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Hey guys, it's me Julie.
Today's topic is going to be about originality in writing and the importance of having your own ideas.
I've found that sometimes when I will criticize a book for being unoriginal, that people will defend those books
by saying "there are no new ideas! There's nothing new under the sun!"
Just to defend trite rehashings and rip-offs.
It's true in some sense that there are only a few established story types,
there are a finite number of types of stories that can be told.
But that does not mean that we can just rip off an element of a story, a character, a setting,
and replant that into our stories just because there are "no new ideas."
That does not mean that, say, in a fantasy story, Middle-Earth has suddenly become a public domain playground
that we can just write off as an homage to Tolkien; it's just not the way things work.
Even established story types like "the Hero's Journey" can be reinvented and retold in new ways.
And if you're going to retell something that's as established as the Hero's Journey,
you need a reason to tell that story again.
So why is it so important anyway to be original?
Well first off, if you're gonna take pieces and parts from other people's stories
and you're just gonna transplant them into your story, you can see some lethal curdling from that.
It's going to look grafted. And if you don't spin these things through your own concept and voice,
people are going to be able to tell, it will show in your story that these are not yours.
It's going to be very very obvious that you are not the master of this material.
So it's gonna get in the way of your storytelling if you don't do this very organically.
There are ways to take inspiration from existing stories, but when you actually grab them in whole
and put them into your story, what's gonna happen is it's gonna look like an old quilt,
that you tore apart other people's stories and you stitched them together,
and what's going to happen when other people read this, is they're gonna see those stitches.
If you don't know what you're doing, that's what's gonna happen.
You're gonna have this pieces-and-parts blanket instead of a story
that grew organically from what you invented and from your own ideas.
Good authors don't copy. They have influences.
If for some reason you're kind of nervous about sailing on your own idea and trying to build something from scratch,
you may try fanfiction first; that is sort of a comfortable place for some new writers to start,
and that way you don't have this pressure to be totally original, and you can practice your writing skills.
There is nothing wrong with that, but you can't publish it,
so you're gonna have to use that as kind of your training ground.
Now it may seem sorta peculiar for an author like me to suggest that originality is so important,
because after all, I did write something that is shamelessly derivative.
I have a novel series that is a Sleeping Beauty fairy tale retelling.
But does that mean that I'm an unoriginal author because I chose to retell a story that's been told so many times?
Well, no, not necessarily. I've never had anybody read my story and say, "You know, this is just a big rip-off."
You can read it and you can see that I'm not retelling it in the same way that anybody else has retold it.
I've incorporated elements of mythology, I have entirely new characters,
and it's really not just an excuse to rehash something that already exists.
I'm bringing something new when I tell this story.
And that is what people need to do if they're really very heavily influenced by one of the greats in the writing world.
They can't just take in whole a character, a setting, an element of say a magic system or something.
Because as I've already said, readers can tell that this hasn't grown organically from what you invented
in your setting and your characters and your history.
They can see that you pretty much just picked it up and dropped it into yours,
and used it as a shortcut. And that is going to cause your stuff to read sort of stale,
sort of boring, and it doesn't have a reason to be written again.
So what I would suggest for authors who want to incorporate things that inspire them
from other people's literature, take a look at what you love about this character,
about this plot element, about this setting. And take it and LOOK at it,
and say, "How can I make this mine? What can I do to go back to the root of what makes me love this?"
And instead of stealing what the author built from that root, build your own from the same root,
and then it should have the same flavor.
It's gonna take work, but honestly if you're gonna be an author, you're looking at a lot of work!
So there are no real shortcuts. You can't just grab something and make it yours
without really spinning it through your voice, through your thoughts, through an invention process.
So say you love someone else's character and you wanna make a character that other people can love
in the same way that you love that character. You're just gonna have to look at the root
of why you love this character. And say maybe the character is one of those rebel types
and always goes against what society tells them, about what their family tells them.
And look at those, and say, "Well how can I have a character that does the same thing,
is appealing in the same ways?" but don't actually steal what they do to rebel,
don't steal how their family actually reacts to them and put it into your story.
And you can really have the same connection experience with your audience that you have
with the characters that you like if you'll just take it and make it yours.
I really can't give you an easy solution to any of this stuff because writing is hard.
And it's ineffable sometimes, it's a type of art, so nobody can tell you how to do it
or else you'll just be copying them. So, all I can really say is if you don't feel comfortable
inventing everything right now, you can start with practice, you can start with somebody else's characters,
or somebody else's setting, and work on that, get comfortable with your voice,
get comfortable with inventing independent plot lines,
and then eventually you will be comfortable enough to build your own from the ground up.
And live in it, work in it, and really have something original of value to share with the world.
But until then, you shouldn't be incorporating other people's stuff like straight out
as building blocks and trying to weave them together, because we can tell, we can see it,
and it won't really be yours.