Influences, Part 1

It is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. In writing, you often want to pay homage to those who have created works you love. Figuring out how not to plagiarize can be tricky, though, and if you're not careful, you'll end up with a derivative work.

Take the following book concepts, for instance. In the first, a young farm boy who was raised by his uncle finds that he is destined to revive an ancient warrior caste that once brought peace and justice to all lands. The caste was betrayed, as he finds out, by his own father, a fellow warrior, at the behest of one who has now been made emperor. It's up to the farm boy turned hero to right the wrongs and overcome his father's failure. In the second, a fellowship of humans, elves, and dwarves has to keep an evil overlord from capturing an artifact that they miraculously stole from him. In the third, a world is protected by dragon-riding knights who have telepathic links to their mounts.

Know the stories? If you guessed Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and the Dragonriders of Pern... you're wrong. It's one story called Eragon, written by Christopher Paolini, a boy who apparently has no concept of original storylines. Remarkably, it has succeeded in the marketplace, and has even had a movie made from it. So if it was so successful, why should anyone try to come up with an original idea if they can model Paolini and rehash all the story elements they like best?

The answer is simple. These stories have nothing to say. They only pander to readers that care nothing about message and want only a diversion for a few hours while they read. If you want to simply provide an escape, go with the tried and true. But if you want people to remember what you said, you'd better be saying something important, something people have never heard before, or that they have never heard in the way you want to say it.

How, then, do you avoid Paolini's mistake? One key is to focus on themes rather than plots. Remember, a theme is a message you are trying to communicate; a plot is a conflict that is resolved in the work. Themes are inherently more important than plots because they deal with conflicts that go beyond the storyline of the work. For example, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest deals with the conflict of independent man versus the "Combine," socialist conformists. The work goes far beyond whether or not McMurphy can overcome Nurse Ratched; it asks the readers if they can overcome society's pressures. One need not rely on the plot and stylistic devices of Kesey's work to write a similar work. The key lies in the theme.

Decide what themes beyond your primary message you want to address. What works express these themes? How do they do it? How well do they do it? (If you are having trouble deciding on the themes, think of some works that you treasure. What themes are these works expressing that cause you to love them so much? The Lord of the Rings deals with corruption and redemption in its subplot of Gollum and Frodo's interaction. In Fullmetal Alchemist, the Elric brothers are frequently confronted with the cost of power. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea deals with the battle against the self.) List the differences and similarities in the ways these works handle your chosen themes. What methods resonate the most in your mind? How can you improve on such thematic devices or suit them to your work? How can you make them work toward a unified story?

This is a lot to think about, and I've barely even begun to sift through the massive number of works I want to emulate. Next time we'll follow this method I've laid out and work through some of the stories I want to influence my writing.