The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Following in footsteps
Originality is hard to come by nowadays. Think carefully about it, we’re at something of a disadvantage in formulating new ideas after thousands of generations of humans have already had their chance to make something new. The ideas we form are based on the ideas of others and glimpses of what we see and hear in the media. We take what we need from other’s originality and form our own generic, almost formulaic version of it. Every twist in the tale of a story has been written before, how else would the writer know this twist would work? Perhaps this is subconscious and on the surface they wholly believe they aren’t plagiarising ideas from writers before them. But they are. Filthy vermin.
I stare at my open word document with half a paragraph written. The cursor flashing indiscriminately, teasing me to write more. I look at what I have written, the introduction to a tale about talking farm animals with heroic tendencies? I shake my head in bitter resentment. I fear I am becoming one of the plagiarising tabloid-penning masses. “George Orwell I am sorry” I whisper under my breath and I hold down the delete key, erasing the stolen idea from the page. The blank page manned by only a flashing cursor screams at me to write something.
I almost spit out my coffee when an idea strikes me like lightning. My fingers tickle the keys expertly as the idea flows fluidly in sentences and paragraphs down the page. A classic, I am assured. A heart rending coming-of-age tale set in Alabama in the fifties about a white lawyer who battles with his conscience to defend a black man accused of rape. I typed for hours, unfolding a sinister side plot about a reclusive neighbour and a childhood romance between the protagonist and a boy named Dill, but then my plagiarism dawned on me and my head fell into my hands. I slammed my hands on the desk and whispered a brief apology to Harper Lee and deleted my work.
I hated what I was becoming, a filthy generic leech, stealing other’s ideas to no avail. I’ve become what I hate, a filthy stealing leech. How hard can it be to think up an idea that nobody else has even considered before? The answer is rather shocking - it verges on impossibility. I start a short anecdote about heroin addicted Scots who decide to pull off a heist, but quickly have to apologise to Mr Welsh. I may as well buy a photocopier and rip off artists that way.
As the night progresses I have to erase the beginnings of a chapter about a big friendly giant, delete the roots of a timeless love story featuring Captain Corelli and get rid of a ballad about a henpecked man named Macbeth. My thirst for literature is my curse, my undying desire to write is my tombstone, inscribed with words someone has already written. A sweet pill of pre-inscribed sorrow ends my career as a writer. It is better to have had passion and lost it, than to never have had passion at all.
Thus halted my spark, my deeply rooted will to entertain not only others, but myself. The need to be quoted faded like the moon on a morn. Not visible to the observer, but still there somewhere deep and dormant, waiting to rise again.
Originality is hard to come by nowadays. Think carefully about it, we’re at something of a disadvantage in formulating new ideas after thousands of generations of humans have already had their chance to make something new. The ideas we form are based on the ideas of others and glimpses of what we see and hear in the media. We take what we need from other’s originality and form our own generic, almost formulaic version of it. Every twist in the tale of a story has been written before, how else would the writer know this twist would work? Perhaps this is subconscious and on the surface they wholly believe they aren’t plagiarising ideas from writers before them. But they are. Filthy vermin.
I stare at my open word document with half a paragraph written. The cursor flashing indiscriminately, teasing me to write more. I look at what I have written, the introduction to a tale about talking farm animals with heroic tendencies? I shake my head in bitter resentment. I fear I am becoming one of the plagiarising tabloid-penning masses. “George Orwell I am sorry” I whisper under my breath and I hold down the delete key, erasing the stolen idea from the page. The blank page manned by only a flashing cursor screams at me to write something.
I almost spit out my coffee when an idea strikes me like lightning. My fingers tickle the keys expertly as the idea flows fluidly in sentences and paragraphs down the page. A classic, I am assured. A heart rending coming-of-age tale set in Alabama in the fifties about a white lawyer who battles with his conscience to defend a black man accused of rape. I typed for hours, unfolding a sinister side plot about a reclusive neighbour and a childhood romance between the protagonist and a boy named Dill, but then my plagiarism dawned on me and my head fell into my hands. I slammed my hands on the desk and whispered a brief apology to Harper Lee and deleted my work.
I hated what I was becoming, a filthy generic leech, stealing other’s ideas to no avail. I’ve become what I hate, a filthy stealing leech. How hard can it be to think up an idea that nobody else has even considered before? The answer is rather shocking - it verges on impossibility. I start a short anecdote about heroin addicted Scots who decide to pull off a heist, but quickly have to apologise to Mr Welsh. I may as well buy a photocopier and rip off artists that way.
As the night progresses I have to erase the beginnings of a chapter about a big friendly giant, delete the roots of a timeless love story featuring Captain Corelli and get rid of a ballad about a henpecked man named Macbeth. My thirst for literature is my curse, my undying desire to write is my tombstone, inscribed with words someone has already written. A sweet pill of pre-inscribed sorrow ends my career as a writer. It is better to have had passion and lost it, than to never have had passion at all.
Thus halted my spark, my deeply rooted will to entertain not only others, but myself. The need to be quoted faded like the moon on a morn. Not visible to the observer, but still there somewhere deep and dormant, waiting to rise again.
Page:
Pip pip ?
:-)
:-)
My argument is that you can't erm copyright cliche life erm experiences
Also, nicely written.
Pip Pip
Also, nicely written.
Pip Pip
I liked that. So true!
Possibly a little snapshot of your life?
:D
:D
Paradox makes me laugh for all the right reasons.
Yeah, *points*, the line starts back there.
Thanks Trib :-D
Brilliantly written, almost certainly not a winner but, still, a marvelous entry, and the kind of thing that makes me love the SSC.
Can't be bothered.
I feel sick.
I feel sick.
I understand, I'm just saying I prefered some of your other stories. Oh, and get some food man, surely it's not that hard. ;-P
Page: