mature poet can sit on the same park bench and feel the world around him. He can appreciate the scene in which he finds himself and more than that, it inspires him. So he can simply take that inspiration and let it works its way out onto the paper in front of him. He hasn't stolen from another writer, he's stolen from the scene in which he found himself (the park bench).

I may have completely missed the mark, but that's my interpretation of that quote.

I always maintain that if you stick with a topic that you feel very passionate about, and care about, you can't go wrong.

David Gemmell, for instance, was very knowledgable on British history, the original Brittish tribes and so on. In fact one of the tribes in his books are called the Rigante, which in my view are based directly upon the Brigante (and thanks to Roman propoganda is actually where we get the word Brigand from, but that's another story).

So when you read Gemmell's work you can feel that he cares deeply for the Brigante and that really comes through when you read about the Rigante. It also means that his characters are 3 dimensional men and women (mature 'poet) and not puppets (immature 'poet').

Just my take on it.

 

[Glen]

...a medieval tale about Loke Skewalker who goes to rescue rescue Princess Loia from the Dark Knight, Sir Dorsh Vayner...

I suppose I'll have to throw that story in the bin then. :0(

I agree with many of the replies - you almost cannot help re-using ideas, or situations, or concepts. Or even types of story - there's that Joseph Campbell idea of heroic myth and the phases/roles in it (ahem, I must read it one day, and then I'd be able to talk much more authoritatively about it). But the main thing is what you do with the idea. What do you do to make it yours.

I'm a very big fan of Barry N Malzberg. I may be wrong, but my reading of his stories is that the idea, the concept, the story itself is secondary to getting into the brain of the character. It seems to me he just chose random sci-fi themes - what will this one be about, oh, maybe, people being shrunk a la Fantastic Voyage - and then wrote about what that would do to your head. That was his unique take, and so for me it was ok.

 

[hopewrites]

- there's that Joseph Campbell idea of heroic myth and the phases/roles in it (ahem, I must read it one day, and then I'd be able to talk much more authoritatively about it).

Hero With 1000 Faces. I loved it, helped with more then just my writing.

 

[Hex]

SO how about if you have a scene where the protagonist is -- I don't know -- climbing a mountain, the fresh moutain air making her cheeks all pink, and someone passing her on their way down says to his friend how pretty she is.

And this causes a man in her party who she used to really like (and still does, secretly) to look at her again and appreciate that actually she is quite attractive...

Lifted pretty directly from the scene in Persuasion, but not within the context of the overall story -- if I read this I would recognise where it came from, or at least that it was similar, but I don't know if it would bother me. Would it be stealing or borrowing or being influenced?

Varangian -- thank you for your take on the Eliot quotation. I'm afraid I hadn't thought about it very deeply (but now I will).

 

[chrispenycate]

Plagiary is the sincerest form of flattery?

I must admit, that's a bit how I feel about fan fiction.

But in most art forms, if you steal from enough different sources you will come through as original (not necessarily good, but that's another discussion).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Hex, I've read Persuasion at least five times, seen the movie at least five times, and I would never have associated the scene in your book with Persuasion until you mentioned it.

 

[The Judge]

Indeed. Perhaps because in Persuasion no one speaks of Anne's beauty, we only have Mr Elliot looking at her in admiring fashion when she's walking out in the fine wind, and Wentworth turning round -- which I've always seen as evidence of his unconscious jealousy despite how Anne herself interprets the look. My first thought on reading Hex's account of her scene was a cobbling of something out of Pride and Prejudice (there's not an identical scene but there's a flavour of it, somehow) but I don't know I'd have picked up even that when reading the scene in in situ.

If it's worrying you, Hex, take out the bit with her cheeks being all pink from exertion and the fresh air, ie make it that she was pretty anyway, and he's just not seen it until someone else mentions it -- that's a credible thing on its own.

 

[Hex]

Ahh have you seen the wonderful BBC one? I love that film. I could watch it over and over again without ever needing to see anything else.

I love Persuasion, it's my favourite Austen (but so is Pride and Prejudice). Anyway -- I hope it's OK to do this here rather than critiques but here's a real example of what I meant (do forgive any hideous errors etc., it's a draft).

Man and woman having a significant cup of coffee have the following conversation:

"Did you ask me here to warn me about Richard?"

"No," he said with a grimace. "I wanted to be fair."

"Well you have been." I felt brave with irritation. "Now ask me something normal."

He glanced at me. "Normal?"

"Yes," I said. "If this coffee is genuine," I waved the cup at him, "ask me about my job. I'll tell you it's gruesome. Boring and pointless and badly paid. And the office coffee is disgusting."

He laughed, drank from his cup, his eyes on me.

"Or you could ask about my family," I said, starting to smile. "My mum went completely insane when my dad ran off with the postman."

"No sisters or brothers?" he asked, straight-faced.

"None," I said. "And that was an excellent question. Very normal. You could follow it up by asking me about pets."

He took my coffee, put both cups on the river wall. "I don't care about your pets."

"You should. I had a very interesting hamster," I said, watching his face.


Can you tell what it is yet? I felt as if I'd lifted that from Pride and Prejudice (the bit at the dance where Elizabeth is telling Mr Darcy he should make small talk). Not word for word, obviously, but the idea of the conversation. Is it just me?

ps: re JK Rowling I meant to say before that I was reading The Worst Witch the other day and was surprised by the number of, shall we say, similar ideas. What JK Rowling did with them was much more exciting and extended, but I certainly noticed a common theme.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I suspect the basic story in Persuasion has been covered so many times in so many ways; it's the image you're taking and the feeling as opposed to rewriting the story, and I think that's fine. We all have characters we like in fiction/movies etc. and these come into our subconscious, and then come out in our stories. And no, I didn't recognise it as Persuasion either.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

No obvious resemblance to P & P in my mind. Darcy was reluctant to talk, and this guy seems very cooperative. Besides, the emphasis her on "normal" questions suggests that something "abnormal" has been going on, that they might discuss, but she doesn't want to. Darcy and Elizabeth are just at a dance, and the only thing that is at all disturbing is the behavior of the younger Bennett sisters.