Thread: Stick with Old Themes?

I have this theory, and by all means correct me if I’m wrong, but I think authors struggle to find an original idea when really all they need to do is put an original twist on an old idea.

Vampires are totally worn out—or are they? Stephen King put a new twist on “Dracula” when he wrote “Salem’s Lot.” And then Ann Rice made the modern romantic vampire with “Interview with the Vampire.” I don’t think we have to ditch Vampires, all we have to do is put a new twist on them. Same thing with werewolves, ghosts, etc.

In fact, one could argue that you want to stay within the motifs that society is already used to. If you make a brand new novel about a brand new creature, it’s a fifty-fifty chance no one will want to look at it.

What do you think about this idea?

I think it's fifty fifty. I mean of course you can put your own spin on anything, and being a good enough writer it can work. Though again vampires have had hundreds of twist, your job is to make me interested a one hundred and first time.

The other hand making a new creature is a toss up. It can come across unbelievable. I think vampires, werewolves, elves, ect.. became popular for the fact they could be real. So making a new creature is a test to how well you can make me believe in this creature. Also the way you use the creature. You used Steven King as an example for vampires. Steven King also has had original creatures that have worked for his style. It's all a matter of writing down a good premise and running with it.

I dunno, I think it depends. All things being equal, like plot, writing quality, etc, if you're looking for commercial success then I think using the old themes will probably work better than creating something new. Most everyone knows what a werewolf, vampire, or elf is, so it's no new territory that they have to conceptualize. They can rely on their already existing schema. I think it's incredibly rare for brand new things to gain traction. The only real modern example I know of is zombies. Think of all the recognizable aliens of Star Wars/Star Trek and how they're not familiar in the minds of most general audiences. That is the hurdle that you'd have to cross when creating something new.

That being said, I hate the way a single theme, style, or piece of fiction gets remanufactured over and over again, because in my opinion it retards the creative progress. If everyone writes their fantasy race as elves, then nobody will create a new, perhaps an even fantastically more interesting race that doesn't exist yet. I think it takes far more creativity on the part of the artist to make something new rather than retool the old. Anyone can take two things that are unrelated and put them together. For example what if vampires were all superheroes? Take one thing, superheroes, put it with vampires and boom, there's an idea. It might be a really good commercial success, but that took literally 2 seconds and no effort on my part to think of.

And that's my minor rant.

Theoretically, every thought has been thought (and really this becomes more believable if you turn to a deterministic view of the universe, with trains of thought moving down the lifestream and nothing original can really be thought of because that would require interference from outside the system i.e. nature), which for me makes it a lot easier to just say screw worrying about originality--if you're meant to be original you will be. Tropes are not evil, people--they would not have grown to be tropes if they had not appeared frequently throughout culture (though admittedly some tropes become tropes because they're just frickin' infamous). So if you're afraid of sucking because you're writing about vampires, fear not--chances are you will do better than if you writing about wereleopards (note: not a new idea; Glen Cook had it first) because people like vampires. What you should be more afraid of is writing something that sucks, and even then it's no guarantee that you'll fail considering the quality of some vamp lit you see about these days (have I mentioned my intense distaste for Amelia Atwater-Rhodes?) but I digress.

So anyway anything can be made to not suck. Stop worrying.

Originally Posted by Edward G

I have this theory, and by all means correct me if I’m wrong, but I think authors struggle to find an original idea when really all they need to do is put an original twist on an old idea.

That's exactly what they need to do. My current novel was heavily inspired by another work to begin with, but as I wrote it and the characters began to take on life, it quickly became my own. Every theme has been done. No theme has been done with your unique point of view.

See my signature for my favorite author's take on the matter.

Originally Posted by Skodt

It's all a matter of writing down a good premise and running with it.

I think that's quite true. There's an author on this board whom I will not mention because I may want to review his or her work in the near future, and one of their novels is a very unoriginal story line, but from what I can tell so far, the writing is great and keeps me glued to the pages. On the other hand a book I've committed myself to reviewing next (The Innocent, by David Baldacci) is simply terrible. It would basically be unpublishable if it were not put out by a popular author.

Originally Posted by Man From Mars

I dunno, I think it depends. All things being equal, like plot, writing quality, etc, if you're looking for commercial success then I think using the old themes will probably work better than creating something new. Most everyone knows what a werewolf, vampire, or elf is, so it's no new territory that they have to conceptualize.
And that's my minor rant.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. It's like a sad truth.

Originally Posted by Vertigo

Theoretically, every thought has been thought (and really this becomes more believable if you turn to a deterministic view of the universe, with trains of thought moving down the lifestream and nothing original can really be thought of because that would require interference from outside the system i.e. nature), which for me makes it a lot easier to just say screw worrying about originality--if you're meant to be original you will be.

Well, of course, if the universe is completely deterministic then we will write what we have been programmed to write and nothing more or less. So, to say "screw worrying about originality" would be exactly the position to take.

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

That's exactly what they need to do. My current novel was heavily inspired by another work to begin with, but as I wrote it and the characters began to take on life, it quickly became my own. Every theme has been done. No theme has been done with your unique point of view.

See my signature for my favorite author's take on the matter.

Yes, my current novel that I'm working on is about a comet hitting the earth. It's been done before in various ways, but mine is a different take on it altogether--and with an unexpected ending. So, we'll see how that goes.

Originally Posted by Man From Mars

Anyone can take two things that are unrelated and put them together. For example what if vampires were all superheroes? Take one thing, superheroes, put it with vampires and boom, there's an idea. It might be a really good commercial success, but that took literally 2 seconds and no effort on my part to think of.

Lol. It's hilarious because it's so true!

There's a book out with superheroes fighting zombies. One superhero is turned into a zombie. He then became a Zombie with superpowers.

Amazon.com: Ex-Heroes (978193486128: Peter Clines: Books

TVTropes has a good article on this.
I think that one kind of has to lean on writers that came before one. Take, for instance, the film The Matrix. This film seemed highly original to many of the people who were first watching it, but it was actually, at it's core, just a combination of the idea of a machine rebellion with the genre of cyberpunk, a genre which was itself based on film noir, which is itself based on hardboiled detective fiction, which could not exist without the influence of early detective fiction, etc. All of these works were highly innovative, but none of them were written in a vacuum. No modern romance could exist without Pyramus and Thisbe, no modern tale of an epic journey would exist without The Odyssey, etc.And there's a reason for this. You can't think about something nearly as well on your own as you can with the help of everyone who's ever thought about that thing before.
At the same time though, this doesn't prevent original thought. for instance, in one of the ideas for worlds that I've been toying around with, there are tall, bioluminescent humanoids who move in eleven dimensions and can time travel, but I'm not using them to make comments about glowing, eleven-dimensional, time-traveling cloud elves, but rather the "fair folk" archetype, and, more generally, the concept of "the other", and in that, I can draw on a lot of established archetypes.

Jim Butcher wrote a 6-book series based on this. A member of a message-group or forum that Jim frequents said that it's impossible to make a new, interesting and good story out of old ones... Jim said otherwise. I can't be sure who challenged whom, but in the end, that forum member said, "Fine, using pokemon and the lost Roman legion, you cannot create an original story". The result was the Codex Alera books, and by God, they're great.

There's that old adage, "There's nothing new under the sun", so don't worry yourself about it. It's what you bring to the writing that matters.

I don't think anything is truly original. Even the bible stories are based on older stories. The only original stories were probably told when our ancestors first learnt enough words to convey something meaningful.

An ancient Roman official once looked at a catapult and concluded that they had reached the apex of human engineering, that nothing new could be created beyond their current technology. He was wrong of course.

So are there no new ideas under the sun? Nah, I think there are plenty of new ideas out there, waiting to be thought. There will be new kinds of stories and plot lines to discover. Instead of trying to combine things that already exist, I think we should challenge ourselves to come up with something new, as well as reformat the old.