# Fresh Ideas



## M. LeRenard (Apr 22, 2008)

I've been wondering about this for a long time.  Is it really true that nothing anyone can create anymore can be truly original?  That everything has to be based on something else?
Essentially these are the arguments I've heard regarding this:
"Every story ever written is based on something else.  Even Shakespeare borrowed his ideas from earlier works of literature."
"Over the course of history, with so many people and so many ideas, every single story idea possible has already been thought of by someone else."
"A truly original story, with no liens at all with the world we live in and the ideas others have presented before, wouldn't make any sense, and no one would want to read it."
"You would have to have read every single story ever written to know what's truly original, and that's impossible."

Is it that the above statements are true, and it's impossible to come up with actual new ideas?  Or are we just not looking hard enough for them?
My thoughts on this are that this lack of fresh ideas seems to be prevalent only in fiction and other creative arts.  In science, to give a contrary example, people spend their time actively seeking new ideas.  Sometimes they just fall on them (electricity, thermodynamics, chemistry), other times they come up with them themselves (relativity theory, quantum mechanics).  But each time someone makes a new scientific discovery, it is truly a new concept; something no one had ever thought of before.  Probability functionals, black holes, time dilation: those concepts didn't exist in any form until the 1900's.
So if scientists can do it (and in fact have to to make a living), why can't fiction writers?  What's stopping us from going out on a limb and coming up with a real original thought?
You guys' thoughts on this?


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## Chanticleer (Apr 22, 2008)

_
Just as the same stars can guide different travelers to different places, the principles of storytelling, while consistent, enable the telling of infinite tales._
                                                          -Robert Kernen

I can't really imagine a situation where there would be no new ideas. Our society and lives continue to change and these changes constantly bring about new situations and interpretations of the world.

You mentioned science actively searching out new ideas and finding them. How, if this source of new ideas exists, could there _not_ be new ideas to use in stories? 

There are an enormous variety of people and things in this world and when talk like this of running out of ideas comes up in _anything_ I always think of this guy:

_Everything that can be invented has been invented._
    -Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (attributed)

Wow, quoting is addictive .


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## Kipple (Apr 22, 2008)

While infinite stories can be told, I believe that all of them are permutations and forms of a collection of archetypes. That's what a lot of people mean when there is no truly original story - it is the product of symbols and ideas that have been brewing in the collective unconsciousness since early humans started telling stories around the camp fire. Knowing this, I think you should worry less about being truly original, that's irrelevant, and worry more about making the story your own. The story of the hero is told over and over again, almost down to a formula, yet each culture and each generation manages to find a way to make it their own. With each political and social movement, old archetypes find new life in the hearts and minds of writers of the time.

I believe that all thoughts, and therefore all forms of expression, are builtoff of prior experience. Barring the psychedelic experience, all humans share similar trials and tribulations. The details are always a little different, but the fundamental encounters remain the same. That's where cultural relevance comes in; a lot of the best fiction is a product of movements and cultures. 

Your comparison to science is fundamentally different from the creative process. You are trying to compare art, a world of personality, of society, of politics, to science, a world of philosophy and knowledge. There is intersection between the two, especially in philosophy, how scientific knowledge affects world views, but science really is quite different from art. They describe the same world, but in two different approaches.

Everything is based off of prior ideas and experiences - I hold this to be true. But that doesn't mean stories can't be original, new movements and new cultures breathe life into the older ideas, that's how a lot of art works. The Renaissance wasn't popular because it was new, hell no, it was all imitating the ancient Classical works, badly, I might add, it was popular because those Classical ideas and concepts were exciting in the context of the growing European culture. Modern art isn't exactly original, the typical Modernist scene is a collage of every day imagery, but the fact that it acknowledges its own unoriginality and absurd premise, the fact that it flies in the face of all most call art, is, in and of itself, original.

If you want original ideas, don't go out on a limb; take what's all around you and make it your own. That's not to say don't experiment, because that's an important part of developing your own style, just don't beat yourself up over the fact that there's probably a story somewhere a lot like your own. If it's your own, it doesn't make a bit of difference.


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## Chanticleer (Apr 22, 2008)

ETC said:
			
		

> Your comparison to science is fundamentally different from the creative process. You are trying to compare art, a world of personality, of society, of politics, to science, a world of philosophy and knowledge. There is intersection between the two, especially in philosophy, how scientific knowledge affects world views, but science really is quite different from art. They describe the same world, but in two different approaches.



Pet peve of mine here. Science is not a world, a force or anything like that. Science is a method, it is a process, a way to approach and solve problems. I bet one could even attempt use the scientific method to experiment with new types of story ideas if one wanted to.


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## Kipple (Apr 22, 2008)

Chanticleer said:
			
		

> ETC said:
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Point taken. You're right about the first few bits. I was too caught up in keeping my thoughts parallel. What I am trying to say is that the way science describes things is different from how the creative process works.

The rest of my point still stands, "They describe the same world, but in two different approaches." It's certainly possible to apply the scientific method to the story-telling process, but I think you can only go so far with that. There's really no universal qualitative way to interpret or describe stories, which is usually important in establishing a scientific theory. I suppose it wouldn't stop anyone from trying to make one. If you're fixing to do that, I wish you the best; I'm just a little skeptical on how it would work is all.


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## Chanticleer (Apr 22, 2008)

ETC said:
			
		

> Chanticleer said:
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Well according to your thesis that "They describe the same world, but in two different approaches." it would seem to me that the only way that  we would run out of ideas is if we ran out of world to describe, and we have not seen the entirety of the universe yet. There are still unexplained phenomena in psychology and conundrums of philosophy  to spare.

I suppose one could say that our one way of viewing the world (storytelling) has allowed us to examine everything while our other way of viewing the world (Science) has not yet allowed us to examine everything yet and as we get better at it we are slowly seeing the rest world again in a different way which is why using the scientific method we have continued to see things that appear new because we are now wearing the rose colored glasses of science, but I find that idea a bit hard to swallow.

But heck now that I think about it how could I be so sure on any of this? I thought this out using logic, yet another way of viewing the world of questionable merit.

Oh and thanks for the encouragement!


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## Kipple (Apr 23, 2008)

Chanticleer said:
			
		

> I suppose one could say that our one way of viewing the world (storytelling) has allowed us to examine everything while our other way of viewing the world (Science) has not yet allowed us to examine everything yet and as we get better at it we are slowly seeing the rest world again in a different way which is why using the scientific method we have continued to see things that appear new because we are now wearing the rose colored glasses of science, but I find that idea a bit hard to swallow.



I agree with this supposition.

Storytelling, through the genre of speculative fiction, describes both the known and the unknown, or more specifically, what the author thinks the unknown looks like. The world of 1984 is an unknown, because we have yet to live in such a government, no matter how much current events suggests otherwise. Science typically examines only the known in search of the unknown. We see phenomena, experiments are designed, results analyzed, and we all learn something new.

But we're still humans, we use human symbols to describe things. I don't mean letters, though those are very important too, but I mean the story elements, the archetypes. It's very difficult to construct an new archetype that doesn't reference existing archetypes. Even if science reveals new truths and new world-views, I think we're still going to be stuck with the same archetypes. With new truths, the fundamental story doesn't change, only the details and arrangement. Does the story of Beowulf change knowing that the world is round, not flat? Does it change if Beowulf had a gun and not a sword? Not really, we'd change a few sentences here and there, but in the end, it's the story of the hero.

It's like language. From a linguistics stand-point, you can't really make "new" sounds. Our lips, tongue, and diaphragms can only capable of so much. My position is that the human brain is the same way, it has limits to what it can express. But don't let that disappoint you, I think that limits are the source of creativity. With things like roleplaying, if you play a god-like character, things get stale fast. But if you play a character with flaws, with limits, it makes those strengths so much more precious.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 23, 2008)

I would agree with you, but in my mind the scientific method and creativity are linked; if you have one but not the other, you're never going to get anywhere.  In other words, if you never go out on a limb in your thinking, you'll always stay on the same tree as everybody else.  But you can't just go out on any limb, because then it'll break and you'll fall.
The attitudes you express about just being content with what's around me is absolutely contrary to the point I'm trying to make, here.  The Renaissance was just a rehash of Greek culture; so was everything else for about 1200 years (if you look at the different 'epochs' of architecture, for instance, you'll see that they all have the same characteristics [triangular front piece on doorways, pillars with grooves in them, the same three kinds of column heads, etc. etc.], just applied differently).  And I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.  Whether it's a good thing or not I'm leaving up in the air.  I still think classical architecture, artwork, and storytelling are quite appeasing, even if they all mimic the crap out of each other.
What I'm asking here is whether or not it's true what so many people say, that you can't write a new story.  I've never thought so (and I could give more specific reasons, if you'd like), but I'm wondering what other folks have to say on the subject.  
In which case I'm paying more attention to your last post, which answers the question.  Do you mean you think that we're limited in ideas only by our brains' physiology?  And do you suppose we've already reached its limit, or what?


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## Kipple (Apr 23, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:
			
		

> I would agree with you, but in my mind the scientific method and creativity are linked; if you have one but not the other, you're never going to get anywhere.



They are linked in a loose sense. The basic process of asking questions and investigation is important to the creative process. In that sense, I agree. Science and creativity are hardly incompatible.



> In other words, if you never go out on a limb in your thinking, you'll always stay on the same tree as everybody else.  But you can't just go out on any limb, because then it'll break and you'll fall.



The fact that you are a human, in my mind, means you'll forever be on the tree of humans. My hypothesis is that there are things we may never, ever understand, the things metaphysical. Any attempts by humans to truly, genuinely, understand them will be built off of existing knowns. To use your metaphor, we can jump from branch to branch, limb to limb. But unless you've somehow altered your consciousness, humans can only tell human stories. They can't tell bird stories or tree stories or electron stories. There's a sense of infinite within our little subset of stories in the same way there's an infinite number of values between 0 and 1. The details, the plots, the intricacies are infinite. But, to me, not the stories.



> The attitudes you express about just being content with what's around me is absolutely contrary to the point I'm trying to make, here.



_"All you touch and all you see
is all your life will ever be."_

:wink:



> The Renaissance was just a rehash of Greek culture; so was everything else for about 1200 years (if you look at the different 'epochs' of architecture, for instance, you'll see that they all have the same characteristics [triangular front piece on doorways, pillars with grooves in them, the same three kinds of column heads, etc. etc.], just applied differently).  And I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.  Whether it's a good thing or not I'm leaving up in the air.  I still think classical architecture, artwork, and storytelling are quite appeasing, even if they all mimic the crap out of each other.
> What I'm asking here is whether or not it's true what so many people say, that you can't write a new story.  I've never thought so (and I could give more specific reasons, if you'd like), but I'm wondering what other folks have to say on the subject.



I wouldn't mind seeing specific reasons. But before this goes on any further, we need to agree on what a new story _is_. What do you think a new story is?



> In which case I'm paying more attention to your last post, which answers the question.  Do you mean you think that we're limited in ideas only by our brains' physiology?  And do you suppose we've already reached its limit, or what?



One person will probably never, ever see the limit. That's what makes their stories so interesting; they're so different from our experiences, yet they share that common human language. We don't have the capability to know all experiences, so there's an illusion of infinity. But really, everything that's us is bound in that brain of ours. And like all things, it must have limits.

But I think we, as a collective species, reached, or are very close, to reaching the limits. Even if there are new scientific discoveries, does technology and world-view really change the fact that there's fatal flaws, heroes, villains, anti-heroes, love, hate, deception, fortune, loss, fate, tragedy, comedy, et cetera? Those things are never, ever going to change, in my opinion. They look different from different angles, different diction, different settings, but it's fundamentally the same. We've got behaviors and instincts written into our genetic code. Until we become something beyond human, that's not going to change.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 23, 2008)

> My hypothesis is that there are things we may never, ever understand, the things metaphysical.


This is very vague, you know.  The _hypothesis_ is that it _may_.  In other words (and sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth), you admit that such things may one day be understood?


> I wouldn't mind seeing specific reasons. But before this goes on any further, we need to agree on what a new story is. What do you think a new story is?


I'll give a reason and answer the question with an example: the genre of science fiction.  To me, this is proof that we're not out of ideas, and probably never will be.  Before inventions started getting interesting enough to write stories about them, the entire genre of science fiction didn't exist.  No one thought about the consequences of building a machine with an autonomous mind, or how we would react if aliens invaded, or what it would be like to travel backwards in time.  All of those ideas were completely new: no connection to things that had been written before (aside from your general story layout, which to me is less an idea and more a convenient package for transporting the idea; like how we wouldn't replace pockets with something else just for the sake of having something else, because pockets are damn useful).  In fact, certain sci-fi authors even did away with the usual 'protagonist antagonist' layout (thinking of Heinlein's 'future history' stories) and just wrote postulates on economics, technology, culture, etc. in story form.
In other words, since we are still growing up and changing (and always will be, unless the same people continue to live forever at the same stages of their lives), it's inevitable that there will be new ideas.  And plus there are stubborn folks like me who don't like sticking to the usual grid and who go out of their way to find something new.
But that's just my opinion.  There's nothing to say we haven't reached the limit yet.



> But I think we, as a collective species, reached, or are very close, to reaching the limits.


Just curious as to why you think that?


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## Kipple (Apr 23, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:
			
		

> > My hypothesis is that there are things we may never, ever understand, the things metaphysical.
> 
> 
> This is very vague, you know.  The _hypothesis_ is that it _may_.  In other words (and sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth), you admit that such things may one day be understood?



I am just kind of wishy-washy, you know?  Bear with me, sometimes I'll change intent and wording mid-sentence. I distract myself.

Let me reword that: My hypothesis is there are unknowns we will never know. But I am not completely unwilling to consider otherwise.



> > I wouldn't mind seeing specific reasons. But before this goes on any further, we need to agree on what a new story is. What do you think a new story is?
> 
> 
> I'll give a reason and answer the question with an example: the genre of science fiction.  To me, this is proof that we're not out of ideas, and probably never will be.  Before inventions started getting interesting enough to write stories about them, the entire genre of science fiction didn't exist.  No one thought about the consequences of building a machine with an autonomous mind, or how we would react if aliens invaded, or what it would be like to travel backwards in time.  All of those ideas were completely new: no connection to things that had been written before (aside from your general story layout, which to me is less an idea and more a convenient package for transporting the idea; like how we wouldn't replace pockets with something else just for the sake of having something else, because pockets are damn useful).  In fact, certain sci-fi authors even did away with the usual 'protagonist antagonist' layout (thinking of Heinlein's 'future history' stories) and just wrote postulates on economics, technology, culture, etc. in story form.
> ...



People have always been afraid of machines with autonomous minds - only they weren't always machines with autonomous minds. Though the speculation is relevant to modern technology and very much important, we find the same old fundamental fear of succession. The father (the creator) is always afraid that he will be overthrown by his son (the machine). In these stories, we often find the themes of human vanity, the fatal flaw, which often becomes our undoing (creating an artificial intelligence in our own image). 

People have always been afraid of aliens - only they weren't always from outer space. They were strangers from strange lands. People fear the strange and exotic - be they extraterrestrial or extratribal. 

People have always been fascinated with time travel, because people have always been obsessed with loss, with nostalgia, with regret. Time travel is often redemption, be it stopping the tremendous mistake that was allowing Hitler to come to power or saving someone's life.

These are only examples of how the new can be reduced to elements of the old.

I'm unfamiliar with the work of Heinlein, so I can't comment. I will have to check it out.

What I'm trying to get at is that ideas are never new, only changing. That which is technically new is made out of the old - inspiration is pulled out of the collective unconscious, those base ideas written into our nature, altered to seem culturally relevant.



> > But I think we, as a collective species, reached, or are very close, to reaching the limits.
> 
> 
> Just curious as to why you think that?



I think that, almost always, we're slaves to our own nature and instinct. That's our limit, both culturally and physiologically. Sure, new technology and new discoveries are made every day, and will continue to be made, as long as we are thinkers. But it's all there to satisfy the same needs. With a spear, we can kill - with an abacus, we can crunch numbers. With a satellite bomb, what changes? With a quantum computer, what changes? We're doomed to do the same things over and over; the only things that change is how fast, how efficient, how quick, we do it. Though impressive, we're not doing anything _new_. We're only changing _how_ and, very rarely, _why_ we do it.

Emerson said that society never advances, that it loses as much as it gains. I think ideas are conserved - always changing but never new.

I think I am just being really nitpicky about it though.


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## Chanticleer (Apr 23, 2008)

ETC said:
			
		

> > With new truths, the fundamental story doesn't change, only the details and arrangement. Does the story of Beowulf change knowing that the world is round, not flat? Does it change if Beowulf had a gun and not a sword? Not really, we'd change a few sentences here and there, but in the end, it's the story of the hero.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Chanticleer (Apr 23, 2008)

_With new truths, the fundamental story doesn't change, only the details and arrangement. Does the story of Beowulf change knowing that the world is round, not flat? Does it change if Beowulf had a gun and not a sword? Not really, we'd change a few sentences here and there, but in the end, it's the story of the hero._

You see on this point I could not disagree more. People seem to be quango bent on this whole idea that we can simplify any plot down to things like "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl." A description like that not only removes all of the impact of the story, but once the idea that one can safely do it is created, any author or person will ask themselves "Hmm... does this story fit any one of those simple descriptions?" Then they will twist the story in their mind and bang it against this metaphorical pigeonhole until it is forced in.

And I don't know maybe they all can be safely simplified like that, but even if they can it makes people ignore the originality of the stories.

For instance both the story of Beowulf and the storyline of the TV series 24 can probably be simplified down to the description "Hero saves the day." But these two stories have entirely different messages. Beowulf portrays heroes as shimmering paragons of justice and power, while 24 forces you to question whether or not what the hero is doing is even right. Because even if he is saving lives and helping people he's doing it by carving little chunks out of his soul and causing other people tremendous amounts of pain.

As the world changed we learned new things from the changing situation and this allowed our stories to gain new meanings. Thus even the most hackneyed of "basic plots" can be new and original.

_The Renaissance was just a rehash of Greek culture; so was everything else for about 1200 years (if you look at the different 'epochs' of architecture, for instance, you'll see that they all have the same characteristics [triangular front piece on doorways, pillars with grooves in them, the same three kinds of column heads, etc. etc.], just applied differently). And I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Whether it's a good thing or not I'm leaving up in the air. I still think classical architecture, artwork, and storytelling are quite appeasing, even if they all mimic the crap out of each other. _

Someone hasn't read the fountain head. Frank Lloyd Write lashed out against this whole thing fairly well I'd say.




_But I think we, as a collective species, reached, or are very close, to reaching the limits. Even if there are new scientific discoveries, does technology and world-view really change the fact that there's fatal flaws, heroes, villains, anti-heroes, love, hate, deception, fortune, loss, fate, tragedy, comedy, et cetera? Those things are never, ever going to change, in my opinion. They look different from different angles, different diction, different settings, but it's fundamentally the same. We've got behaviors and instincts written into our genetic code. Until we become something beyond human, that's not going to change._

Ok for starters, quite a lot of people on this forum are working on hammering out that little "human" detail. And weâ€™ve still got more than a few aspects of the human psyche left to explore in my opinion.

And this is another pet peve of mine. This whole doom, gloom, we will never get past our inherent inferiority, bla bla blaâ€¦

Listen, Iâ€™ve plunged this existential toilet before. I just canâ€™t stand it when people sit around and proclaim the game over so they can feel better about stopping playing. As much as I dislike Faulkner he had a point in his Nobel Prize speech:

â€œOur tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up?â€

After that he starts up this whole â€œholier than thouâ€ talk, but he had a point. People keep seeing serious problems and succumbing to the idea that they canâ€™t do anything about them because itâ€™s easier.

Seriously! If youâ€™re having trouble coming up with something new keep trying. Maybe itâ€™s gotten harder, maybe it hasnâ€™t, I donâ€™t know! And if you canâ€™t do it on your own, fine! Letâ€™s band together, Iâ€™m all for not facing the sea of troubles on my own.


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## Adelio Altomar (Apr 23, 2008)

One can always take old stories and create their own originals spin or take on it. Kinda like how Kyell Gold did with Aquifers in Waterways. 

And I think that there is indeed some tale we have yet to tell, we're just so used to the old ones being rehashed that we overlook the new. But that's just me.


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## Chanticleer (Apr 23, 2008)

Adelio Altomar said:
			
		

> One can always take old stories and create their own originals spin or take on it. Kinda like how Kyell Gold did with Aquifers in Waterways.
> 
> And I think that there is indeed some tale we have yet to tell, we're just so used to the old ones being rehashed that we overlook the new. But that's just me.



Thanks, I was beginning to think I was the only optimist left.


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## Kipple (Apr 23, 2008)

Chanticleer said:
			
		

> For instance both the story of Beowulf and the storyline of the TV series 24 can probably be simplified down to the description "Hero saves the day." But these two stories have entirely different messages. Beowulf portrays heroes as shimmering paragons of justice and power, while 24 forces you to question whether or not what the hero is doing is even right. Because even if he is saving lives and helping people he's doing it by carving little chunks out of his soul and causing other people tremendous amounts of pain.



The messages that differentiate 24 from Beowulf are just as reducible as the plot, though. What's important is not originality but how we, the audience, interact with the poetic and aesthetic visions, as well as the cultural relevance of the story being told.

Stories are path independent; there are an infinite number of ways to tell a single story, even though the story remains the same between each telling. I will say that there are new and original permutations of a single fundamental story, and I believe that's as close to agreeing with you as I'll ever get, because we seem to have different definitions of things.  



> As the world changed we learned new things from the changing situation and this allowed our stories to gain new meanings. Thus even the most hackneyed of "basic plots" can be new and original.



Is it really new and original if it can be reduced to that which is not new and original? This is a semantic issue we need to settle.



> _But I think we, as a collective species, reached, or are very close, to reaching the limits. Even if there are new scientific discoveries, does technology and world-view really change the fact that there's fatal flaws, heroes, villains, anti-heroes, love, hate, deception, fortune, loss, fate, tragedy, comedy, et cetera? Those things are never, ever going to change, in my opinion. They look different from different angles, different diction, different settings, but it's fundamentally the same. We've got behaviors and instincts written into our genetic code. Until we become something beyond human, that's not going to change._
> 
> Ok for starters, quite a lot of people on this forum are working on hammering out that little "human" detail. And weâ€™ve still got more than a few aspects of the human psyche left to explore in my opinion.
> 
> ...



I know that my original message seems pessimistic. But I want to make it clear that I am neither optimist or pessimist - just monist. Society may never change, we may never learn our lesson, we may repeat ourselves, but we are still thermodynamic wonders of our solar system. Fiction may be composed of a sequence of ever-repeating ideas and concepts, but an individual's vision and arrangement makes those things beautiful. A beautiful and elegant language is no less beautiful and elegant if it has 26 letters in its alphabet. We've got flaws, we've got strengths, and we've got limits. Just because it isn't truly original doesn't mean it isn't exciting.



> Seriously! If youâ€™re having trouble coming up with something new keep trying. Maybe itâ€™s gotten harder, maybe it hasnâ€™t, I donâ€™t know! And if you canâ€™t do it on your own, fine! Letâ€™s band together, Iâ€™m all for not facing the sea of troubles on my own.



That's the thing; I don't care if it's new or not. All I care about is expressing myself in a way that pleases me. If someone else enjoys it, that's great. If it just so happens to be new, that's even better. I want to fulfill my potential - to be me, that's what my writing is about.


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## Chanticleer (Apr 23, 2008)

Letâ€™s sidetrack to the reducing concept for a bit.

When someone reduces a story like that I see a kid on his birthday tearing the paper off of all of his presents, dumping the card and present on the floor and then carefully putting the box off to the side. When he finishes he turns to the stack of boxes and starts crying because everyone got him a box.

By the logic that if you rip everything out of a story until nothing but a mangled framework is left you can clasify it is like saying that if I poured turpentine all over the Mona Lisa and the Virgin of the Rocks I could accuse Leonardo da Vinci of repeating himself because they both look like canvases now.

Stories are more than basic plots!

They have characters, settings, events, tones, and motifs. You canâ€™t call a story the same as another story unless it has ripped off all of these things.

If this is the semantic difficulty in this discussion, please tell me.


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## Kipple (Apr 23, 2008)

Chanticleer said:
			
		

> Letâ€™s sidetrack to the reducing concept for a bit.
> 
> When someone reduces a story like that I see a kid on his birthday tearing the paper off of all of his presents, dumping the card and present on the floor and then carefully putting the box off to the side. When he finishes he turns to the stack of boxes and starts crying because everyone got him a box.



That's pessimistic and not at all how I think about it. I see it more like this:

The kid takes the birthday paper, the box, the present, and the card and notices they ALL say the same thing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Why does something as immaterial as crumpled wrapping paper say HAPPY BIRTHDAY? Because the kid is applying his own aesthetic sense, his recognition of the paper, his a priori knowledge that it is his birthday, and interprets the paper as HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Meanwhile, you can take the present, adjust its dimensions a little, write something a little different on the card and it says something completely different: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. Or I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK. The setting in which the story exists, the a priori knowledge the reader brings to the story, the appearance of the story, all of these make a particular story unique, no matter how unoriginal the story and its constituents may be. What's important is not the box, not the wrapping paper, not the gift, not even the actual present as a single object. What's important about receiving this present is the giver (the audience and his/her life), the recipient (the reader and his/her life), the aesthetic of the object (because wrapping it in newspaper is just not classy!), and the moment of time surrounding that gift (the culture and context).



> By the logic that if you rip everything out of a story until nothing but a mangled framework is left you can clasify it is like saying that if I poured turpentine all over the Mona Lisa and the Virgin of the Rocks I could accuse Leonardo da Vinci of repeating himself because they both look like canvases now.



But he borrowed the ratios of anatomy, he borrowed Classical ideals, he borrowed a person's visage to make a painting. Nothing about the Mona Lisa was particularly original, but it was aesthetically important because da Vinci knew WHAT to borrow given the context and culture he was in. I am saying that all individual stories are inherently unoriginal. But unoriginality is not equal to alikeness, things can be different from one another and still be unoriginal, it just means the artists borrowed different things to make them.



> Stories are more than basic plots!
> 
> They have characters, settings, events, tones, and motifs. You canâ€™t call a story the same as another story unless it has ripped off all of these things.
> 
> If this is the semantic difficulty in this discussion, please tell me.



Characters, setting, events, tones, and motifs are all reducible to primitives as well.

I am saying stories can't be truly original because they are derivative of the single source of inspiration, the collection of these finite reduced elements. Everything that has been used to make them is borrowed from the environment in which it was written.

If I give someone a photograph of an absolutely beautiful dragonfly, it would be strange of them to say "Wow, how did you make such a gorgeous dragonfly?" Because I didn't make it, I borrowed it. Authors don't make heroes, authors don't make tones, authors don't make events, they borrow them from their own experience, their own subconscious, the collective unconscious innate in human brains. I believe that makes them unoriginal. But as I said before, this is irrelevant. What makes art valuable is the aesthetic behind that which was borrowed. 

The main problem I am having with your use of the word 'original' is that you seem to take it (please correct me if I'm wrong) to mean "unlike something else" whereas I take it to mean "not derived from something else, not derived from the first form from which everything else is created."

Please don't take my use of "unoriginal" as insulting or derogatory or pessimistic. That's not what I'm trying to get across.


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## Xipoid (Apr 23, 2008)

Regarding the original post:


I think it all depends what you define "original" as. If I say an original story has _absolutely no_ elements that any other story has, then you are going to run of out things to write about rather quickly. However, if I say an original story is something that is not blatantly a parody/copy/remake of another particular story (not a general idea), then you'll never run out of material.


In all due seriousness, if you are going to impose a standard of original as "nothing similar to anything else in anyway", it serves no real point which makes me wonder if you are just being argumentative. (You as a general you)


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## Poetigress (Apr 24, 2008)

I think we might be into semantic issues not only of how one defines "original," but how "idea" is defined.  Yes, the genre of sf has given new concepts and devices and means for telling stories, but the stories being told are still human ones -- stories about our relationships with each other, with the world around us, wondering what happens when we die, what makes us human, and so on.  The way we explore those issues changes with new ideas and discoveries, but the issues themselves are the same questions humans have been pondering for ages and will continue to ask as long as humans exist.

I fall into the category of people who say it's impossible to tell a truly "original" story, because of the fact that the best stories are still about people, and while human culture changes, human nature really hasn't.  The struggles to relate to each other, to find our place in a hostile world, are still there just as they were thousands of years ago.  Parents and children, lovers, the struggle to know and choose between right and wrong, and what that even means -- that's the human heart of the story, whether it's being told in hieroglyphics on a temple wall or in HTML on a website.

And I don't see all of that as a bad thing, personally.  For me, I'm less concerned about writing something original (as in, "something no one else has ever done anything similar to before") as I am about writing something that's uniquely mine (as in, "a story the way only I can tell it").  It might seem like a fuzzy distinction, but it works for me.


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## Rhainor (Apr 24, 2008)

99% of everything has been thought of before.  However, if a writer or artist has not experienced a given thing, then he could something which is in a sense both original *and* a recreation.


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## Poetigress (Apr 24, 2008)

There's also the aspect of being influenced by something without consciously being aware of it, without intending to be derivative of that particular work.  We're all products of our time and culture, at least to some extent, and everything we experience can influence us and our stories.

Incidentally, this, to me, starts to get into the notion of "I don't read other people's stuff because I don't want it to influence me -- I want to be original," which has frankly always seemed a little silly to me, for more than one reason, but mostly because one's work doesn't become original simply because the writer is unaware of what's already been done.  It's true that you wouldn't be consciously imitating or deriving the idea from another work (again, here we're into what "original" means), but you're no more likely to come up with something "new" -- you're just more likely to _think_ you're the first person to come up with a particular idea, because you haven't personally run across it before.  

It's a bit of a paradox, perhaps -- I think, the more you read and experience, the more variations and possibilities you become aware of, and the more options you have to be able to combine elements in new ways -- and yet, the more you read and experience, the more you realize that things have always, in some form, been done before.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 26, 2008)

It always comes down to definition, doesn't it...
Then let me put it this way; what's the highest degree of 'original' possible in fiction?  Original in this case just meaning 'unlike what came before'.

I tried to think of an idea that couldn't be reduced to some basic human condition as ETC did with the sci-fi ideas I put forth, and I couldn't do it.  Which makes me understand what you meant about always being on the human tree.  Suppose, though, that we haven't explored the whole tree yet?



> In all due seriousness, if you are going to impose a standard of original as "nothing similar to anything else in anyway", it serves no real point which makes me wonder if you are just being argumentative.


But is it possible to come up with such a thing?  Have we really thought of everything there is possible to think of?
Although, such an idea I don't think would resonate real well with most people, simply because it would be so out of their realm of thought that it probably wouldn't make any sense.  In which case such an idea would be a little on the pointless side, so far as art is concerned.  But maybe not.


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## Xipoid (Apr 26, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:


> ...But is it possible to come up with such a thing?  Have we really thought of everything there is possible to think of?
> Although, such an idea I don't think would resonate real well with most people, simply because it would be so out of their realm of thought that it probably wouldn't make any sense.  In which case such an idea would be a little on the pointless side, so far as art is concerned.  But maybe not.




Well that lends itself to a two cases.

1) Humans have thought of everything possible

2) Humans have not thought of everything possible


In the event of case two, then it seems that humans are not "universally creative" in that they must base a new idea off a previous one instead of creating a whole new concept from complete and utter scratch. This would give an illusion a lack of original ideas, while in reality there are plenty. People just take small bridging steps towards them instead of large, inventive leaps. Eventually after enough time, we reach new ideas that seem fresh enough.



However, if it is case one... well that one is pretty self-explanatory.


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## El Furicuazo (Apr 25, 2009)

I don't remember where I read or listened to this, but in essence, story plots are the same things.  Also, fiction already has been used for a quite long time; & almost all the good topics & elements have been used, except for those that are extremely awkward for most people.

Besides, it's REALLY hard to be TOTALLY creative; with almost all that we create, there's some outer influence of some sort, no matter what.

To actually become more creative, we would need to think about other ways of social interaction & values in order to develop different plots.


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## Deosil Fox (Jan 12, 2010)

wow I totally agree with EVERYTHING that you said Oo


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## PheonixStar (Jan 12, 2010)

I think the story can suffer if you focus on uniqueness over content.

I think that it's usually people writing what they love that creates something "new," not people striving for newness for its own sake.


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## Atrak (Jan 12, 2010)

Deosil Fox said:


> wow I totally agree with EVERYTHING that you said Oo



Haha, thx for bringing this thread back, as I hadn't seen it  .



M. Le Renard said:


> I've been wondering about this for a long time. Is it really true that nothing anyone can create anymore can be truly original? That everything has to be based on something else?
> Essentially these are the arguments I've heard regarding this:
> "Every story ever written is based on something else.  Even Shakespeare borrowed his ideas from earlier works of literature."
> "Over the course of history, with so many people and so many ideas, every single story idea possible has already been thought of by someone else."
> ...



My sig says it all.


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