On Originality

by Fragon Calfbreaker

We've discussed the number of ideas/concepts/etc. that Paolini has "copied" from several writers in the Plagiarism section. This article, therefore, is intended to address the issue that fans (again, repeatedly) bring up: that is, nothing in the world is original anymore, hence, Paolini is justified for what he has done.

I agree with the first half of that statement.

Yes, nothing in the world is "original" in that sense, and if you believe that you're either God in disguise or are fooling yourself. (Kenneth Eng, wipe that smug smile off your face). Everything has already been done in some manner or form, particularly if you stretch or generalize enough. People who go to great lengths in order to reduce 'influence' on their work are fighting a losing battle. How many times, after all, have people come up with an idea, thought it was genius, wrote it down, and then found out, months or years later, that a writer they've never heard or read about has done the exact same thing?

Nothing is original; everything has already been done. And yet, not quite. Not quite.

There is perception, and in that a writer has all the power in the world to make the reader then believe that what they are writing is in fact, the first and the last time it will ever be done--at least until the last page.

That is the problem with Paolini's work. He has taken ideas and structures from various sources, perhaps altered them a bit, but he has neglected to put his mark on them. He did not show his world and story as he might have seen it, being more concerned in what the great writers before him had done. There are some of the opinion that he has created a 'new twist' in some of his ideas, but this 'twist' can often be found in another shape or form in another story. What Paolini did, therefore, was less writing and more of a mix-and-match type of deal. He copied and pasted and jumbled them up, rather than writing them from his heart and soul as he ought to have done.

When I was growing up, I was limited in books and entertainment, coming from a lower-middle class family in the Philippines. But I never got tired of reading the stories I had. Each reading was almost a different experience. I also never tired of asking people for stories, even if it was the same story, only told by someone else. It was so different each time. My mind conjured different images for each telling.

The same goes for everything. You probably know that game where you tell someone something, and they whisper it to the person beside them, and so on, and the message you get at the very end is different? That works on the same line too. People are different--their perceptions are different--the stories they tell, if they tell from it as they ought to have told it and not as someone else might have, will be different, fresh, unique.

It's not the fact that Paolini took ideas from others that make his works so difficult to swallow. It's the fact that he failed to make them his.