A little bit of background for this topic: from my teenage years into my early 20s I was a prolific writer and artist. I wrote dozens of short stories, fanfics, and even a full length novel which I never posted publicly. I drew a lot, too. I would never consider myself ‘good’ at either discipline, but I’d say I reached the lofty heights of ‘passable’.
Unfortunately, you need to make a living in this world, so I put all that aside for about 10 years to become a software developer. I was still consuming a lot of media, though, and still do to this day. Like you guys, I lamented the wokeification of games, films, and books, and frequently discussed it with people in my personal life. I kept coming around to the same conclusion: ‘If we’re not happy with the stories the mainstream are providing, we need to create our own’.
Fast forward to today, I’m at a position in my career where I’ve automated a lot of things so that I have more free time. A few months ago my wandering mind was struck by a bolt of inspiration from the blue, and for the first time in ages I felt the desire to create again. As I sat down and organised my ideas, though, I realised that I was (consciously and sub-consciously) pulling elements from media which I have enjoyed and combining them into my own story. It’s very difficult to put a number on these things, but if I had to estimate I’d say about 60% of my ideas come from media, 40% from my own personal experiences. Of course, I did the same thing as a teenager, but I’m a bit more self-aware now than I was back then.
My question to you guys is, do you care about originality for its own sake, or does it have more to do with how a story is told? When I think about my favourite stories, some of them are extremely trite and tropey, but they are told masterfully well. Is it even possible to be truly original in such a media-saturated world as ours?
For what it’s worth, I don’t intend to shake the foundations of the world with my story, I just want to tell a good one that isn’t full of woke BS.
One of my art teachers once told me that the way you develop a style is to find things you like that other people have made, steal them for yourself, and make them your own. Things that we consider "Original" tend to rely more on the unique perspective of the storyteller than the components of the story itself.
I think of Tolkien. He set out to create a mythology, and he succeeded with flying colors. But he built it off of other mythologies and languages that he studied and learned from. Look at hobbits. The idea of little people who live in caves and burrows wasn't exactly new. But making them civilized and having well-maintained, comfortable homes puts a clever new spin on the concept, making them both familiar and alien at the same time.
I think of games. Nobody would say that the New Super Mario Bros games feel bad to play, but people got sick of them around NSMBU, because they were becoming stale and repetitive. Then Super Mario Bros Wonder comes out, and played almost the same way. But the new presentation and mixing in new (and forgotten) concepts and mechanics breathed new life into the series! Sometimes, all it takes is a new perspective on the same, solid foundation to make it feel original and fresh.
Making something "original" usually boils down to taking something and presenting it from a new angle that isn't often considered. So don't worry about being "unoriginal." If the bar for originality was truly "Has never been seen before in the history of the world!" than nonsensical modern "art" would truly be the peak of culture.
That's definitely been my experience of developing an art style, so I can attest to that at least. To some degree I guess it's impossible to create a work which is completely derivative, as elements of the author's unique perspective will always shine through, even if you're deliberately attempting to copy something.