Start writing

>start writing
>everything i write is a copy or some form of copy of other media that I 'drew inspiration' from
>feel like im ripping them off and stop

am i creatively bankrupt? is this normal?

Stop making this thread it's not funny.

wat


first thread about this ive ever made, give me an actual answer, fag

Only the creator may truly create.

Nothing is original. There is nothing new under the sun. Fiction is largely iterative, both of real life and from other fiction.

The trick is ripping off things that aren't widely known and obscuring the iteration with superficial changes, e.g. replacing "sir" with "ser".

well what are you writing about op?

You can write whatever you want to.

It's fine.

t. never familiarized self with copyright law

Just don't write, you'll get sued.

>writing with the expectation of making money from it

lol

stealing is cool
-ts eliot

It was going to be a short story, or half-book or something along these lines.

What I had written so far was this.
Archaeologist accidentally kills someone during a dig. He think's hes expelled from the society, and is waiting on a letter from them. He receives one instead from someone claiming to be his lost brother, even though his family never mentioned one and the rest are long dead. The letter details something amazing he found, because he 'brother' is an archaeologist as well, and tells him to come inspect it.

Main character agrees and leaves, has to take a carriage to the town. (Its kind of medieval times, furthest advancements are steam ships and flintlocks) The town is known for being kind of weird and isolated. During the carriage trip of 5 days, him and the driver pass through a blasted lands. This area was a site for a crusade, the crusaders being holy men chosen by the church to seek out and expel the plague.

There they encounter a veteran crusader, who basically asks them for a ride. He alludes that theres more to the plague than the church actually reveals, but wont say more. During the last day of their carriage trip, they're attacked by abominations. Things that are horrid lumps of flesh, with the attributes of humans and animals alike, all molded together. Crusader seems to know how to handle them, carriage driver dies.
Thats it so far. It was going to evolve into supernatural horror. The end is the group finds the source of the horrors and subsequently the plague (at least in that area), and it turns out the source is actually the main character. During the dig he encountered a supernatural being or idol or whatever. He was enthralled by them, did their bidding for five years and then was sent back in time in order to convince his past self to align with the supernatural beings, except speed up the process of whatever they were having him do. Main character agrees to join the supernatural beings, because history repeats itself blah blah, but the crusader kills him at the end, which also causes the horror to never have happened.

The waters of originality are only found by cutting through the ice of inspiration

if you want to read a weird book

email me: [email protected]

it isnt online, it was temporarily for 1 year then the publisher removed it

It happens mate, it's a cycle.

>enamoured with book
>INSPIRED
>write shitty story in a blatant rip off style
>enamoured by other book
>INSPIRED
>write shitty story in a blatant rip off style
>enamoured by other book
>etc.

And then you just keep doing that but each time you'll find there are things YOU like to do, then you'll notice there a little sayings, sentences, words and syntax that you seem to keep repeating in each of your stories, this is your style beginning to emerge and then on it goes. Keep reading and keep writing you nigger.

Originality comes from engaging with inspiration, that is, acknowledging that inspiration comes *from* something allows you to turn to that something and interrogate it, ask it in an intimate way what it's telling you and why particularly its speaking to you. Your attempt to explain this speaking inspiration is originality.

You should have a fifty page sequence of the main character sorting tessera into their correct findbags and documenting where each was found on a plan of the site.

>is this normal?

Yea. Everything ever written stands on the shoulders of giants OP, but that doesn't mean it isn't good.

"Good poets borrow. Great poets steal." -Me

...

Most writers imitate someone at the start.

Kerouac imitated Thomas Wolfe for years.

David Foster Wallace's debut novel is literally just the written version of a bunch of Monty Python Sketches (The Man Who Talks About Things In A Roundabout Way, Mr. Creosote etc)

You stopped, so no.

Life of pi is a rip off and made it's writer very rich.
The guy who wrote it first is long dead and his family couldn't do shit about it.

""Good poets borrow. Great poets steal." -Me" - Me