My father is a writer and has been his entire life. He always shows a great deal of interest in what I come up with but it always seems to be so he can simply tell me the title of a book, or film, that already exists and then just leave it at that. It crushes my drive, does anyone have any tips on how to just let it slide off my back, or even help making something more original so he can't just gun me down?
Sure. Middle fingers. I always have one ready for friends/family and the other handy for industry/gatekeeper types. It's a little juvenile and a little stupid (to quote Ferris Bueller) but there's really no other defense. Writing will drive you crazy without a little "fuck you" available in the defense mechanism toolbox. The criticism will hit you like a firehouse no matter which writing path you choose. It's almost like a rite of passage. Sometimes I think they only invented writing to give people a socially acceptable excuse to kick one another in the balls. Writing is like any other art form. It's something that doesn't exist and nobody needs. Art for art's sake. Write it because you want do. If you're looking for approval, you will invariably be disappointed. I know that sounds cynical, but cynicism is one of a writer's most effective tools. You said, "It crushes your drive." That's the wrong way to look at it. Your drive is the only thing you have control over. The rest is up to other people, and you have no control over them. If you're looking externally for motivation you're fucked before you can get out of the parking lot. As for originality just forget about it. It's a unicorn. It doesn't exist. Your dad didn't write anything original either unless he predates Shakespeare. Writing, if anything, is a study in the careful art of derivation. Hell, even the publishers aren't terribly keen on originality despite their assertions to the contrary. They want shit that sells. And shit that sells can only be forecasted by other shit that sold before. Else we wouldn't be obsessed with genre and pigeonholing. Obviously this is an oversimplification but the underpinning logic still applies. The trick is to write tried and true stories with a unique little twist that can pass the initial originality eye test, but further review will reveal the derivation. And that's okay. It's not a secret or anything. Nobody expects you to reinvent the wheel or anything. I don't know your dad or anything about your situation, but if you're describing it in terms of "gunning you down," I don't think the underlining issue has anything to do with writing. Forgive me for being presumptuous, but that sounds like an endeavor that might not end satisfactorily for you, so write what you want because you want to. It's easy for me to say because I'm divorced from the emotions involved here, but the writing doesn't care about it one way or the other. Just do it.
Yup. It's shitty hearing that kind of thing from a parent or authority figure like a teacher, but what you have to come to terms with is that it's not about you. It's just about them being smug. Nothing is original; every work of fiction can be compared to another one (another ten!). That doesn't mean it's not worth making. My advice would be to stop sharing things with him.
Damn straight! Dad: What are you working on? Jack: Nothing. Dad: Nothing? I just saw you writing something. Jack: You wouldn't like it. It's not original.
Life is not original. There is nothing new under sun. The life we live, fall in love, fight, tell the truth, lie, have been done and is being done by people across the world and throughout time. But, we, as individuals, are original. So, by you living your life, you make that life story yours. So, by you taking that idea or concept and writing about it, you make that your own story. What makes Shakespeare great is Shakespeare. What makes you great is you. Godspeed!
My advice: Your dad can suck his own cock. I'm sure if he did the research, he'd find millions of other books just like his own. Nothing is original, nothing is new. As Cogito once said, it's all been done before. Let me add to it: It just hadn't been done by you yet.
Have you heard of the Oedipus complex? Where the son takes the place of the father (in the mother's bed)? Sounds like your father is REALLY worried that if he doesn't keep you down, that's what's going to happen.
Boy, that escalated quickly. Moving right along: ask your father to watch the Iron Chef sometime, and ask him if he thinks that the contestants are "uncreative" because they're using familiar ingredients in new ways instead of inventing new ingredients. Better yet, ask him what his favorite stories are, point him at similar stories that came first, and ask him if he's changed his mind about his favorite stories being any good. Which, circling back to what was just brought up: if your father likes detective stories, ask him if he thinks that the entire detective genre is a cheap Oedipus Rex rip-off.
Flip your story make the killer a good guy and have him fight off the nosy police/detective. The killer needs to rob and kill to feed his crippled little girl, and so-on.
My only advice is to try to change the way you engage that particular dynamic. It's only going to get worse as you get older and your personal bank of familiarity with other works grows, and it's part of a general thing that happens to all of as we get older. We start to see the patterns of larger structures and realize that in many ways it's all a rehash... everything... every conversation, every argument, every town plaza, every tree, every everything. The universe is just this immense fractal pattern and each of us is just a smaller facet of a larger picture that mirrors itself into ever-expanding, larger shapes, all the same as its smaller components and... If you let it, that thought process will trap you into a tight corner of inaction or ennui. Instead, take note of the themes your stories have in common with other stories. Note how these themes repeat. Note how this points to our concern and interest with these themes because they point to common experiences. This isn't a bad thing at all. This is connection. It's a way for us to break out of our little solipsistic shells and realize that we have things in common with others. We have suffered the same wrongs, enjoyed the same wins, longed for the same unhaveable things. Just flip your spyglass around and look from the other end.
That reminds me of a passage from, of all places, The Art of War: "There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers." The Art of War, Chapter 5.7-10 In the same way, there are a few basic plots and tropes, but combinations and variations of them yield nigh endless possibilities.
My dad's also an author, more of a religious nature, and self published. He's been pretty successful despite the fact that his writing sucks, even for the material he has. It's just sort of all over the place, and he has trouble keeping a firm line of thought on any one topic. I've never asked his opinion about my work before, mostly because he's not into the genre at all (he also hates the word genre, but that's another story), and he's also the type to not want to be bothered by something he's not truly involved in. Most I ever got from him as a kid was, "Nice job, keep it up, there's some grammar errors, but you're getting there". He would also compare my story to some things as well, but not often because he's not into fantasy at all. Give him a technical manual though, and he'll dig right in. This also sums up our relationship too, I guess. I would just not ask your father's opinion, family makes for bad critiques. Either they'll love it and find no flaws because they're blind from their association with you, or they'll be extremely critical and very harsh. I tried asking my fiance her advice recently and, well...it didn't go so well. She later admitted her background in journalism made her bias and critical, and that she probably wasn't the best person to critique the work. I'm going to see if my neighbors will read some, closest friends I have...I'm kind of a loner like that. Now I need a beer :goes to fridge, finds no beer: "FML".
That's messed up. There's actually 11 musical notes. Maybe Sun Tzu was a pentatonic blues player? I'd assume he's dropping the second and seventh note of a scale. Crap, now I want to transpose The Art of War into a Robert Johnson blues album.
Maybe he means well and this is his way of participating with you. Ask him if he knows of any plot that hasn't been written, because that's what you want.
I always thought pentatonic scales were more the norm in Chinese music? That's the stereotype in my head, anyway.
Heh. It would be kinda funny if you could find one of his older stories, make some slight changes, and when he offers some criticism, give him the big reveal.
Your father doesn't sound like the best person to go to advice for. Everything has been done before, and all those movies he compares your work to, they too have been done in one fashion or another before they were created. Thing is, there's nothing new under the sun. It seems you have a fear of reinvented the wheel, but the trick is to not reinvent it, but to create a wheel that is your own style. There is a reason tropes exist. People like tropes. Tropes are familiar. Tropes are something we understand. This is why people enjoy certain genres because those genres possess tropes they enjoy reading. What people mean when they say they want something original is not that they want something entirely new, but that they want to see those tropes they are familiar with done in an interesting a unique way. So the next time you dad tells you he's seen it before, just tell him, "By you haven't seen my version."
THIS ^^^^^ Yeah, it's good to try and come up with stuff that you don't see a ton of - or in my case I like to mash together things that don't usually appear in the same space - but everything is derivative at SOME level. West Side Story ripped off Romeo and Juliet, which was itself a re-write of a pre-existing story by Arthur Brooke (who in turn probably ripped it off from an earlier non-English language source). Write what you like. Also, the best way to get better at writing is to write stuff, learn from it, and then use that stuff to write more stuff. The premises I came up with when I first started playing around with fiction are a lot simpler than what I come up with today, but you don't learn that unless you keep writing.
Yeah. Literally nothing is original. Hell, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Dragonball Z, Doctor Who, and all those other well-known pop culture stuff aren't original. They borrowed from already existing work that came before their time. The first story I created was called The Mighty Ninjas C. Yes, it was a complete rip-off of Dragonball Z and Naruto. Only they were ninjas, not super-powerful warriors. They all had an origin story where they trained in a ninja academy as kids, the whole shebang. Hell, the main lead had a ten-year-old son who fought alongside them in their battles for crying out loud! The only difference was that the son was blind and relied on his hearing and other senses. Is it original? Well, yes and no. Most likely not. But did I care? Heck no! Their first big arc was against a major antagonist named Isadore who sought to destroy their homeland because of something the Ancient Elders did to his parents decades ago. He starts by abducting the boy and brainwashing him. So what do we have here: -> Super powerful ninja warriors. An academy of ninja warriors led by Ancient Elders -> Blind ninja in the form of the main lead's youthful son -> Ninjas fight with ninja weapons, alchemy, and magic -> A villain hellbent on vengeance over an injustice done to him decades ago -> A rescue mission to save someone Every. Single. One. Of. These. Have. Been. Done. Before. And despite my paranoia that now someone will take what I just listed and make their own story about it, I want you, OP, to know that it's all been done before. Maybe not in the exact form as The Mighty Ninjas C, but they've all be done before at one point or another. And now I'm wondering if I should answer my childhood's urges and get this old oddity written...
