Anywho, one of the most talked about topics in fiction is originality. You see it not only in conversations about books, but conversations about movies, television, and every other story telling medium, as well. Many people lament the loss of "originality" in film in particular. One of the most common criticisms of James Cameron's Avatar, for instance, is that it was just like Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves, but with blue-skinned aliens instead of Native Americans.
All the metaphors for Native Americans, without the need to hire any Native American actors!
On the other hand, one of the most popular quotes about creativity is "good artists copy; great artists steal", a line that is made even better by the fact that no one is sure who to attribute it to (most people say either Pablo Picasso or TS Elliot, but no one is sure). In fact, many people say originality doesn't exist. So what's the deal? How can we mourn the loss of originality, but also embrace this loss and make clever little witticisms about it? What is "originality" in creative works, and fiction in particular, anyway?
Before we tackle the tricky subject of borrowing from other works, let's talk about the base concept of originality first. There is a lot to unpack here.
It's important to realize that even if you aren't drawing explicitly from fiction or any other type of creative work in your writing, there are certain tropes- that is, story telling devices- that show up in stories you create, and these tropes have all shown up before. It's not a bad thing, as there are only so many different types of characters, stories, and themes you can create. I've seen so many starting writers try too hard to be innovative and in the process they either (1)never end up writing anything because that perfect, mind-blowing, game-changing story never comes or (2)create a jumbled mess that is so focused on being different it forgets to add quality story telling.
Humans have been telling stories for a long, long time. Stories about love, hatred, war, peace, oppression, liberation, courage, cowardice, acceptance- every theme you could ever want. Stoic characters, loud characters, funny characters, sad characters, brave characters, honest characters, deceitful characters, optimistic characters, cynical characters and more, as well as every permutation of these traits you can think of. There are too many situations to even name that can happen in these stories- that's why there is an entire online encyclopedia dedicated to these tropes.
Don't click that link if you were hoping to be productive any time in the next couple hours.
This is what people mean when they say you can't be completely original. Even if everything you write is drawn from a combination of your noggin, your life experiences, and the life experiences of other people in your life, there is almost certainly a number of tropes that fit us and our experiences. Not in the minute details, but in what they boil down to.
Speaking of "not in the minute details, but in what they boil down to", let's move on to the topic of drawing inspiration from other creative works. Because there are a lot of examples of great works that are influenced by other works, and those influential works themselves having been influenced by other works.
Let's start with my favorite filmmaker, whom I've written about before: Akira Kurosawa. Aside from being one of the best filmmakers of all time, he is also one of the most influential. The Hidden Fortress inspired the original Star Wars trilogy; Yojimbo inspired A Fistful of Dollars; Seven Samurai has influenced so many films, from The Maginificent Seven to A Bug's Life, that it's hard to keep track.
Just some little movie trilogy, you may have heard of it.
And yet, even being one of the most talented, innovative, and influential directors ever, Kurosawa had his own influences as well. The linked article talks about the influences on his work as a filmmaker; in addition to his own life experiences, one of the biggest influences on Kurosawa was Russian literature, especially Dostoyevsky and [Maxim] Gorky. My favorite movie of all time, Kurosawa's Red Beard, is based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto, and also draws from a Dostoyevsky novel for one of the movie's subplots. So to say he came up with the ideas for his brilliant films by himself would be, at best, disingenuous.
Think of stories as a chain reaction of different influences coming together. Every story is a mixture of the author's life experiences, the life experiences of people they know or know of, ideas they've studied, fictional works they've seen and enjoyed, other creative works they've experienced and enjoyed (I once wrote a short story inspired by a painting I saw), and other such sources that come together into whatever work that person creates. Originality, if such a thing exists, comes in the way you synthesize those pieces together, not in pretending that whatever you make has never been influenced by anything else and is completely unlike everything before it.
And that's where the "not in the minute details, but in what they boil down to" idea comes back into play. Every story, boiled down to its bare elements, is very basic. Fight Club, a book and movie I was just talking about with my good friend Morgan, is one of my favorite stories out there. Many people, myself included, find it very creative and original. Yet, at it's very core, Fight Club is about a person overcoming a certain part of himself. In that sense, Fight Club isn't much different than most other fiction.
Can Tyler Durden overcome himself... by working up the courage to ask Marla to the prom?!
Defining what is or isn't plagiarism is a little bit tricky, particularly because the line can be ambiguous. But this is where the "minute details" come in. Two stories might share similar characters, themes, and overall stories, but how similar are their character's arcs, the way they explore their themes, and the specific plot points they go through? Earlier I mentioned Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars. Well, I have have been a bit nice in saying A Fistful of Dollars was "influenced" by Yojimbo, because the movie actually seems to be plagiarized from Kurosawa's film. Scene by scene, the movies are incredibly similar. So similar, in fact, that Kurosawa brought a lawsuit against Director Sergio Leone and won.
Interestingly, Leone's defense was that Yojimbo wasn't a completely original work, either. And he certainly had a point. Kurosawa himself stated that the 1942 movie The Glass Key was a major influence for the film. The difference here is that Kurosawa took a lot of tropes/story elements from The Glass Key and made them his own, while Leone took entire scenes from Yojimbo without giving proper credit.
Originality in fiction, to me, comes from the ability to synthesize an original story from existing parts. Creating fiction is sorta like the act of creating life: you're not doing anything new, but you're creating something unique (also, you're naked, sweaty, and possibly drunk... that's how most other authors also write, right?). So if you're a writer of any sort, don't feel the need to focus on creating fiction that is unlike any other. Focus, instead, on creating something worth reading or watching.
