Influences

[pegkerr]

dragonpaws remarked in a comment to yesterday's entry that she noticed the similarities between this proposed ice palace book and pameladean's Tam Lin. Here is part of my reply to her.

Anyway, the parallel you noticed between this new book of mine and Pamela's Tam Lin is not news to me at all; in fact, I can assure you that it was the primary thing on my mind yesterday as I was cleaning out the garage. I am also fretting about the similarities to Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia, with the epicyclical spell. This, too, is probably not a coincidence; Pat is another one of my mentors. Yes, as in Pamela's book I'm planning to have the man get the woman pregnant (perhaps deliberately, using magic, despite her birth control?), and then have a magical use for the pregnancy. As in P&C's book, I'm planning to have the villain suck away the life force of someone to whom he is related, to extend his own life (although in my story, rather than finding someone to whom he is related, the villain makes a baby). As I said, I am a little worried about it but think it will be okay. Will have to think of how to spin it a little differently, emphasizing themes of emphemerality/immortality, and parenthood, both deliberately accepted and deliberately rejected.

This is getting back to something I spoke about in earlier entries: gravitational pulls of other stories. I do tend to think about this a lot. Of course, many stories have elements that other stories also use. Of course, the greatest writers did not hesitate to get ideas from others' works (i.e., Shakespeare). I have an extremely retentive memory for this sort of thing, which can be both a blessing and a curse for a working author. I have frequently astonished kijjohnson by referring in a conversation to a snippet from a book I haven't read for fifteen years. I'll go over to the shelf, page through it, and quickly find the thing I've remembered, frequently word-for-word. As I said, this can be very useful, but on the other hand, writing my own stuff continually sets off "echoes" of other stuff I've read. I'm continually thinking, as I write, about where to draw the line, so that if what I write reminds me of something I've read, I try to draw it out in a different direction, give it a different spin, etc. How different does it have to be? Depends on how common the idea is. This is an issue both at the micro-writing and macro-writing level. I've written a sentence and thought, "Ok, I know where I got that image or the combination of those particular three words together. It's from that scene in that book from ________. Is it okay to use it? Can I think of something different to say that will accomplish a similar effect, if that's the effect I want? Are three words acceptable but five unacceptable? I remember arguing with myself about this over three words in a short story: a woman is horribly embarrassed when confronted by a naked man, and says something in a "high, emaciated coloratura." I wrote that down, and remembered . . . oh . . . I remember where I read that. But it's the perfect phrase for what I'm trying to get across. What to do?

I used it. I'm still not sure whether it was the right thing to do, but over the years, I've come to think it was probably a mistake to do so. And so I've become even more conservative over this, the longer I've been writing. If I were writing that story today, I probably would have tried to think of a different three words instead.

Anyway, nobody's sued me yet.

P.

Comments

[innerslytherin]

I was very tempted to do that myself once. C.S. Friedman wrote of her anti-hero Gerald Tarrant that he did or said something with "languid malevolence" and I wanted very very badly to steal it! But as I'm a yet-unpublished novelist, I was too chicken to use it! ^_^ I've always wondered myself if that would be a form of plagiarism, or at least genius-stealing. It's very frustrating to know someone else has coined the perfect phrase for you!

[pameladean]

As you know, Peg, the particular aspect of TAM LIN that was pointed out to you is not original to my novel anyway. It's right in the ballad.

What occurs to me, though, is that sometimes when people get all het up about influences and stealing or whatever, it is not the bare idea but something in the surrounding miasma that really makes them say stuff like that. If you don't want quite such a miasma from my book, look at other sources that use that motif, the deliberately getting someone pregnant because one has a magical use for the pregnancy. For something completely different from my work that I admire tremendously, consider John M. Ford's short story "Green is the Color." It's in one of the Liavek anthologies. The third, WIZARD'S ROW, I think. Look at the original ballad.

Or you could just thumb your nose at them. I'm not going to sue you.

Pamela