Kane

As a young teen, fifteen or so years ago, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings inspired my creativity and my desire to write like no book had ever done before. Nowadays I don't know if I could read through the plodding pace with which Tolkien wrote, but I still love the world he created. Now, in an effort to write serious fantasy, I continuously begin stories in a style similar to Robert E. Howard's Conan, another immense influence of mine. I am also influenced by George R. R. Martin, which tends to drive me even further into a world without magic, revolving around human struggle and treachery. The problem is, I find, that I lack inspiration in this regard. A very large part of me wants to write something whimsical and magical, a land of little people, Elves, ominous orcs, trolls, ogres and Dragons. I would like to weave fantastical tales of the impossible, the absurd, the comical, while imbuing them with the realism of the "human" condition.

I have developed into a person who loathes copying others. In my writing, my music, my mode of dress; in everything, if I think I am doing something similar to somebody else, I scrap what I am doing and start over. I think this is, in large part, why I have never finished anything but a few songs, and no stories. How do I write stories that reek of The Hobbit, or Conan, or The Necroscope and still be taken seriously? How do I write stories that so obviously betray my greatest inspirations without being seen as a copycat? Is it possible? Does it matter? Were it only for my own amusement, I dout that it would. But, since the only job from which I can see myself taking professional enjoyment is a professional author, I feel like I need to figure this out before proceeding.

Any thoughts?

Straylight

Every story in the world is the same story. Person desires something. Person seeks it. Person encounters obstacles (internal or external, social or environmental). Eventually, either overcomes them, or fails.

Every story builds off that story. You can't escape it, unless you write Portrait Prose exclusively.

Lord of the Rings ripped off all sorts of Mythology, the same way The Wheel of Time ripped off Lord of the Rings and Terry Goodkind then ripped off the Wheel of Time. The end result, however, is different. Once you recognize that, as a writer, all you're doing is finding new symbols to tell the one story that man has told since the dawn of time, you're free. Borrow as you will, but know that, unless you actively steal prose, you'll end up with a new story. You literally couldn't sit down and re-write a story verbatim.

Right after I read Zelanzy's Amber for the first time, I was in love with the concept, and I sat down, renamed the characters, tweaked the setting and story a little, and started writing, mainly as an exercise in self-indulgence. I felt it was plaigurism, and I never planned on doing anything with the story.

12,000 words later, I had a story that was nothing at all like the work it was drawn from.

Best of luck,

~SL

Kimahri

I agree straylight. I think everything written has influences that go back down to the classics in some way or another. If you can come up with something totally original then more power to you. I myself have influences from Tolkien and Jordan, however, I hope that I can stray away from copying their stories (which I believe I have) and create my own and one that will be respected among the writing community. Write what you want to write and don't worry about whether or not it sounds too much like something else. If a particular scene seems too much like another you have read then change it in a way that makes completely different. Your writing and the story you tell are only measured up to your own creative standards. Remember that you are in control of how it shapes into a story. Take the cliché and make them completely the opposite. I am sure after some time thinking you will be able to come up with something to work on and develop. Hope that helps in some way or another.

kimahri

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simon woodhouse

Perhaps you need to have a heart to heart with yourself and face a few home truths.

Without changing your approach, it sounds like you're always going to struggle, and by wanting to be unique you're almost working against yourself.

I think it doesn't really matter too much if what you write is similar to other people's work, because they'll always be something about it that's come from you. That's not the problem; the problem seems to be coming from your insistence on being unique. You need to address that issue more than anything.

Talia_Brie

You've read On Writing, right? I'm re-reading that at the moment and one of the things that is sticking with me this time is King's idea that writing needs to be honest. Honest to yourself, honest to the reader.

I think if you can look at what you're creating this way, that you're being honest with yourself, then you'll be able to work around this compulsion you have to be perfectly original.

Everyone has influences, and writers who inspire them. Unfortunately you write fantasy and your influences are 1. the man who created the genre (Tolkein) and 2. the man who created the greatest hero of all time (Howard/Conan).

Your work is always going to reflect the influence these two people had on you. I don't think you need to be afraid of that, as long as you can look at what you write and say, 'this is honestly something that has come from me'.

You are a very strong writer, in my opinion, and I don't think I'd want to see an unrealistic expectation stifle that. You write a genre that is called Heroic Fantasy. There's nothing wrong with that. Ray Fiest and David Gemmell have both forged sparkling careers writing in that field.

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suzakugaiden

"Every story in the world is the same story. Person desires something. Person seeks it. Person encounters obstacles (internal or external, social or environmental). Eventually, either overcomes them, or fails."

Being that general is asinine. You've also managed to describe game theory and Darwinism. Not to mention that this technically also covers search algorithms in programming, if you replace people with some vague abstraction.

Also, that "there are no original stories" thing is a an incredibly dumb cliche. I don't care how true it is. It's old, it's uninteresting, everybody's heard it, and I'm immensely sick of hearing it repeatedly. Not attacking you, mind you. I just don't think it's really valid advice anymore.

Anyway though, I guess I'll agree that often times (God, that's a crappy phrase) frequently, one will start writing a story that bears a major influence from something, and end up with something different. In relation to my own writing, Conifer was originally VERY similar to the webcomics Akaelae and Terinu.

I have odd influences.

Finally, some real advice. Read books outside of what you normally would. Expose yourself to weird crap. Find out what your dearest truth is, pick something else, and then write an essay tearing apart whatever that something else was. Pick an arbitrary fetish, write a literotic piece about it, and use strong allusions to esoteric religious texts.

And if all else fails, read Joyce.

bob rulz

Just because you draw significant inspiratin from other areas doesn't mean that you're ripping their work off. Nowadays, everything draws inspiration from something else, even if it's a huge combination of other works. Tolkien essentially launched the fantasy genre, and look at how many people have been successful using this same idea of elves, trolls, ogres, orcs, dwarves, etc. There is nothing wrong with writing heroic fantasy or any other genre you want to write. You just have to do certain genres well. Just an old rehash of LotR, for example, needs to be pretty well-written to be successful. Many people have accused the Sword of Shannara of being a complete ripoff of Lord of the Rings (which, imo, it wasn't), yet it was a bestseller when it was released and Terry Brooks has been one of the most successful fantasy authors (although I don't know how respected he is in the professional writing industry...I've rarely heard anything about him on writing forums). Don't be afraid to write what you want to. Almost everything nowadays draws inspiration from previous works.

Straylight

Much like saying, "I don't mean to bother you, but...", I've found that anyone who has to disclaim their statements with, "Not attacking you" is most likely doing just that. Indeed, you've called me asinine, and a dispenser of invalid advice, as well as indirectly implying that I was dumb and uninteresting.

I just wanted to point that out.

I respectfully disagree with your post.

~SL

Kane

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I should just write what I want to write, and damn anyone who doesn't understand. Hopefully, if I can write without trying to be perfect, or original, I can stick with it. I seem to write a bit, offer it up for critique, and then mill over it for hours, trying to edit it, until eventually I lose interest. Thanks again.

cbrmale

First up, I have never been a fantasy story reader. Or a fantasy (science fiction) film or TV watcher either. I am quite grounded in reality. Second, the sheer size of the Lord of the Rings books put me right off. I have picked up my son's books and read a couple of pages and the pacing! It is sooo slow...

I have written several short stories, three of which have been published. And I have written one novel, currently entered in a competition and doing the rounds of publishers. I am writing another novel at the moment.

The concept for my novel came to me in a vision. Not a dream, it was too vivid. The opening sequence, the female character was so real I could reach out and touch her... With the beginnings of a storyline, and a character talking to me, the rest was easy. Some of my short stories were similar, the best ones were when the character was whispering in my ear. The strange thing is all my visionary characters have been women. Perhaps not strange, I am more comfortable being close to women than I have ever been with men.

The novel follows the usual arc of the key characters surmounting a number of obstacles before they reach their destiny. In this case destiny is bringing the man who is trying to kill her to justice as well as consumating the romantic relationship into marriage. But anyone who reads the actual words will be thinking something entirely different. A crime story based in an exotic location with multi-dimensional characters where the cross-cultural romance is strong sub-plot to the solving of the mystery.

I was talking to a published fantasy writer who is the same age as me. She said she took to writing when she had a vision with a character that wouldn't leave her alone. And I have found that many writers start with a vision, a story that writes itself, in their earlier works at least.

So Kane, can you have a vision? Will you wake up one morning and there is a character telling you "My name is Tanya and I am a young Russian girl and I am paying for the mistakes I have made in my life. But I am a good person at heart and I want a fresh start." Honestly, why Russian? But that's what happened to me, and it was a great start. A girl who's made mistakes, caught up with the Russian mafia, needs a rescuer to save her life.

All the best for the future. The only advice I can give is that my vision may have come to me because I am always exploring books, films and TV shows outside of the square. Perhaps I have read or watched so many different and exotic things that dreaming something that was a little bizzare wasn't so unexpected at all.

Mike C

This is the advice Michael Moorcock gave me, and it's the best advice I've ever been given.

Usually you write fantasy because you read fantasy, and want to emulate it. Ditto every other genre, but it becomes an incestuous process that never injects anything new.

Read widely and wisely. Read genres you usually avoid. Read classics. Read voraciously, then come back to your chosen genre better informed and with a new slant.

And if all else fails, read Joyce!

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Kane

This is what I do. Sci-Fi, Horror, Adventure, Classic Lit., Fantasy, Fiction, Non-Fiction. I probably read it all, save for Romance novels. I write fantasy because I love warriors, swords, horses, steep mountains, plummeting caves. I want to create worlds that aren't bound by the ridiculous socialities of present day earth, etc. I just love fantasy, and would like to write something that is like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror, all wrapped into one. Thanks again for the comments. I think I'm figuring out what I must do.

CZ

Kane, I think you hit upon something in the original post when you said that LOTR today would be too plodding for you to read. My personal opinion is that fantasy is a world that has parameters, but also has the ability to change and evolve within these parameters. I share some of your concerns since I write fantasy myself and am 36k words into the first book of my planned trilogy.

I agree with the people in this thread who have encouraged you to read outside the genre. I read a daily newspaper plus several news sites (bbc, etc) to try and broaden my horizons and spark ideas, not only for the newspaper I write for, but for my own personal ideas. I truly enjoy nonfiction travel books and books on other cultures such as the !Kung from Africa. I feel that reading a mishmash of things (including things from the genre you write in) provide "ingredients" in your head.

I also feel (and this may be controversial given some of the attitudes on this board) that you should give yourself time to "cook" these ingredients. A lot of people are hell bent on "write X amount per day, get it done." While I understand and respect that attitude I have never and will never force myself to hurry through a creation process. If I don't feel I have fleshed out an idea for my book well enough, I will simply work on a writing prompt for that day and let the idea flesh out by writing a few sentences defining it in one of my "random files," and then come back to it. That way, I get some writing done for the day but I don't screw up a fledgling idea. Then again, this way of thinking and working could be a totally personal thing. I just find that giving ideas some time to grow (a few days, a few weeks, in some rarer cases, a few months or longer) can be a good idea because they morph into more complicated things. The trick is to be able to work on something while your ideas grow so that you're not just sitting around on your butt not doing anything. My solution is to do writing prompts, your mileage may vary.

I really feel fantasy (maybe more than any other genre) builds on previous ideas almost so much that you're standing on the shoulders of other authors. The trick is to find unique angles. When Tolkien emerged with Middle Earth, that was a very unique angle, however when Paolini came out with 'Eragon,' it was not. Can you tell the difference between these books? I think you can. And since you can, I think you possess the kind of ethics and perspective needed to keep writing your novel without sitting back and worrying overmuch about it. A little worry is healthy. I do it. But I think the very fact that you do worry will keep another author's voice/ideas from creeping into your story just because you *do* worry and you will have the eye to see it and the ear to maintain your writing voice.

I hope this helps. I've thought about this a lot and came to these conclusions a few months ago. I find that writing every day (or nearly every day as the case is now that vacation has ended) really helps to put things in perspective because I produce more writing and read with a critical eye.

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