Questions about Originality

[Incanus]

This topic has come up from time to time, often as a side issue to some other area of discussion.

The basic premise is: how much do you value originality in your works, or the works of others? Also, how much originality do you try to include in your fiction?

Or, how about considering this question with respect to different aspects of fiction? Do you tend to employ more original ideas when it comes to characters, but use more traditional settings? Does it occur more in plotting, perhaps? Or do you tend to blend things together, creating some brand-new things side by side with known fantasy races, or a more common plot idea?

For myself, I tend toward using more original material, with notable exceptions. My novel(s) take place in my main primary world, which features a lot of originality. I’ve done a few shorter pieces that are set there as well, but many of my shorts take place in a more ‘generic’ fantasy world where there are plenty of previously known concepts and creatures and whatnot.

Is originality a laudable goal? Is it overrated? Is it best used in moderation? Is there such a thing as too much for a single novel or series?

 

[Devor]

I very much believe in originality and the value of a great idea. I also use fairies, orcs, and elves in a quasi-medieval setting. Most of the new races people invent just are remixes of old ideas anyways.

There's an elf and dwarf villain team who appear for a bit in my book, and it's the closest I get to drawing on political talking points. The elf is coded as a right-wing jingoist militia-type, and the dwarf is coded as a left-wing eco-populist terrorist, which gives me the giggles because you'd expect it to be the other way around. We only see them chat for about a scene as they work a job. It's like a prologue for the last act of the book.

You see, an "elf" or a "dwarf" is not the big idea. The "big idea" is that whenever the characters aren't all about sprites and fairies, they devolve a bit into a parody. That goes for a lot of secondary villain characters. The book is about my two main characters fighting each other over the fate of their people, so all these other villains are just incidental. It's implied that elves and dwarves and orcs are part of magic traditions as rich as the fairies one that we explore, but we just don't see it much.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I firmly believe that great ideas are the most important part of a book. The problem is that people see "elf" as the "idea," when the dynamic is the real idea. The elf plays into the story's themes and intentions in a particular way. It offers a reliable lightweight levity in order to highlight the drama.

You see one of the themes of the book is that we laugh at funny things, but that doesn't mean they aren't also sad and important. After we laugh with the elf and dwarf as they banter on the job, we cut to the next scene, where we end up screaming as the consequences of their villainous "job" play out.

 

[skip.knox]

The term is slippery. A reader might not be familiar with whatever you are considering to be original, and so will agree and maybe even remark on how original is the story. OTOH, the reader might incorrectly see some pattern or aspect as being derivative of something else, even though you were utterly unaware of the source. OTOOH, the reader might utterly miss the aspect of originality.

I just use my own spidey-sense. If I'm creating an item or setting or character or scene or whatever, once in a while I will think "oh no, not that way." Otherwise, I don't fret, nor do I aim.

What I do value is grace, skill, depth. There are plenty of books I've enjoyed that were unremarkable on these points. Such books are fine. There are a handful of books, though, that are graceful in their writing, skilled in their construction, and deep in a variety of ways. Such books stick in memory. And a handful of those are so good, I have read them multiple times. Near as I can recall, originality did not enter into it.

 

[Penpilot]

For me, I don't necessarily worry about it too much. I just focus on telling the story I want to tell. If some of that story travels over well trodden paths, then so be it. To me it's not about original ideas, it's about making ideas your own. We've all heard it said there are no original ideas. There are just original executions of the ideas.

I just try to grow my world, my characters, and my story and try to take interesting paths. Everything else is just noise distracting me away from that.

I've been to other places on the interwebzzzz, and I find some writers get locked in to this thought that uniqueness/originality automatically equals good, and if you write something similar to something else, then it's automatically bad. I don't think that leads anyplace useful.

It's impossible to dodge influences and similarities. For me it's better to focus on making things interesting and cool. Because there may be a million stories similar to the one I'm telling, but my story may be the first story of that type someone comes across. So I should write the best version of that type of story that I can. It's not always about who's first.

An unassuming English kid with glasses obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight.

You might think from that description and that picture that I'm talking about Harry Potter, but I"m not. That picture is from a DC comic book The Books of Magic that predates Harry Potter by seven years. It about a kid named Tim Hunter.

People have pointed out the surface similarities between the two stores over the years, but there's no accusations of plagiarism. It's just parallel thought based on similar influences. And the overall end results are different.

 

[Mad Swede]

For me originality is not about the plot or the setting. It's much more about how we combine the elements in our story into a coherent whole. In academia there is an ongoing debate about how many original plots there are in story telling, and also whether you can subdivide these into elements or situations. Last I heard there were said to be 6 or 7 original plots and somewhere between 20 and 30 dramatic situations used in stories. To me that suggests that originality is more about how we develop our characters and plot, in terms of what aspects we look to emphasise and how we combine dramatic situations when we write. For me this then gets combined with whatever underlying message we include in our writing to create an original novel or short story.

 

[Devor]

Last I heard there were said to be 6 or 7 original plots and somewhere between 20 and 30 dramatic situations used in stories.

I've seen the plot list. Man on a boat trying to battle a man-hunting shark is very different than man struggling for ten years to survive on a deserted island in almost every way, except that they make good movies and that they can both draw on the themes of "man vs. Nature." But both movie plots also draw on themes outside of man vs. nature, so even there, saying they have the same basic plot is.... well, at best, it's using plot in a way that's so broad as to be almost meaningless.

I would say it's not a basic plot list so much as a list of "categories of themes derived from conflict."

The way I see it, a plot is a pattern that repeats four times: The plot pushes until the character shifts. The first time it happens the shift is usually a call to action. The second, it's a midpoint. The third, a darkest moment. And the fourth, a resolution. So if I were to define a basic list of plots, it would look at the different pattern those four shifts can take.

For instance, Romance stories follow a tight pattern: Shift one, two characters struggle with being pushed together; shift two, they drop their resistance and grow closer; shift three, they break up; shift four, there's a grand gesture and happily ever after. That's the basic romance plot. But we can change it in a lot of ways. Like, in the first shift they could like each other but be pushed apart, then choose to come together at the midpoint, then still break up and have the grand gesture / HEA. If we define romance by the Happily Ever After, it still counts as one, but that first half of the book will feel pretty different because there's a different first half to the plot.

In my opinion, this is the level where a writer should be when thinking about what they're doing with their plot. What are the four shifts for your plot? If they follow the same pattern, can you at least dress them differently? Or vice a versa; if you're using a medieval Chosen One with swords and sorcery, maybe you can play with one or two of the plot shifts to do something really fresh with it. Maybe instead of "accepting the call to be a Chosen One," your MC interrupts it somehow and somebody becomes the Chosen One who wasn't supposed to. Now we have all the same tropes and trappings, but a significantly different kind of plot. If it's the MC who becomes the Chosen One who wasn't supposed to, the other three acts may be the same plotwise, but you can take the chance to play with the character, like making them a rebel-screwup instead of a farmboy. Or if the MC is the farmboy, then he has to step up without the Chosen One powers (similar remaining plot points but tougher) and/or convince the new guy to step up, which is a very different plot all the way through (the MC is Ishmael, not Ahab). Or, if the MC interrupted the process but is neither the farmboy nor the person who got the powers, we may have an MC on an atonement arc.

Twisting even one of the four plot points gives us a huge opening for doing something new with our plotlines. If you have four plot points to work with, it might be possible to sketch out more variations of the Chosen One plot than there have been Chosen One stories written, even at this abstract level. Just looking at the Chosen One plotline, if you can find just six variations at each plot point, that's 6*6*6*6=1,296 different versions of the plot. And there are way more than 6 things you can do at each point.

All that to say: Originality is out there to be had, if you know how to look for it.

 

[Incanus]

While Skip raises a good point about the term being ‘slippery’, I don’t think that means we can’t have a decent discussion about it. Yes, there are nuances, and different folks with different experiences and reading preferences can shape perspectives.

I wholeheartedly reject the notion Penpilot cited from the internet: originality is always good, a well-trodden path is always bad. That is pretty silly to my mind.

But, of the responses I’ve seen here, I think I tend to agree more with Devor.

For me, one of the biggest attractions of speculative fiction are the original ideas that drive the stories. I’m pretty sure that also puts me in the minority on this question, but that’s all right.

When I read a description of contemporary fiction that says something like, “A divorced mother of three from Pittsburgh takes a trip to New Orleans to rediscover herself,” I have to admit that it fails to spark any interest in my mind. Pass. It may be well written, it may do a good job with the character and story, but I don’t find anything obviously intriguing about it. Maybe it contains good amounts of originality, but the description is too mundane and ordinary for me to ever find out.

On the other hand, when a Star Trek episode opens with some strange anomaly that does something weird and dangerous, and there is no immediate explanation or way to deal with it, I’m hooked.

I agree with the idea that originality often means combining familiar elements in new ways. I think something like The Beatles is a great example of this. They brought a fresh take on music from recent years (from their time) and brought very strong songwriting skills to bear on it. Pretty original result, but it didn’t come wholly out of the blue.

 

[pmmg]

The basic premise is: how much do you value originality in your works, or the works of others?

I am not sure I give any. I dont think works can really help but be both original and not original at the same time. No one writes with my voice, or my characters or plotlines...so my work will always be mine to some degree or another. But wait, you say...your work has swords, and orc like things and Dark Lords... It must be like LOTR. How original can it be? Well...it can still be plenty damn original. ...And it can still not be at the same time.

I think I place little value on this, and on the conversation of it. We spend a lot of effort to walk out from under the shadow of some great work or another, but lost in there is the work we brought to bear ourselves. My story is a good piece of fantasy literature whether it has some similarity to LORT or sword of truth, or Sword of Shannara, or not. Perhaps it is that I have elements that might make it seem derivative, but it still has a whole lot that makes it stand on its own. I will pit if against all those others anytime. None of those stories were the inspiration for my tale, and in truth, none had much role in the creation of it.

If you ask me, I would say my story is most like Samurai Jack, but...its also has parts that are like Star Wars, LOTR, Conan, Elric, Xena and a whole bunch of others. But in another sense...I dont see another tale like mine anywhere. It seems like one that is few and far between to me. I think it will stand on its own.


Also, how much originality do you try to include in your fiction?

I just write the damn thing and the chips fall where they fall. I dont give this a lot of value at all.


Or, how about considering this question with respect to different aspects of fiction. Do you tend to employ more original ideas when it comes to characters, but use more traditional settings?

This is too far into the weeds for me. I just try to write the best story I can, and keep true to the themes and issues that made me want to write it in the first place. I am more than 20 years in, and I still want to write it, so....that's what I will do. My setting is a world I made up for the tale, it is kind of desolate in many ways, and harsh, but the people do okay.

I dont consider originality a key goal of the setting or plot or theme or any of that. I think I might go crazy if I did.

I think, to the degree that my story will have the appearance of originality at all, it is simply that I write to timeless values, which so many seem to want to challenge today. I am mostly counter to those that are counter godly values. Amidst so many trying to tear down, my stories build up, and that will seem unusual. But its not original. If I lived in another time, I be standing next to more like myself, and not less.

Is originality a laudable goal?

I'd say its probably an impossible one.

Is it overrated? Is it best used in moderation?

If you can create the illusion of it, I would go with it and not look back.

Is there such a thing as too much for a single novel or series?

Again...prob not. I am not sure you could ever be truly original, or that such a thing could be achieved. But if you get close to it, it would not be too much. It would probably be just right.

 

[JBCrowson]

I think pretty much every writer has originality as a goal - none of us sets out to rewrite another book or story exactly. The subgenre of alternative interpretations of fairy tales, for example, rewrites the fairy tale, but in a new way / setting / emphasising a different theme, to the original. And I think most of us deliberately chose to write a new book story, so I would argue we do consciously choose to be original from the outset.
We also have prior works we have encountered that influence what we write. In a re-working of the quote (see what I did there) "there are two kinds of writers: those who are aware of their influences and those who are not". So in a partial way, nothing we ever write can be wholly original, or at least not purely of our invention. The echoes of those books we devoured as kids / when we were meant to be revising for exams / sat on the train to work, can be heard, if ever so faintly, in what we create now. And I'm good with all of that. The original seed of my world owes something to Lothlorien, Revelwood, Mythago Wood, the greco-roman myths. But it is none of those things now.
To get back to the OPs question, I think my position on intentional originality has shifted over the drafting, writing, editing process. At the outset, I wanted to have a setting that was unlike other fantasy locations, and an MC with a backstory like no other. As I've progressed I have come to realise both that my creation is less unique than I set out to achieve, and that fact matters less to me than it did. I've been on my own development arc alongside my world and characters the whole time.

 

[Karlin]

Is being creative or original a function that can be turned off and on at will, and you choose to be more "original" here and less there? The only time I even think about this is if I write a paragraph, and then think to myself "hang on, that's too wild, it will confuse the reader".

 

[Prince of Spires]

There are so many sides to this question that you could probably write a whole book about it. Appologies in advance for a (probably) rambling post...

First of, I believe all stories are both original and unoriginal. In the end, when you look at it on a conceptual level, then pretty much all stories have already been told. Star Wars is just a Western Hero's Journey set in space. You can do this for all stories out there.

At the same time, each story is unique. Not only could two writers take the same idea and concept and write two different stories. But also, if I take a single idea I would write two very different stories if I would write it twice.

I think pretty much every writer has originality as a goal

I'm going to disagree here. Just like you have readers who only like reading Shapeshifter, Enemies to Lovers Romance with a Happily Ever After at a medium spice level, so to do you have writers who just want to write that.

I've read a whole bunch of Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler, and they're basically all the same story, with just a slightly different setting and premisse. When you look at them from a distance, they're "paint by number" stories. Note that I don't mean that in a bad way. I enjoyed reading them. However, you could probably write a list of what happens in which chapter and apply that to each of them. The same goes for movies by the way. Plenty of advice on how to write movie scripts goes almost to the level of "on page X, Y needs to have happened."

What is the case is that all writers are different. I remember a presentation once, which dug into this a bit deeper. Some writers can't write a story unless they believe it's an original idea. Their mind just refuses to put down words if they think they are being derivative. Others work the exact opposite way. Side note, from the same presentation, the same goes for the saying "you can't edit a blank page". Some writers not only can edit a blank page, but they can only write that page after they've edited it in their head...

Everyone is different.

When I read a description of contemporary fiction that says something like, “A divorced mother of three from Pittsburgh takes a trip to New Orleans to rediscover herself,” I have to admit that it fails to spark any interest in my mind. Pass. It may be well written, it may do a good job with the character and story, but I don’t find anything obviously intriguing about it. Maybe it contains good amounts of originality, but the description is too mundane and ordinary for me to ever find out.

On the other hand, when a Star Trek episode opens with some strange anomaly that does something weird and dangerous, and there is no immediate explanation or way to deal with it, I’m hooked.

This doesn't really have much to do with originality though. Just with marketing and what you as a person are interested in. The Star Trek episode may very well be a copy-past from two episodes ago (they did every now and then just reuse the same, unoriginal idea). And the divorced mother may very well have the most original self-discovery.

This is only a sales pitch. And it's written that way because the target audience will resonate with it. It doesn't say anything about the story itself.

As for what is actually original, that's very hard to judge. I remember a quote from Terry Pratchett that he received some letters from readers during the hight of the Harry Potter craze, that readers had read and enjoyed his stories, but that they did feel like his Unseen University was a complete ripoff from Hogwarts and that he could have been more original. Even though the Unseen University predates Hogwarts by something like 14 years. And that Harry Potter itself was just a pretty standard Brittish boarding school story with some magic thrown in.

The same goes for pretty much everyone by the way. We tend to only remember the highlights, but forget what was the inspiration for those, unless we really research it. Tolkien is seen as pretty original, but he drew heavily from lots of different sources like Beowulf and the Kalevala. That doesn't make his stories any less, even though they are not original by any means.

As for the question how much it matters in my own stories, well, I simply don't think about it. It doesn't feature at all. I just pick an idea for a story that excites me, and write that. That's hard enough work as it is, without having to worry about whether it's original or not. I fully realize that it's not and sometimes, if I'm stuck, I do think about what kind of story I'm telling. If I'm writing an Underdog Sports-story, and I'm stuck, then thinking about what makes those stories work can help me get unstuck.

And I know that in the end, my story will be both original and unoriginal. Original because only I could have at that time written that story. And Unoriginal because all stories have already been told at some point, and I stand on the shoulders of those that came before me.

 

[Karlin]

Star Wars is just a Western Hero's Journey set in space.

Actually, Star Wars is a Samurai movie. Influenced bu Kurasawas Hidden Fortress

 

[Queshire]

Steal everything! Toss it in a blender!

Or to put it in another way, rather than specifically strive for originality I aim to take a wide variety of inspirations and synthesize them together.

 

[Gurkhal]

Rather than try and write a long post I say this. See my signature.

 

[Incanus]

There are more ideas and responses here than I was expecting, and more than I can respond to in a single post.

Gurkhal's quote: I am a tad confused by it. I would never dream of substituting one for the other. The quote seems to be a response to a sentiment I've not come across myself. The way it is phrased almost sounds as if the two things are mutually exclusive--a notion I wholeheartedly reject. This looks rather like a strawman argument.

Prince of Spires points out that the example I gave comparing a contemporary fiction plot with a Star Trek plot is more about marketing than originality. I partially agree with that. My thoughts there were largely subjective, no doubt. I have mixed appreciation for contemporary fiction: I would say something like "A Few Good Men" has a more original plot than most 'self-discovery' character study stories (which don't seem to have much in the way of plot at all). But this is getting too far afield.

I am somewhat surprised at how few fantasy writers have an interest in attempting to create something original (if I'm understanding that right). For me, it may be the most distinctive feature of fantasy writing. Setting out to write a fantasy story without inventing anything for it seems like a huge missed opportunity to my mind. I would say fantasy and original invention go hand in hand.

A point about 'originality': when I do come up with an idea I like, I don't go searching everywhere to find out whether it's been done before or not. Having come up with something I've not seen before is good enough for me to consider it 'original', even if it turns out to have been used a dozen times somewhere. I'm not big on splitting hairs--I will leave that to others.

Final thought: I'm a picky fantasy reader. I have a hard time finding new items I really love. I wonder how much the lack of originality in a lot of fantasy plays a role in this? I'm not sure...

 

[skip.knox]

First, let me reiterate what I think is an important point: one reader will think your book is original while another will think it's derivative. So, to be "original" does it have to be declared such by all readers? By 90% of them? More than half? Just two? I've said my piece on this and now I've said it twice, so I'll leave that lie.

But there's another aspect of slippery in the term; namely, at what level are we discussing it?

That is, a turn of phrase can be original. A scene can be original. The plot of story can be original while the setting is not. Or, the setting can be original. And so on. It is, I propose, important for the author to understand at what sort of originality they are aiming.

Taken all together, the notion is not worth pursuing, at least not in a practical way. It's more a point of philosophy, about which there can be endless discussion, but when it's time to write a story, it's just a distraction.

 

[Incanus]

Interesting. I don't think this needs to be so confusing, or philosophical. The discussion might be a bit broad in a sense, but I don't think that makes it worthless. Why not use common sense?

Here is the definition of 'originality' in my Random House dictionary:

1. The quality or state of being original. 2. Ability to think or express oneself in an independent and original manner; creative ability. 3. Freshness or novelty as of an idea, method, or performance.

I see nothing in here as to how many people have to agree about it, or on what scales it may or may not apply to. The definition doesn't seem to be so problematic as to render the whole discussion as pointless. I admit to some confusion about the hair-splitting (as it appears to me).

I found the discussion to be mostly interesting. There are a lot of viewpoints, and I'm open to reading about them.

Anyway, it's all good, as they say.

 

[Gurkhal]

Gurkhal's quote: I am a tad confused by it. I would never dream of substituting one for the other. The quote seems to be a response to a sentiment I've not come across myself. The way it is phrased almost sounds as if the two things are mutually exclusive--a notion I wholeheartedly reject. This looks rather like a strawman argument.

The quote is a direct response to many threads about "Is this original?" when the focus of the author should not be to make things original but to do things well. An unoriginal story that is well done and well executed will be better than an original story that is poorly done and badly executed.

Hence the message is that being original does not make a badly written story good. Orginality is thus not a substitute for quality in writing. Thus focus on writing your story well, and worry about orginality later.

 

[Penpilot]

I am somewhat surprised at how few fantasy writers have an interest in attempting to create something original (if I'm understanding that right). For me, it may be the most distinctive feature of fantasy writing. Setting out to write a fantasy story without inventing anything for it seems like a huge missed opportunity to my mind. I would say fantasy and original invention go hand in hand.

For me, it's not about not being interested in creating something original. It's about wasted effort worrying and focusing on something unnecessarily. Originality IMHO is not a good goal in itself when writing. I think it's more important to simply write the best story you can, and let the rest take care of itself.

Why worry about something being similar to something else when I know the answer is always going to be yes. Writing a long story can be difficult enough already, why spend any time worrying about irrelevant noise? I'd rather take that energy and apply it to making my story better.

 

[Incanus]

For me, it's not about not being interested in creating something original. It's about wasted effort worrying and focusing on something unnecessarily. Originality IMHO is not a good goal in itself when writing. I think it's more important to simply write the best story you can, and let the rest take care of itself.

Why worry about something being similar to something else when I know the answer is always going to be yes. Writing a long story can be difficult enough already, why spend any time worrying about irrelevant noise? I'd rather take that energy and apply it to making my story better.

I think we are talking past each other here. I guess these concepts can be a bit tricky to think through.

For me, it's all about an interest in creating something original. What I'm talking about doesn't involve wasting time or worry. I'm not sure how those ideas fit into this. I've never once considered those things when brainstorming something new. I honestly don't see how they apply here. I've been thinking about fantasy inventions for decades and I've never been bothered by worry or time-wasting before.

Let's say I invent a new kind of metal and give it its own name, and give it some kind of special property, and then add it into the fantasy world I'm setting my stories in. Characters refer to it, make things with it, perhaps discover a new property in it over the course of the tale.

In this scenario, how did time get wasted? What is there to worry over? I wouldn't care if someone else invented a similar metal in another story. It won't be identical, and it won't have the same role in the story. Perhaps this is what you mean by 'let the rest take care of itself'?

I'm talking about inventing something new by my own standards. It helps to have read a bit in the genre, and to have a bit of a foundational understanding of it. I'm not so obsessed over it that I have to open every book that's ever been written to ensure my originality.