To Be Original
Originality sets a goal for many people that can either lead to inspiration or despair. With many blanks of the world already filled in, explorers, innovators, philosophers, and storytellers all grapple with a similar obstacle of striving for something new.
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” -André Gide
Where does the inspiration for something new come from? I’m one of those in the camp of storytellers, and my methodology is largely abstract thinking. If I want something new, I try thinking about my own thoughts and experiences differently; sometimes my thinking gets to the point of stupid thought experiments like “What if that experience was entirely imagined?” or “What if something sharp was smooth?” One of my favorite quotes comes from such a story by Adam Gopnik called The King in the Window that includes two worlds with physics in each being the opposite of the other: “Your mind has windows and mirrors. Use them! Hold a sentence up to the mirror in your mind and see what it looks like reversed! Look at a thought through the windows of your mind and see how it changes at different times of the day! Think!” I may’ve taken it to heart a little bit, but I’m of the opinion imagination can make up a great deal for lack of experience. Even writers who are experts may have trouble writing, perhaps even when writing about a subject they’re an expert in.
The limits of experience can provide their own creative elements in a certain way as well. In the early days I imagine people without boats or diving gear looked at the sea and their minds went wild à la Moana. Likewise for people without telescopes or rocket ships who looked at the sky. Those new experiences when limits were transcended must’ve been something. People experiencing them for the first time nowadays also experience something similar, but it’s interesting to think about whether it’s diminished in some way due to it not being the first time in human history—and is diminished further upon the same person reexperiencing the same thing. That seems to be part of what makes stories so nice; you get to experience something new without experiencing it yourself, or maybe reexperience something but from someone else’s perspective which makes it new.
Image of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
I’d say that about summarizes original ideas and original experiences. What brought this topic up? Well, I was thinking about modern movies and how there seems to be a pattern of reboots, spinoffs, and sequels: Marvel has released somewhere around 30 movies with a seemingly infinite number more planned alongside TV shows; James Cameron has a number of sequels planned for Avatar; and I don’t even know how many movies and whatnot there have been about Batman. It leaves me feeling like originality is an afterthought. Even films arguably “original” since they don’t fall into the category of reboot, spinoff, or sequel like Turning Red (by Pixar) or Strange World (by Disney) aren’t really appealing in the sense of being unique. For the case of Turning Red there’s somewhat of a reliance on popular culture references and Disney mannerisms largely expressed visually and in its story. In the case of Strange World, I didn’t bother seeing it (and I’ve yet to hear someone so much as talk about it) because of these same mannerisms being so explicitly shown in the trailers. That’s a very strange thing that a story with the premise of Strange World didn’t evoke a sense of originality. I guess, to me, a lot of films nowadays feel lazy.
If you take exception to what I think here, I recommend seeing my post on quality versus appeal. What I think about the above examples doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad, I just don’t really like them and that’s due to how they all feel the same in some way (and too much the same in that way). But, there are stories that are fairly similar that I do very much enjoy. I can get hooked into genres like fantasy which follows a formula by nature and which aren’t original when only considering the stories by their formula. The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001) both have the same twist but both have a unique enough story to make it not feel the same—and that twist is arguably not original to either film, as it was used in the 1890 short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce and I’m sure has been used before without record of it. There are also some stories much too original that I don’t enjoy—though this is more so a tangent getting into what I like, so I’ll stick to the point that such stories would be original to me but not so much others or the history of the world.
To be original means something different depending on who’s asking or what it is in reference to. A fantasy enthusiast like me might be looking for an original story in the way of its characters but not want originality in the way of its plot (e.g., give me a succession crisis but instead of duty-driven, avid, or reluctant characters as possible successors make them passionate about things other than the succession or make them decrepit). For others, looking for a genre they’ve not tried or experienced yet might suffice what it means to be original. The idea in general is unanswerable, or at least I don’t think there is any sufficient answer, but to narrow down what it means to be original to a particular thing makes it easier to approach an answer.
