How to write fiction plagiarizing….lay outs

Are you sure you’re of a sound mind today? Are drugs finally legal in Mexico? Did you drink to your brim of margaritas and lost consciousness? Don’t you know plagiarizing is a criminal entreaty?

Before we go on…let’s chat about originality since…blank starts practically do not exist. The possibility to be able to create something out of nowhere is close to null. Why? Cause someone else beat us to invent Utnapishtim, Adam, Eve or Balam-Quitzé. I mean the myth of humanity, humanity as a concept, is more ancient than you or myself. And…we can’t re-invent it all, can we? Even if we were to think biblical characters did really exist…How can we know that Adam was Adam and not Esteban just so he donned the “first man” tag only because those jotting down god’s teachings didn’t like the name? It’s a humongous if….

So…why is that related to originality? All stories, even the ones in which the characters are talking little bunnies, deal with human concepts. That’s how and why it’s kinda harsh to be original. Love, revenge, rivalry, transformation and growing are human ideas. All stories are about what happens to human beings: sudden dead of the parents[1], dead of a beloved one, a wanted pregnancy with lots of risks[2], unwanted pregnancy without them but that places things upside down[3], adultery for justifiable reasons, adultery just because, jealousy, shotgun murder, political betrayal, unrelentless capitalism race…

And you still believe that no one, absolutely no one, copies from anybody else? At least a fraction of the idea?

“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the <<Ode to a Grecian Urn>> is worth any number of old ladies.”

—William Faulkner

“Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him[4].”

—Mark Twain

 “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.”

—Lionel Trilling

 “The immature poet steals; the mature poet plagiarizes.

—T.S. Eliot[5].

Every single one of us, who writes, designs, teaches or engineer; has a favourite thinker, engineer, designer or…a full apartment complex of them (mea culpa). Among those living in my apartment complex, there is a guy who wrote robots’ science fiction and his “Memories[6]”

In them (the last ones), Asimov more or less tells u show he startes copying the STRUCTURE of the stories from his favourite authors since, in his opinión, we all want to be like the best. Just saying, most of the living authors I have at least read the interview, mention a certain someone who used to live in La Mancha as their ideal…in Spanish. In English, they mention one of three: Stratford-upon-Avon, la Rue Morgue or Cthulhu.

It is from there that we plagiarize. The plagiarizing T. S. Eliot mentions is not the vulgar let’s see whom to steal ideas from. It is the study and imitation of the literary hero who wrote the bloody thing which inspired us to write until we learn how to create something on our own. That, or the will to see our nemesis down. What with Balenciaga buying Channel to undo them and better his own patterning? This is the plagiarize I talk about in the headliner.

Who inspired you? Have you tried to repeat what made their work a success? Are their literary resources ancient of minty breeze? Anyone who hasn’t taken anything from anywhere else for their own stuff…can throw the first stone of an absolutely pristine and devoid of inspiration from other art works’ very own fiction.

Oh…and about the other plagiarizing. I’m against it. About the one stealing other’s ideas.

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[1] The most remarkable fetish of a certain animation house

[2] Steel magnolias,  American movie of 1989 I haven’t watched it yet.

[3] Jenny-Juno, South Korean movie of 2005 and quite, quite similar to Juno, American film of 2007.

[4] Maybe not as sure his wife had already said it…and the other way around.

[5] 20 Master plots. Ronald B. Tobìas.

[6] Twice in fact.