This one starts a bit odd, and perhaps suggests something I don't intend, but bear with me. All will be revealed. If in a rambling, anticlimactic fashion...
Damon Knight and Me
or: What Inspired This NonsenseBorn in 1922,
Damon Knight wrote better than twenty science fiction novels and countless stories by the time he died in 2002. However, he will probably be always known for a single story, "To Serve Man", which appeared during the initial (and still best) running of the Twilight Zone.
Knight wasn't one of the BIG ONES for me. The first time I knowingly read a work of his was when I picked up his book on writing Creating Short Fiction in my efforts to improve my craft. (More on this in a bit.) The only short stories of his I've read are "Semper Fi" (which is in Creating Short Fiction) and, of course, "To Serve Man." Of his novels I've read but one, Why Do Birds, a really strange novel about the end of the world. All of this works I've mentioned I enjoyed, but I recommend Why Do Birds with some reservations; it's probably not for everyone.
The reason I bring up Knight is that I was flipping through Creating Short Fiction not too long ago and I came across a portion that gave me pause.
Knight writes, "There is an implied contract between the author and the reader that goes something like this: Give me your time and pay your money and I'll let you experience what it's like to be" a variety of different people in various situations (Knight 54). A very valid and perceptive view of the author/reader relationship.
My problem was, when I read it, I was certain I had copied the sentence in one of my essays. (
This one, to be precise.) I was fairly sure I hadn't done it word for word, but it was, in my head, close enough to warrant a little owning up, and as soon as possible. Lord only knows I don't need the P-word attached to my name.
I start this essay up, gather information on Knight, keep Creating Short Fiction on hand to quote from, and then, and only then, I go back and look at the offending sentence. Which is this: "Every writer, no matter the field, promises to divert, to inform, or to provide some combination of the two."
Now I don't know about you, but I don't see any similarity between the two. Both talk about what the writer owes the reader, granted, but the thrust is entirely different. I'll humor myself and say that my sentence is more succinct than Knight's. It is pretty much the only thing I'll grant me; Knight's comment on the writer/reader contract is much better and one I would endorse fully. If I might further compliment myself, I think the two ideas complement each other and worth considering whenever one approaches Fiction.
Now where does that leave us? Well, with an essay that isn't as relative as I had feared, of course.
(There is still that little whisper I have at the corner of my mind about one of my other sentences in that essay, but I'll only bring that up if I can site it and if it's not another phantom of my self doubt.)
Similar ThoughtThe aforementioned confusion is an example of similar thought. Sometimes when writing on a subject matter, writers will come perilously close to duplication. It happens.
There are excellent examples of this through out the creative field. One that springs readily to mind is between
Ramsey Campbell and
Richard Matheson. Campbell's short story "A Street Was Chosen" is about a science experiment being run on unknowing neighbors which leads to violence and self destruction. It is very similar to Matheson's "The Distributor", in which a man moves into a neighborhood and performs similar actions there.
While the stories share similar trains of thought, they aren't copies by any strain of the imagination. Campbell's tale is more experimental, for one thing, while Matheson's is a bit more personal in nature. However, they tread the same path, reach the same destination, and leave the same disturbing realization that what happens in both stories could well happen in real life.
And maybe happening right now.
Another even better example comes from listening to two songs: "McCarthy Park" and "Classical Gas". For the most part two distinct pieces, there is a passage that is exactly note for note. The thing of it is, both songs were written at the same time; all it was was a startling coincidence.
As was said before, it happens. While the imaginative realm is vast and deep, it is not infinite. There's a good chance that, when writing, one will brush shoulders with another writer's work. The trick is recongnizing a brush when one sees it. Far too often readers will see a similar thought and call out "Copycat", or worse, the P-word.
This is not to say that there isn't copying in the writing world. Far from it. One writer reads another work, is inspired from it, and goes off and writes something like it. Sometimes it's within brushing distance, sometimes its a wee bit closer than that.
The worse offenders tend to be new writers struggling to find their voice. A good example of this would be
Terry Brooks. Reading his first novel,
Sword of Shannara , one can not help but notice similar beats to that of
J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Which isn't surprising as
Lord of the Rings was one of the inspirations for
Sword of Shannara . (Brooks talks about the novel's origins
here.) If fact, to be brutally honest, one can't walk through the garden of Fantasy Fiction without tripping over a sprawling Tolkien wanna be.
Another example would be, again, Ramsey Campbell, whose first stories resembled that of
Howard Phillip Lovecraft. Which, again, surprises no one. When running through the halls of Dark Fantasy, one tends to trip over the shatter remnants of Lovecraft imitators. A situation that might have well appalled Lovecraft to no end.
In time these writers move into their own niche and their works look less and less like their inspirations and more like the writers themselves. It's a growing process too many would-be critics think of as the P-word.
And, finally, there is the dread P-word. Plagiarism. It's a word tossed around far too often. It is the theft of ideas, of plot, of character.
The only example of plagiarism that comes readily to mind dealing with a specific author is perhaps the very worse example possible: that of
William Shakespeare. Shakespeare stole. He stole a lot. But the problem with using him as an example is for one thing in his day and age plagiarism hadn't the connotation it does now. For another, Shakespeare made such vast improvements on what he took from it seems rather petty to complain about.
Well this has been a bit of a ramble, hasn't it? Almost anticlimactic, too, as if the writer lost track of where he was going towards the end and sort of stumbled to a stop. But that can't possibly be what happened could it?
For a third time, it happens.
There is more to say on this particular issue (specifically on plots and characters), but that is better suited for other essays. Ones that are better structured, say...
Oh well. I can't always be brilliant...
______________________
I'm going to try and follow what I remember of MLA style report writing while composing essays. Which will result in source siting sections such as this one:
Knight, Damon.
Creating Short Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997
