inspiration and flawed fiction
Jul. 28th, 2014 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliRipping off other people's stories is a classic way to get ideas.
On the whole, I've found that bad, or at least flawed, fiction is the ideal source. Good fiction, you can see the idea in action just by re-reading it. Bad fiction, the only way you can see the idea hopping through flaming hoops with more grace than a tiger is to make it do so yourself.
(Well, usually. Sometimes a throw-away idea is used as background, or a lie, or something, in good fiction and you can steal it and bring it to the foreground and so have a story.)
But not always. I was reflecting on Andre Norton's Forerunner Foray. There are two major things I noticed reading it as an adult that I missed as an adolescent. One was that the heroine and hero traipsed around in history without the slightest concern about whether they were affecting the future, or the well-being of the aliens and their civilization -- and given their status, they threw a real monkey wrench in there. And I played around with that and have a story about lords and loyalty and death. Also, the heroine's big motive was to Get Her Hands on an Alien Artifact. It obsesses her. Her boss thinks it's good treasure, another psyker thinks it's a valuable artifact. . . and no one thinks maybe this demonstrably powerful thing has an agenda of its own. Which idea sits on its own and does not sprout a story. . . .
On the whole, I've found that bad, or at least flawed, fiction is the ideal source. Good fiction, you can see the idea in action just by re-reading it. Bad fiction, the only way you can see the idea hopping through flaming hoops with more grace than a tiger is to make it do so yourself.
(Well, usually. Sometimes a throw-away idea is used as background, or a lie, or something, in good fiction and you can steal it and bring it to the foreground and so have a story.)
But not always. I was reflecting on Andre Norton's Forerunner Foray. There are two major things I noticed reading it as an adult that I missed as an adolescent. One was that the heroine and hero traipsed around in history without the slightest concern about whether they were affecting the future, or the well-being of the aliens and their civilization -- and given their status, they threw a real monkey wrench in there. And I played around with that and have a story about lords and loyalty and death. Also, the heroine's big motive was to Get Her Hands on an Alien Artifact. It obsesses her. Her boss thinks it's good treasure, another psyker thinks it's a valuable artifact. . . and no one thinks maybe this demonstrably powerful thing has an agenda of its own. Which idea sits on its own and does not sprout a story. . . .
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 08:30 am (UTC)only way you can see the idea hopping… is to make it do so yourself
This is why I have become progressively unable to watch video productions - if I have a STOP button I will use it, because I'm already rewriting the dialogue in my head and essentially making the story I'd tell, which is usually better!
[I mean, gawd, come on - I can see why such-and-so movie wasn't a blockbuster success - what I don't see is why they thought it would be with this crappy screenplay! Idiots.]
As for your artifact, it's older than the character, right? By orders of magnitude, yah, which means it's had all the time it needs to telepathically shape the emerging consciousness of the child, 'dream-programming' her from Day One to have that weird, driving obsession to find it and free it…
- To bitter-sweeten the pot, it may have done what the Second Foundation did to Arkady Darrell - her EEG didn't show tampering from its original state because it already was, had been since birth, and in the process they 'overclocked' her mind, making her a bright, indeed brilliantly clever girl, so it was all okay, you know… Your artifact, logically deducing that a beautiful, brilliant woman is more likely to succeed at the goal than a lumpy dull prole, has done them one better, tweaked things, “As the twig is bent so grows the tree,” you know - producing a Hedy Lamarr. O my gawd. But she didn't come by this bounty naturally, and the price for it must be paid…
[Indeed, it might have been doing this for generations - suppose her entire family of de' Medicis owe their success to this. Now, what? Without the artifact - their children will be dull-normal, ordinary, and the family's empire will crumble and fade…]
Yup - I could have been a writer, once.
[Edit: I'd nix that last - it's too similar to what Galadriel told Frodo, that the destruction of the “One Ring to Rule Them All” will pull the bathplug, and all the Rings will fade out and all that they made possible (including Lothlorien itself) will drain away…]
[Then again, given the original point of this post, “Ripping off other people's stories,” hey, go for it!]
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 12:30 pm (UTC)Not that someone else's couldn't do that. 0:)
Me, I became a writer as much to get the ideas out of my head and onto the paper as to avoid word-deprivation. (Really! Just because we were going on vacation, we had to return all our books to the library a week before, and do without any new ones!)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 05:35 pm (UTC)But, y' know, that would make for interesting character drama. Suppose - to continue the analogy - Tolkien had written the story differently (though he had his reasons for how it is). The possessor of a Great Ring does not die, Gandalf said - he does not grow, or obtain more life, he merely continues until at last every moment is weariness… And we do see that Bilbo has aged, though very slowly. Fiddlesticks. Say that the moment he took hold of Gollum's Precious the aging process stopped. Miraculously - magically - cell renewal is held perfect, indefinitely. There's no need to bring in Baggins: The Next Generation; Bilbo himself IS Frodo's age, still, and will remain so! Unless and until he casts the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, that is. Then it's Game Over. Remember what happened when Dorian Gray stabbed his magic portrait? They found a horrifying, monstrous, debauched, almost unrecognizable corpse on the floor, before a (now marred) portrait painting of a young god. Go ahead, Bilbo - throw it in! But you might as well throw yourself in also, save us the trouble of burying what's left of you when deferred Time takes its revenge…
[Melkor made the Orcs “in envy and mockery of Elves.” As the Lucifer-analogue, he would know the trick if anyone does save Illuvatar Himself: Do Orcs also possess Elveness immortality? The point is never addressed. But the Ring then could confer that upon its possessor. Presto! Welcome to the next ten thousand centuries of youth and health… in theory. In practice, not so much, because Ee-eevil.]
In this case, yes, our fiery sexy romance-novel heroine with multiple doctorates and Paris Hilton wealth confronts the reality of Donovan's Brain - which complacently informs her of what will happen to her if she destroys it. As Khan said, “Not all at once - and not instantly, to be sure…
“Does the name 'Charlie Gordon' ring a bell?
“Go ahead, press the detonator - and all that you are will be cut off at the root, and will wither away, day by day… You'll retain just enough intelligence to recognize what you see in the mirror - and weep…”
“… Um. Say, guys, y' know, I've been thinking, and, um…”
- and gosh, what happens next?
My child, you have come to me - my son. For who now is your father if it is not me? I am the well spring from which you flow. When I am gone, you will have never been. What would your world be, without me? My son…
Thulsa Doom, Conan the Barbarian
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 06:43 pm (UTC)For instance, Bilbo happens to find the Ring as Sauron is arising as the Necromancer. Suppose he had found it earlier. Would have been a lot harder to work up the enthusiasm to destroy it without Sauron breathing down the back of their necks.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 07:11 pm (UTC)This is why the Elves were horrified when they encountered Men - where they came from, if fifty years went by between Step 1 and Step 2 of a plan, so what? Fifty minutes, fifty seconds, fifty years, comme ci, comme ca… Now they so much as turn around and sneeze, and turn back to find “Son of” standing in for the guy they'd just been talking to…
[To the Elves, all Men were like the Ray Bradbury story, “Fire and Ice,” where people aged out their entire lives in just seven days. “Now, wait a minute…”]
So, yah, Bilbo went on his adventure, returned to the Shire, and, what was it, thirty-odd years then passed (from WWII to Watergate). The Birthday Party happens, Gandalf ducks out to do some quick research, and eleven more years pass before he returns! (Numbers approximate. It might have been seventeen years - from Apollo 11 to Challenger.)
I mean, never mind traveling to Mordor - Frodo could have built the road himself. La, di da di dum…
I wonder to what extent this glacial velocity (and corresponding redwood lifespans) was Tolkien's rebellion against the madly accelerating 20th century.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 08:40 pm (UTC)And your main characters are not elves.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 12:25 pm (UTC)Oh yeah. If I ever do manage to write that fantasy novel I have (copious) notes for, it'll owe its existence to a TV show with a brilliant premise that was utterly, utterly wasted.
Good stories I just want to roll around in. Flawed stories I want to rewrite. (Which is why I'm a horrible person to watch movies/TV with. I either leave or talk through the whole thing.)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 12:48 pm (UTC)