A couple days ago my friends made me watch Your Name for my birthday as they were aghast that I had never seen it. After having watched the movie, I completely understood why. It was absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite romance stories of all time. What was a nice coincidence about the movie was that it was partly the inspiration for the book Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. After I watched the movie, I was thinking about that book and the parallels between the two stories. The inspiration was there, but it still felt like its own original story just not completely original I suppose. In fact, if Brandon Sanderson had never said Your Name was an inspiration for his book, I’m not sure I would have drawn the connection myself.
Inspiration is a tricky thing when it comes to telling a unique story. I do believe that all creatives find inspiration from each other and the media that we are exposed to. It helps mold our own tastes and what we find enjoyable and creating what we would enjoy ourselves is key to creating something truly amazing. But there is a careful balance between creating something inspired by another versus something that feels like a carbon copy or a close rip off of that original media. It begs the question, how does one use that inspiration to create something new?
What is important to establish when creating a story with influences from another story or media is whether or not your story is inspired by another form of media or if it’s based on another story. But you might wonder, if its based on another story, is that not ripping off that story in a way? It depends how you approach it and the source material in question. For instance, if it’s stories that are in public domain, like old mythologies and folktales, that’s often acceptable to tell a story based on those concepts. Rick Riordan is a good example of this with his Percy Jackson series being based on Greek Mythology. It’s not exactly one for one, but it’s very clear that he based major narrative beats off of stories from Greek Mythology. Another example, my favorite one, would be The Shadow of the Fox series by Julie Kagawa based on Japanese Mythology. Again, it’s not perfectly one for one but it’s clear that much of the core ideas of the story come from Japanese mythology. These stories are fantastic and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that they have their core fundamentals that come from previous stories.
When it comes to drawing inspiration from other stories that aren’t in public domain, that are clearly original works that belong to someone else, it’s important to make something new from that inspiration. There’s something that the YouTuber Ludwig said when it comes to content creation, the “yoink and twist” method that helps a lot with this. As weird as the name is, it’s a very self-explanatory method of taking a concept that’s been done but changing it to become something else. The thing with that though is that I think it requires several iterations of change and imagination to create something new from that inspiration. Like with Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, the premise is very similar to Your Name, but the interaction of how they communicate is a lot more direct and the main plot is more fantasy oriented. It’s different enough that it’s a completely different story. But I think it’s also important to not hide the inspirations for your story. As creatives, one of the best things we can ever do is inspire each other to create more art, especially in this day and age.
Balancing inspiration and originality is always a tricky thing. It’s hard to be completely original these days when it feels like every kind of story has already been done. The thing is, it feels like that’s the case but it’s not actually the case. Even if your story draws inspiration from another, it can still be your own original story that you created. As long as you put in the effort to create a story that’s unique and interesting, even if it’s inspired by something else, it’ll still shine all on its own.
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 