Mythology in Writing - Why isn't it Plagiarism? | Page 1 | Scroll and Pen | Guild Forums

Aldorel
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Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:48 am

By this I don't mean "Why aren't the Ancient Greeks/Norse/Celts suing us?" because, obviously, they can't. By this I don't mean we should stop using mythology in our writing, because there's just too much material to play with and it does make such good art.

By this I mean, "Why is it that we get annoyed with Tolkien/Anne Rice/Star Wars ripoffs when we consider a retelling of The Odyssey or Beauty and the Beast to be high art?"

Is there really that much more skill involved in using Homer as a base than using Lucas?

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:05 pm

I think the difference is that Myths aren't really long enough or have enough of a plot to qualify as novels in their own right. If someone wants to write a story based off of it, then they have to add a lot of their own ideas to it. Everything written today is already it's own novel, and doesn't need the writer to come up with much more.

Plus, stealing those ideas is like stealing from an individual person. Since it took whole societies to work on and come up with Mythology, it's more of the property of everyone.

Mcfeegle

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xTurquoiseDragonx

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Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:01 am

Generally I would agree that mythology is the property of everyone because it was developed my many people over a long period of time, but novels are the property of a single person. But there are some odd exceptions to the rule that make things slightly more complicated. For example, you're considered a genius if you use the plot of a Shakespearian play. But most people agree that he wrote the plays entirely himself, and put a lot of his own unique writing style into them. So why isn't taking a plot from Macbeth considered bad when taking a plot from Star Wars is?

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:21 am

That's an interesting point. I think it's probably because Shakespeare is old and Star Wars isn't. Stupid, I know, but that tends to be people's thought process. If it's old, then it's ok to copy, if it's knew, it's not.

Mcfeegle

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xTurquoiseDragonx

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Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 1:38 pm

I agree, the age of something probably is a big factor in whether or not it's okay to borrow from it. As soon as a book or movie reaches a certain age, it becomes a "classic" rather than something new and innovative. And then creating something similar is considered a tribute rather than plagiarism.

So the question is: How long do I have to wait before I can write a book with glowy energy swords and evil empires without getting sued by George Lucas?

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:20 pm

You'll probably have to wait unitl George Lucas has been dead for at least twenty years.

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Aldorel
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 7:43 am

Or a couple hundred, if we're using Shakespeare as a benchmark.

So the determining factor in how we percieve copying is whether anyone can remember how innovative the original was? That seems really strange to me. It takes just the same amount of work to retell Homer as it does to retell Star Wars, if you're not taking technical writing skill into account. But people look at Omeros and say "what a masterpiece!" whereas they look at Eragon and say "overblown and derivative." So why is it that finding that the plot is modeled after The Odyssey makes us happy but finding elements of Star Wars ticks us off?

Is it because it's impossible not to use the archeypes in myth?

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 9:11 am

I still think that the whole myths thing is because no specific person wrote it. Shakespeare is because it's old, and Star Wars is because it's rather new. If you really think about it, every author steals elements from books that they've read. It just depends on wether they did it enough to be noticeable or if the work they stole from is very famous.

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Aldorel
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 7:04 am

Naming your work after the guy you copied from sounds pretty obvious to me. And you don't get much more famous than Greek Myth.

But I do agree with what you're saying about all writing being borrowed from other sources. It's just wierd when you think about it that we feel the need to hide this so extensively - except when dealing with "classics" and especially mythology.

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:39 am

I agree that age is a big part of whether or not its 'alright' to use the same plot or elements as another story. But I think that form is a big part. I would immediately see the Star Wars in just about anything, but I would realize that it actually WAS Star Wars if it was in poem form. Connections across forms and styles that differ from novels to poems to plays are much more difficult than that from novel to novel.

Wouldn't that be at least part of why all of those Shakespearian-story novels are so popular?

Time frame has a lot to do with it, too. I could directly rip off Star Wars by creating swords made of light, but if I used them in a medieval time frame with an evil witch using the sword, which she created with magic, it would be a little more obscure to the imperceptive viewer than using a lightsaber in something future-set.

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Aldorel
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Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 6:37 pm

Hence the popularity of placing mythical figures in the modern day?

There are a number of changes made in transferring a play or a poem to a novel, but it still uses the same characters and plot.

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