Creativity, Inspiration, and Plagiarism

[TheNewVinylScratch 4]

    So, until a few days ago, I considered myself a very creative and imaginative person. I have always loved sci fi and fantasy, and creating my own worlds and such. For years now I have actually been working on creating a world and trying to write a book. Then about two weeks ago, I started really looking through my notes and my world and realized that every single idea I had in there was basically a rip off of someone else's idea. Every thought or idea I thought I cam up with was inspired or based off of someone else's work. Every Character, location, story, and object was not my own. I'm having a crisis of creativity.

 

    But being inspired isn't a bad thing. using other peoples ideas as a base and making them your own isn't inherently wrong. Very few ideas are 100% original, but what if 100% of your ideas aren't original. When does inspiration become copying, and when does copying become plagiarism.

 

    I'm not sure what i'm looking for here, your opinions words of advice on how to be more creative and original, weather being inspired to much is bad thing, or weather you can never have to much inspiration. where the line between being inspired and copying someone else's work is. I just feel like i have never had an original thought or idea, I have just been copy my favorite authors work, reshaping it, and calling it my own. 

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

That's exactly what everyone does. No need to worry about it, unless you're taking too much from any one particular thing.

[Sugar Pea 2,681]

Not many original ideas you see aren't 100% original, because they are usually inspired by someone or something they saw.

Now if it were plagiarism, that would be the complete taking of someone else's idea or project and calling it your own.

Try thinking outside the box of what you usually see on a daily basis on terms of creative ideas. Like for example, you could write a story on the perspective of a gentleman potato. You don't see that everyday!
 

[Invincible 2,090]

Unless you've copied a 100% of some concept or object, then you shouldn't sweat it. Many things that may feel similar can in fact be different approaches or interpretations of a story or an idea, i think that if you're inspired to make your own idea, then you should go for it.

[Steel Accord 6,658]

Some of the greatest and most "original" pieces of fiction are inspired from something the creator loved. Almost all of Quentin Tarantino's entire body of work is heavily inspired from the grind house shlock films he watched as a kid.

 

George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg? Indiana Jones and Star Wars are towering testaments to pulp era adventure and science fiction comics and films.

 

Pacific Rim? The new IP in an age of remakes and reboots? Power Rangers, Gundam, Independence Day, Godzilla, The Cthulhu Mythos, Neon Genesis Evangellion, that's the short list of clear inspirations the film pulls from!

 

This very show? Flim and Flam walked straight out of the Music Man or a Vaudeville skit. Sombra is explicitly inspired from Lord Sauron. Discord was created from Lauren Faust binge watching Star Trek: the Next Generation and wanting to basically have Q in her story. Lord Tirek was direct copy character from the G1 version of the show he appears in.

 

Creators are influenced by the things they connected with, this is just how the medium of story telling evolves. The difference is to look to them for inspiration rather than regurgitation.

[LittleMac 3,084]

It's only plagiarism if it's the exact same thing. You're only basing characters off already existing characters, even big time directors do that

[Tan 91]

Sorry if I am a tad late, and sorry if this isn't exactly an issue for you now when you read my post, but here is my 2 cents.

 

First off, there is a quote(and I have a few quotes for you.) that really holds water and is very profound yet simple. "There is nothing new under the sun." Every possible thought you could ever have will be the byproduct of your environment, intellect, emotional disposition, and a myriad of other factors. Everything that you could ever say has been said before countless ways in every form of entertainment ever since the birth of writing. This is NOT a bad thing. in other words, there is no such thing as originality because every thought and saying is a remix of something the person seen. Here is another quote for you, also related to the creative process. "Artists copy, great artists steal." Initially this one might be more upsetting on face value but think about the quote for a moment. Regular artists copy, what exactly does this mean? well they see something and they capture/remix/recreate it. All artists do this, be it writer, drawer or animator, etc. Now the second half. Great artists steal. Inherently stealing is bad. . . but this is a very judgmental view. Allow me to elaborate with a paraphrased quote from the legendary George Carlin "There are no bad words, it's all about context." So stealing alone is just stealing, nothing more, nothing less. It's not the act of theft that's important, it's what you do with it. So you want to make a character for example, and for the sake of example you are writing and need a character. Now then before you can move on, you could sit down and think about what motifs and tropes could bring an original character to light, BUT this takes time and alot of effort and can slow the work. Also, this approach is the non theft way but its alot easier to come up with cardboard characters and stereotypes this way, which is why I don't recommend it. One more reason before I move on, it makes a character harder to identify with. Now back to stealing. Let's say you watched Danny Phantom and your story needs a perky goth character(regardless of gender). Now you take Sam and insert her in the role, you don't leave her there, because that would be abuse of stealing. You are just using her as a placeholder. Now look at Sam, consider why she "fits" and why you stole her for place-holding. A number of things happened with little to no effort on your part. You got a rough idea of: How they dress, color palette, personality template, and a connection. If other people see your character think of Sam, well its up to them on how they react, obviously there will be morons who say expies are bad(even though tropes are TOOLS) but the more educated ones will admire the connection and have more interest in the new character regardless of gender. Now there are a few things to consider, like everyone has a rip-off threshold and they vary quite significantly. But back to using Sam as placeholder, consider her quirks and what made her work. How many goths do you see caring about the environment? This is a subtle thing that had serious gravity on what made Sam so interesting. But you have a placeholder, and it gave you stuff, what's the next step? Start changing things. You can go about changes in any order, and the more you do it, the more it will become yours. You can ask yourself questions like what makes this character stand out from a stereotypical goth? This can lead to thoughts like, "how goths do you see talking about Mario Kart or games in general?" This can give birth to a gamer perky goth. then you can change gender if it matters and suddenly your character gets an identity all their own. And despite how wordy I got, its actually a pretty simple process. I got probably a tad carried away with examples, but in this hypothetical, you created a character with their own identity and it was from the simple yet effective act of stealing. You don't even have to change much, just the stuff that has serious gravity on the character, and you may want to consider your verse's characters, setting, rules, and other things to see what you need to change to make this new character fit your work and be a believable byproduct of their environment. 

 

TL;DR first point: Being "original" is alot of work, nigh-impossible. Stealing gives you placeholders and templates, just change to make it fit in your work, and you're golden.

 

Secondly, don't fret theft or originality so much. Stealing is. . . well you get it by this point. Context is key. I am going to illustrate a few extremes. taking a work and calling it your own. BAD, VERY BAD. using overly elaborate Expies that have gone through so many changes that they are truly original now and have no connection to their bases. BAD, it's a time sink and defeats the purpose, and the only reason writers/artists do this is for integrity delusions. Okay two extremes down and both are not ideal, but have been done by lesser beings and produced garbage on most prominently fanfiction avenues. So what's a good medium? somewhere between stealing and not changing to overly complex expy abuse, but more leaning towards little to no changes. Inspiration is a beautiful thing, all the greats are inspired by various things they seen. From lesser beings like me, all the way to greats like Shakespeare or Dickens. There is much more to "creativity" than stealing, though stealing is a great tool when used correctly. Another quote for you and this one is very profound(Albert Einstein said this one, and he was a textbook example of genius) : "the secret to creativity is hiding your sources." Initially, probably frightening. But when you consider it, it's very true. This shouldn't be alarming, hell its a very simple and effective strategy for creating original works. It doesn't hinder a work's potential, and when used right it can give birth to wonderful things. Art imitates life, and vise versa. Because stealing and changing is so simple and effective, and efficient many people do it. There is no shame in it. And bonus points for inspiring a generation to take art and entertainment to another level. At the end of the day, it's not about who can conjure up the least stereotypical cardboard cutouts, it's about inspiring the future generation to do marvelous things and further technology and other aspects of life. And bonus points if your work keeps somepony from committing suicide. When you get comments from fans that say how much love your work and how it impacted them positively on forums or other social media outlets, then you really did good, and it should bring you a healthy pride and sense of worth.

 

TL;DR second point: Stealing and no change is just as bad as overly complicating things, and both defeat the purpose in their own right. A healthy medium is economically sound, and ideal. Inspiring others is the point, not showing off your creative muscles.

 

If you can't tell by now, I myself am a writer. Not only a writer, I also draw and animate stick figures. I hope this eliminated any remaining fears you had about creativity. I said most of what I wanted to say but I have more advice for a fellow writer. If you don't already, I highly recommend spending as much time as you can on Tvtropes.org. I owe like 80% of my writing chops to that wiki and its written in informal speak. It's not always to the point, but it has examples of media that make the rambling much easier to understand if the article is confusing at all. They aren't but seeing examples really cements the idea in my mind with clarity. I'm also working on a story(with intent to publish) and I have gone through similar concerns, and am my own worst critic. . . the point is, I been there, if you want me to elaborate on anything else, or just want a creative sounding board, pm me your Skype and we can talk in detail. Hope you enjoyed my post and have a nice day.

[Justin_Case001 4,857]

I understand what you're talking about, experimental Galaxy.  I have long wished I could write a novel, but I just don't have any original ideas.  True originality is very rare and difficult to do.

 

I was going to embed this great, classic Simpsons clip of Roger Meyes Jr. talking about plagiarism during his trial against Chester J. Lampwick in The Day the Violence Died.  I just dragged out my season 7 disc, popped it in, ripped the footage, cut, edited, encoded, uploaded to youtube, and then..."blocked in all countries due to copyrights by FOX".

 

 

Are you kidding me?!  There's tons of Simpsons clips on youtube!  It's not like I was posting the whole episode!  It was a 20 second clip!  F*ckers.  Anyway, I'll just recite the scene.

 

The judge rules that Roger Meyers stole the character of Itchy from Chester J. Lampwick, and then Meyers says, "Ok, maybe my dad did steal Itchy, but so what?!  Animation is built on plagiarism!  If it weren't for someone plagiarizing the Honeymooners, we wouldn't have the Flintsones.  If someone hadn't ripped off Sgt. Bilko, there'd be no Tomcat!  Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear!  Heh.  Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney...your honor, you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?!"

 

The actual clip would have been funnier.

 

Anyway, the longer time goes on, the harder it is to come up with something truly original.  That's why I've never tried to write a novel or an MLP fanfic, even though I'd like to.  It's a tough thing.  But like others have said, as long as you're not copying something word for word, it's ok.  I mean, Halo is a combination of lots of classic sci-fi franchises, the most prominent being Aliens.  Just look at the Pillar of Autumn.  Practically a carbon copy of the ship in Aliens.  And Sgt. Johnson is Apone.  Every modern fantasy has copied or based something on LOTR.  Anyway, keep trying and don't get discouraged from trying to write your book.  Although I'm one to talk.  :S

[Wind Chaser 4,767]

This is something I've dealt with just as much. I was developing my own project for about 3 years when in the past few weeks I found out something very similar already existed, to the point of even using some of the same names and plot elements as my work. But there are ways in which I have dealt with that to distinguish my own work from one that already existed beyond my knowledge until recently.

 

However, there's the title of a video series on YouTube called "Everything is a Remix". Even some of the most memorable moments of some of the most allegedly "original" works have a background of being inspired by something else. Here's one on The Matrix:

 

https://youtu.be/yrW3E6BN5Dg

 

At this point, I say, it's not being 100% truly original that counts, because there's a chance that even if you think it's original, it's probably been done before. Life and almost everything in it is a shared experience, so the same thing coming up twice is the rule rather than the exception, despite how much it's seemingly frowned upon. The only truth behind it is if you do something that's been done so many times that most reasonable viewers can predict it accurately with at least a general knowledge of the subject.

 

To really distinguish your work, make it you. Put real life allegory into it. Be more firm and subtle in your message. Take what you've learned from other works in terms of story styles and structures and apply it in a way only you can. In all truth, it's very likely that nothing is 100% original by the most strict definition, but there is one thing that you should strive to make original: the blend of the elements that come together to make a good story.

 

After all, aren't all humans made of the same base cells? But we're not all the same, aren't we?

[Rivulet 116]

It's not really such a bad thing. You're being influenced by shows that you like, and things you find interesting. If I had to write a story about something I hate or just don't care for, I would most certainly give up on it. Taking things that you like and shaping them differently from their base is fine, but you don't want to make it almost an exact copy with different names. Say you wanted to write a story about a time traveler. You wouldn't want to copy Doctor Who and make him the last of his race, travels in a police box, regenerates, etc. You would want to mix it up from what it was, to a completely different idea.

[EpicEnergy 22,090]

It's perfectly fine to create something directly based off someone else's work as long as you acknowledge that person.

Plagiarism is often said to be directly copying someone else's work, but that isn't always the case. Plagiarism is also taking someone else's unique work and using that as a foundation to create your own work. In the example of writing, someone can plagiarize someone else by taking what they said, twisting the words around significantly, inserting their own words, and claiming the work as their own without any credit towards the other person. That is a form of plagiarism because it used someone else's writing as a foundation.

As for inspiration, you don't have to mention the person who inspired you to create a work as long as you didn't take any part of that person's own work.

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

Noi matter how original your own ideas may be, chances are that someone else has probably had them at some point and gotten them out to the public. I've had this happen many times, and so have other artists. You can always twaek something to make it just different enough to get away with if it looks like it's going to infringe on someone else's work. You could also consider it a challange to see just how flexible you can be in rewriting something to make it completely different. Sometimes by changing your perspective you can come up with something better than the original work. 

Long story short, don't get discouraged. The world is full of ideas and if you love being creative, it's a great way to strengthen your abilities when you have to think and rethink your artwork, for any reason.