Who doesn't read Sutter Kane? Or Garth Marenghi, author/editor/producer/actor of the amazing series "Dark Place" and the second best horror author of the 1980's (after Sutter Kane) provides advice that all aspiring authors should follow.
"The worst story in the world is still infinitely better than the best story in my head because at least the worst story actually exists in the real world." I was not expecting such a motivational quote from Terrible Writing Advice to make me get back to the grind of querying agents.
@@MythicMachina Keep in mind that making a basic, simple map for your world isn’t a bad thing. Hell, you can draw just a landmass and some border lines to start, no names at all, and that’s perfectly ok. You can build upon it and improve whenever you want from there. That’s what I did for my own.
Just remember aspiring writers: Being original takes the form of either flagrantly ripping off older works with little to no modification, or obsessing about having your book reinvent fiction, while never actually writing anything. Hope this helps!
Yup. There are two main trappings of people trying to be original, rather then writing story. Even if Van Gogh stated that best authors are those who rip off from the best. Either: 1) Trying subvert common cliches, forgetting that most of those were already subverted long time ago and those become new cliches. Or simply pretending to be original, purely because lack of knowledge that what someone think is original was already done dozen times. For example "The Happytime Murders" may seam original until you realize that "Meet The Feebles" from 1989 exist (and is way better). 2) Focusing on coming with "new" ideas via comparison with TV tropes. And then creating incomprehensible mess as those random and commonly bad ideas (Tropes exist because there are reasons why specific plots are popular). Look, Pink Floyd The Wall as a movie (I know it is music video, not the point).
@@unicorntomboy9736 I like to take stories I have read, create fanfiction from them, then find a way to merge two fanfictions together. The result tends to be sufficiently different from either parent universe that it works.
I think the best way to overcome cliches is simply to ignore their existence and try to write something personal and special to you specifically. If your writing is emotional and personal, than any cliches which appear in your story won’t matter and won’t break the immersion. Think of Lotr. Is it cliche by modern standards? Absolutely. Does that do anything at all to break the immersion? Absolutely not. Don’t worry about being original, just write the story you would want to read.
I saw that post. It reminds me of growing up watching cartoons and despite the fact most 90s-early 2000s weren't the most "original" ideas, there were still mountains of beloved franchises. "Oh another cartoon about heroes, or robots and science, or magic people? cool, just means there's more cartoons to delve into"
@@icebearnicho8256 my favorite aspect of those shows was that it was just a fun world to dive in where anything could happen I also like more grounded works that simply give you the rules of the world as you watch others use them to their advantage but there will always be a part of me that will miss the "Well I guess the Martian god died trying to save his planet from a meteor and now it's heading straight for earth" aspect of it where shit just happened and you had to make sense of it
Two painters stand before an easel One holds a wide palette with multiple different colors, and mixes and combines them to create a piece that draws on older works while interpreting them in a new, interesting way The other has spent all that time trying to invent a new color
I’ve been struggling with my story because I felt like it “wasn’t original enough”, but after watching this, I feel a lot better about my story. I really needed to hear this.
Focus on telling your story the way it needs to be told and worry about originality later. Chances are, if you end up loving what you wrote, others will too and originality will be a happy coincidence.
Pure Originality is extremely difficult, But originality as in not having stereotypical stuff is easy (well, not really, but just do the opposite sometimes, aka subvert expectations)
Legitimately, most of my favorite stories could be called “unoriginal”. The Lord of the Rings was explicitly modelled after European epics and mythology, after all. The trick is to have a different angle to come at the story-LotR has the main heroes be the unremarkable regular folk rather than the people “destined for greatness” (they get to help, so it’s kind of a best-of-both-worlds scenario, but the hobbits are the crux of the story). You can get a lot of mileage out of “Here’s a familiar story, but with this key detail changed.”
I feel like you could say this about anything though, the difference is in trying to find the nebulous abstraction that makes up a "good story" being fresh _is_ pretty high on the list.
Everyone seems to have noticed he's fully animated but has anyone noticed that his infinity gauntlet stretches all the way to his shoulder now? And that it seems everybody is getting new suit upgrades?
It kind of makes sense. He's making a shit load of money, so he probably can afford that stuff. Now I'm wondering if he grows more powerful the more money JP makes from this channel.
Yeah. Noone wants their project to be just like everyone else's. There's no fun in creating something like that. What makes it original is your take on the trope or story. You're you and you're not going to tell your story in the same way another writer is. But you still want it to stand out from someone else's who writes similar types of stories.
They way that you tell a story is the real original thing here. Its the process, not the end. Otherwise people should just go to the end line of the book.
Yep, And if you take in account its sarcastic ther is really god advice what "totally not to do ever" like using tolkiens sources and inspiration insead him.
Just the other day, I saw a post from someone claiming they had a pottery class where the instructor had everyone split into two groups: Group A had to crank out as much pottery as they could to receive a good grade--quality didn't matter, only quantity. Group B *had* to submit one and only one perfect piece of pottery in order to receive a good grade. At the end of the semester, most of the really good pieces of pottery came from Group A. The reason? (supposedly) Group A focused on cranking out pottery, not caring what the quality it was, *BUT* in doing so, they obtained experience in creating somewhat decent pottery. Group B spent so much time on researching what made great pottery that they never sat down and actually made pottery until the last week of the semester. Definitely a bs story but the underlying moral is sound: crank out crap; eventually you'll get to the point where it becomes less crappy until it's actually somewhat good. Then go from there.
I personally saw the story as a metaphor for people who want to start writing. One person spends so much time researching creative writing that they don’t even start, and the other one immediately starts writing and, well, it’s shit. But the experience eventually gets them to write a bit better. So yeah, I should stop researching, sitting on my ass, and just START WRITING.
@@BazzyBaka yep, that's where I was going with it. What eventually got me to put words down on paper was me telling myself, "No one expects it to be Shakespeare so just write." That got me at least eleven "books" so far, even if it's on AO3.
Aight but I still don’t understand how one is supposed to identify, learn from, and then come up with improvements on their mistakes. If you keep practicing the same error, what changes? And even if you can recognize what you did wrong, that’s no guarantee you’ll know what must be done to improve it. That’s what I struggle with the thought of. Is it all bs?
Uh, learning from mistakes is a pretty basic trait that most humans possess. If you genuinely don’t understand how continually practicing something will gradually make you better at it, I don’t know what to tell you.
One time I started writing a story. I got through three chapters. One of my family members asked what the plot was. I told them, only to realize I had accidentally written the Lion King.
@@Frendlualso also Egypt mythology (the story between Osiris and Seth). So in the end being *that* original doesn't matter, the more important thing is how you can give your own touch to your story
@@skalessibbons7349 It was something I tried writing when I was 13. The main character, Amadeus, is a prince living in a prosperous kingdom with the king being his stern but loving father. Then, his father is killed, the palace burned, and he is forcibly exiled after a plot led by his uncle to overthrow the kingdom succeeds. The plan was then for him to work together with survivors of the coup to retake the throne. It was actually a significantly less interesting version of the Lion King, perhaps with extra middle schooler edge.
Reminds me of a quote that roughly goes: Be someone who never finishes anything. If you have a thousand one-of-kind ideas, publish them all messily. Give the seeds to those who can nourish and grow them all with you.
I stopped caring about originality long ago. I feel so much freedom, and now I write exactly what I want: A story about a space princess who can bench press planets, tanks supernova explosions and fights unknowable star-eating horrors, led by a dark knight who can shred the heroes to pieces in combat and on the dance floor. Every step the characters take can destroy entire cities. Their punches vaporize moons. The fights are measured in light-minutes. Even the sweetest, cutest, smallest child character has a kill count in the hundreds. And there are mech knights with flaming swords, and giant kaijus, and the knights ride the kaijus.
@@andrasfogarasi5014 More like Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k, for the multiple factions involved, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann for the over-the-top insanity.
My favourite story along these lines involves a forum fight between Jim Butcher and some guy about whether good ideas or proper execution were more important for writing a novel. Butcher eventually accepted a challenge from the other guy to take the worst ideas he had, and try to make a book out of it. So the guy said "The Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon". A few years later, we wind up with the Codex Alera.
Yes, and Codex Alera is the tropiest Fantasy series, but yet was super engaging. I loved it. His story about Dresden Files is actually similar. When he was in college he was trying very hard to be original and one of his professors sat him down, told him he had the talent but needed to stop being afraid of tropes. So he wrote the first Dresden book with as many tropes and cliches as he could think of to try and prove them wrong....welp...
I wonder if it's true that anime has done everything: how about this, an evil emperor destroys the world, a great hero saves the day, and takes over as the benevolent king, but really the king and the evil emperor are the same person, he just ruined everything so people would love him more when he took over in his new identity, and ushered them into a free and prosperous society.
@@futurestoryteller damn.... Thats so messed up. But i have heard the similar story of it but just remove the isekai super edgy self character harem nonsense, there you have it nice story. Sometimes isekai anime either is so bland cliche it looks the same or complete satire. Like there choosen one that wants to be farmer because hes paralyze entire life or President Putin goes to isekai. Japanes people really have crazy idea, but i dunno why they adapt the bland cliche one instead
Originality is one of those things that feels like it's in a weird cultural place. It's vastly over-stressed most of the time, yet when it is completely absent you can really tell.
Early pixar had so much original ideas to offer back then from Toys had feelings, a society of monsters, Romance for robots; because they poured out so much good stuff its kinda hard for their new movies compete with that
Parts of this remind me of a thought I had: Creatives are measured by what they can create, not what they can imagine. Too many people think or proclaim they're "creative" because they're day-dreamers and imaginative. "Creative" is not the same as "imaginative."
Honestly this is one of the reasons why copyright law is so loose. You can have a story incredibly similar to someone else, but change a few things and it is fine. There are just only so many ways to make great stories. Any sort of strict copyright would kill everything.
@@SlapstickGenius23 Tarzan is in public domain, you are confusing it with Disney's Tarzan which is trademarked, also for the sake of specificity a trademark protects a mark aka a symbol, name, smell so on, the point of a trademark it protects the distinctive characteristics of a company. You should also look up Winnie the pooh and the expiry of its copyright (copyright expires after lifetime of author + 60 years after death, trademark on the other hand can be protected indefinitely assuming you keep renewing it) the day the copyright for Winnie the pooh expired there was a trailer for a Winnie the pooh horror movie.
@@iksskan9147 Tarzan is owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ estate, even though the stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs himself (while still featuring him) are public domain.
Honestly, I am one of the people who believes in the idea that mostly nothing can be discovered at this point, but that refers mostly to TROPES, not ideas, which I would put moderately far behind it on that race. Maybe I'm being generous though, I mostly refer to very specific scenarios regardless of the familiar building blocks used to write those very specific scenarios, soooo. But, that being said, you can always make a unique story, and like the channel implcitly teaches, its okay if you use tropes, just use em well and put your heart into it. For example, if I want the mentor death trope, a common trope to be sure, I can at least make the mentor a great character, handle their teachings well, maybe throw in their impact on the world, so that they didnt just appear to teach the MC and then drop dead, but were just another great character on the journey.
What does it mean to be truly original? Does being original requires you to not use any of the tropes? To create completely new genre, or just sub genre? If it means creating new sub genre then I believe it is still possible, but you see. It actually requires knowing a lot about genre as a whole. But that's not enough you also need a lot of dedicated work and passion. Tolkien who is said to be father of fantasy, he did not create it from thin air, he studied various European myths, legends and other stories for years if not longer. Creating something original is way harder than media wants you to believe. Media makes you think that only chosen ones have souls and are able to create something new, while it's probably true that not everybody is able to do it. Bigger problem is that it actually requires dedication and years of hard work, something that many people who believe in this pseudo intellectual power of originality don't have at all. Like Raskolnikov who wanted to prove to himself he is one of greater people than common pleb without really understanding what it truly means, so do these authors are doomed to fail and they will either think they are unoriginal or delude themselves that their stock_story#4518 + 3 weird gimmicks, is a peak of originality
I mean given Tolkien use his experiences on being an solider in WW1, him being a environmentalist and studying languages, loving norse/germanic mythology and even his views on religion and mortality (as in being a religion denomination minority as in being a catholic in the UK) to put his own spin on fanasty.
@@mrszmatan2727 i think you nailed it, 3 years ago i started to really spent time in writing, being research about things involving storytelling (structure, dialogue, conflict, etc), and everything else to make it feal real (psychology, history, martial arts, other works, etc), and i still see how much books i have to read, but thats a bad advice, sadly, you should begin the earlier the better, i have like the main story i want to tell, but i dont have the experience to pull it off, so i have to put it in stand by and start to make other shorter works to actually write something, so i get the experience and hopefully reputation to maybe one day being able to have the experience to actually make a good story out of that idea, its painfull having to wait, but i think its more painfull knowing the potential of your story and blew it up bcs impatience or actually knowing is beyond your current capabilities, its the difference between being a one hit wonder, an amateur and having a fruitfull carreer out of your art
The great thing about unoriginal works is they have a sense of familiarity. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes I rewatch the same shows even though I know how it goes, because I like to vibe with the characters. Or to put it another way. Once you've read the alphabet once, everything else is a remix. Depending on how deep you go, nothing original has been created since the Big Bang. On the other hand, every single thing is original in that it's a unique variation of what's come before. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you drive somewhere.
not to mention different people coming up with the same ideas can still identify new things. its especially nice when the dudes were chill with each other. take galvani and volta, for example, both trying to figure out electricity and while volta discovered the more valid explanations he still was respectful of galvani and thats why both are revered today.
Originality isn't black and white. If you're too broad then everything is either "made of atoms" or "an abstract concept". Many times, it's easy to tell what's more or less original than others, countless writers use this notion that there are no original ideas use it to justify not even trying with their story and just copy and paste what's done before with no creative input. But anyways, if you consider multiple ideas in the past and find a new way how those ideas work together well in synergy, that itself is an original idea.
@@psykofreac9188 This is something i struggled with for a while. A few years ago i tried making a story about a war between alien robots only to realise i straight up copied Transformers 1 to 1. Years later my stories are now a far cry from what it was before. Still has Transformers inspiration but this time spliced with DNA of other shows i like In short; Stealing one idea is plagiarism, stealing multiple ideas is inspiration. And so i stole way too many ideas
@@adamshafeeq8685 Basically, don't try to write "original stories". Write "stories with original ideas" even if it also uses unoriginal ideas. It's okay to use unoriginal ideas as long as you lead to something original. For example, a story about wizards itself isn't an original concept as it's used in countless stories like Harry Potter and Fairy Tail. However, Natsu never played broomstick basketball and Harry never ate magic rocks to use its fire properties as fuel.
I think I read a comment on some other video about creative writing that was "Nothing is original anymore. You cannot create something out of nothing. You must steal. And you must learn to steal well." Kinda similar to you comment. XD
I used to have difficulty coming up with original ideas. Now I just think "what do I really want to read/watch right now but can't find anything like it no matter how much I search and ask around?" Or "I liked what I thought this story was about, but it turned out completely different. I really wish it was more like my first impression from the synopsis" Either one of those gives me ideas for original stories. Then I write them with my unique perspective. Voila. An original story.
Tip for any aspiring writer: A story is like a recipe for food. Yes, you can make food that is similar in scope to others, or that uses similar, if not the same, ingredients. But you can also change to recipe slightly depending on your tastes or others' tastes. Maybe you throw in a new ingredient that someone else didn't consider, or you put more of one particular ingredient into the recipe than what it normally calls for. Heck maybe you decide to swap out one ingredient for another. Will it taste perfect? Probably not. Will it taste good? Maybe. But regardless, you at least made it your own, and that's all that matters. Don't worry about trying to impress others with your recipe and just focus on trying to make something you would enjoy
This... Returned something to my memory. I'm like this - i have never written a thing, because what's the point if I'm just not gonna be original? BUT the reason I think this is because that's how people treat it sometimes. I remember writing in HS. And I came up with a story idea, maybe for myself, maybe for a project. I ran it by my best friend, and his response? "nah there's so many stories like that, super unoriginal" ....he's right, it was an isekai, very unoriginal, I do appreciate the honesty. But the negative feedback burrowed its way into my mind, categorized itself as "don't do this". Don't be unoriginal. People don't want the same story, isekai is overdone. .... Nevermind that every season there's like 3+ isekai anime that air. Nevermind that I had read several different "other world" stories up until that point and never got tired of it, to this day. But man having your best friend, or any direct audience, communicate to you that being unoriginal is bad.. It crushes a whole vein of ideas. I started thinking my stories are better in my head anyway - they're written for me to enjoy, nobody else, no judgements of an audience, no writing to cater to anyone else's expectations. I am creatively free if I keep it in my head. But no, you're right. I should have just written what I wanted. Gotten better at the actual writing, no matter the content. If others read it and like it, great. If only I do, fine. I could have developed the writing experience and skills, then aimed at a target audience later. But nope. I did not do that. My fault for taking criticism so fatally, but I also forgive myself because it is not easy to stay motivated when your support group inadvertently shuts you down. I still appreciate his honesty. But ouch
I say writing in a genre isn't bad so long as you try to do your own thing with it. In your case, you could look to the previous TWA video on Isekai stories and go from there.
@@wariodude128 If I wrote a story today it wouldn't be an isekai, probably. I still enjoy reading/watching them but I don't really daydream them anymore. My understanding of storycraft since then has significantly deepened and I've watched many TWA episodes including that one. TWA didn't exist when I was in high school though. I could probably outline a good story but I lack the ability to write it. Word choice, dialogue, pacing, etc. I've considered drawing it in some fashion.. But that's a whoooole other thing
Oof... I'm so lucky I got my isekai-like idea started a year before SAO was animated and gaining popularity. But it's still been hard feeling like my thunder was stolen and seeing how much better the genre could be if only "I" had been at the helm. Then one day I looked up, surely isekai wasn't defined by SAO, Alice in Wonderland is one just like that, right? And sure enough, it's really a tale as old as time. But the reason we keep telling it is because new iterations of the same idea always spark wonder in a new generation. The paradox is nothing and everything is original simultaneously - because every one of us is original in who we are, as no one shares our exact pains, our exact experiences, our exact interest, or our exact opportunities. It's not about the work itself being original- it's about how well you can capture your own heart and put it on a page for the world. TheHigherFury , I hope this helps you move forward with your idea. Your voice deserves to be heard. Putting yourself out there is terrifying, critique can absolutely be traumatizing. But I hope like a third act in a story, that your darkest moment of self loathing brought on by your friends renews into a glorious moment of renewal and faith.
My fisrt story, was in fact, an Isekai in a Roman world with a very few yellow-eyed mutants. The thing was that happened like 7 years later after the MC, got isekaid, so the story, was more about him dealing with the problems that he experienced, at the beggining and how he develops trought the story. So the fact of being Isekaid, it's just a little detail, not the main plot, and the story, wasn't about the isekai thing at all.
Paraphrasing from Tumblr, on fanfiction (which is a whole another discussion on what originality is) Me writing fic: this story has been done, this ship is stale, this kink is overdone, everything is old Me reading fic: omg this one scratches the itch JUST SO i hope the author has written 10,000 others just like it
I love fanfiction. I struggle to come up with ideas that sprout on their own. I'm much more of a vine person - I can take another story and grow my own ideas on it until the result is beautiful and completely different from the original structure. But, like, it couldn't exist without that structure. And THEN, when my ideas are fully grown and have developed their own stems, then I separate them from canon and breed them together to form a story that is for all intents and purposes original, though if you ask me I will happily admit it is a merger of two fanfics (or a fanfic with some other canon universe). By that point, all I have to do is change the character's names and appearances to eliminate the last remaining traces of canon. I love fanfiction, and will defend it to the last of my strength.
@@sarahvunkannon7336 Those can become legit original works. 😁 Everyone and their brother knows _50 Shades of Grey_ was a Twilight fanfic with Edward as a human instead of a vampire. _Freedom Planet_ started off as a Sonic The Hedgehog fan game starring OCs. _Them's Fightin' Herds_ was a fanmade My Little Pony fighting game until Hasbro sent a cease & desist order, so the team tweaked the ponies into other quadrupeds (like a cow, a sheep, and a llama). These are hardly the only success stories. 😋
This has been something that I've been dealing with. Being original has become such a hard step, because at this point a lot of things have been already made, with many stories sharing a lot of elements but with one or two different events. Basically, any idea anyone has, can be and was already made before, and that idea just has slightly changes. To overcome that thought and take it out from my head, was simply ignore it, and do what I want to write and present to the world. Make something original is almost impossible, but doing something yours, with your essence and style, is more important.
Being original is kinda overrated in my opinion. I like a lot of shows that are all pretty similar, to each other, but it's these similarities that allow their differences to shine through so brightly and have all the more of an impact.
This is actually a problem of perception, you are (or perhaps were) over-inflating the significance of the similarities and underestimating the value of the differences. Think of the seven stories. The only thing this truly speaks to is our obsessive need to catalog things. How can "The Quest" be different than "Voyage and Return"? Sure, the return adds something, but it's arbitrary, right? And what does it add? Rebirth maybe. I bet you can easily George Carlin and the Ten Commandments this isht and break it down to less than seven. Happy ending. Unhappy ending. Tragedy. That's one I saw in an article lately - don't ask me the difference between unhappy ending and tragedy. So there's only three stories then? How about this. Attempt to overcome obstacles. There you go. One. There's only one story in the history of the universe. I copyrighted it. Now no one can tell stories again. At a certain point it's really not all that different from saying "Writing a story is unoriginal, so I can't write a story and be original" It's just not a very rational or productive way to look at originality
I prefer stories with a fresh take on an old trope rather than totally original. Like The Boys(superhero genre), Shrek (fairy tales) and Blue Lock(anti teamwork and sports)
I think the best way I've ever heard originality described was along the lines of "just because your story is original doesn't mean it's good, just look at the human centipede"
Even if your story uses a few cliches or tired tropes, it’s about approaching them from a new perspective, rather than going off the rails entirely. As great as it would be to see a new, groundbreaking story that redefines a genre or creative writing in general, it’s still incredibly rare; in between each one, there are going to be bad ideas that don’t work at ALL, or sometimes bad executions of a good idea. The most original thing you can do is write what YOU want to write, and revise it until you’re content with your final draft.
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” -C.S Lewis, a pretty well known writer and provider of my favorite quote on originality.
TWA is continually outdoing itself, every time I think "this is it, this was the best episode" he'll release another, greater call out that has me in stitches. What a brilliant mind
This is one of my favorite quotes from youtuber Cosmonaut: “Original ideas doesn’t make a movie good. You can still make a good movie even if it has no original ideas. Stranger Things doesn’t have a single original idea but people still love it”
“The worst story in the world is better then the best story in your head - because the worst story in the world exists in the world” Best writing quote of the series.
To answer "Why are there so many Isekais if they don't make money"? 1) It's the anime that loses money. The light novels they originate from literally only takes like 3 people to make and can be churned out on a monthly basis. Therefore they can shove out "quantity over quality" and still make decent money. Not much, but they don't lose money. Animes, however, is a huge project with hundreds of people working on it, so when they adapt the same Isekai clone for the 1000th time, well of course it's a whole different problem altogether. Mid to small anime studios don't really have much choices on what they make. They can't afford the licenses to or can't offer the budget for big-name writers to sign on letting them adapt their story. They often don't have the time, buget or manpower to write an original, or just don't want to take the risk. That's why their "best choice" is to adapt low-tier, cheap stories and pray it makes enough money to keep the lights on, which unfortunately most times, it doesn't. 2) Light novel recruitment systems, namely publisher contest and web novels, are really, *REALLY* bad at selecting fresh, new ideas. They put waaaaay too much emphasis on making things as simple to understand as possible and puts the most importance on the first few chapters. This means people trying to write unique ideas, long term plans, or basically any stories with any exposition actually have severe disadvantage in being discovered while stories that uses archetypes, locations, and tropes everyone are already familiar about have a huge advantage. 3) It's Japan. A country that still uses fax machines in 2023. A country that sticks to outdated, ineffective and abusive work ethics even if it means economic stagnation and miserable society. They're terrible at changing the status quo, even if it means taking losses.
4. Their appeal. Knowing the general consensus of average anime fans (y’know, the horniness and whatnot), and the fact that a lot of isekai stories tend to feature milquetoast/audience surrogate MC’s with little to no personality other than “I have an op ability and a harem of conventionally attractive anime girls”, the appeal of isekai to anime fans may contribute to their popularity and appeal. (Oh, and one more thing about the harem: don’t forget the slave girl and the 10 yr old who’s actually 9999999999 millenniums old, so it’s okay!!11!!11!)
"Story structures work kinda like religious dogma in that the writer should adhere to them zelously" Has got to be one of my favorite quotes and will think this every time I have to write a story
Damn, JP, you surprised me two times. The first time you decided to fully animate the sponsorship wars. The second time was when the animation was surprisingly good. Did you learn this yourself from skillshare classes?
Honestly and truly, this is the TWA episode that hit the hardest for me. I've said myself that ignoring how other works have influenced one's own motivations and writing styles is a fool's folly, yet hypocritically have never finished a full draft of one of my own stories because of a search for the unattainable "perfect" resolution that hasn't already been done before. TWA is one of the best series for writers, and I hope that it receives all the love and attention that it deserves.
I think the best reaction to “your idea’s been done before” is “cool, how did they do it”. I get into a lot of new media (and drop them bcz adhd) through their similarities to stories in my head.
I want someone to write a book about a hero, but told entirely in the form of self aware short stories about fully flushed background characters who's stories intersect with the hero by verying degrees. Kind of like one of those documentaries where they tell the story of an important event through interviews of people who were there
Driftwood, by Marie Brennan. The focal character never appears in the present time of the story. The story is framed as a memorial to him, with various characters recalling how he helped them.
"Am I conflating my sense of self worth with what basically amounts to day dreaming?" Hello 911? I'd like to report a hate crime. Yes, a UA-camr shot me straight through the heart with facts and logics. "Nevermind that the worse story in the world is still infinitely better than the best story in my head, because at least the worst story *actually exists* in the real world." NO, STOP!!! I'M ALREADY DEAD!!! 😭😭😭
I’ve been sitting on a book for years now because I think it’s great and I don’t want to open it up to criticism. If it stays in my head, it’s the perfect story.
I know you normally lay the sarcasm on thick, or add little written gags, to help sell that people should be doing basically the opposite of what you are saying, but it hit weirdly hard when the "real" JP came through super strong right before the "Sponsorship Wars" section. I'm not really a writer, but I do enjoy the art of storytelling and your series has always been a fun look at the almost neurotic way that people can look at stories and story telling.
When I was writing my book, (that I'm still working on) one of my beta readers said that it reminded them of another show because of the story structure. That ate me up for quite a bit because I thought that meant I was a hack. Then another beta reader told me that the book was fresh and innovative and I should get it out. (Am still currently trying to work on that) 'Unoriginality is a criticism' is subjective. If your story reminds you of other things, use that to your advantage. You're never gonna write something original. So write you instead.
Don't freak out that first beta reader was right. I stopped writing for YEARS because I got the impression EVERYTHING I wrote reminded me of something else and I just couldn't write an original plot. I couldn't get a plot that someone would not say, "I've seen that before; its an old trope." That's just the point; every plot, character and theme IS an old trope. Its HOW YOU PUT THEM TOGETHER that makes the originality!
I never cared about being original, I thought that I wanted to include things from stuff that I like because I wanted to write what I myself would enjoy. Therefore I'd attract an audience that has the same tastes as I do, and so I'd also have a decent idea of audience expectations and know how to entertain them the best. It also helps a lot to get inspiration from reality as well as mediums you're not working in. For example, if you're writing a comic book, you can find inspiration from video games, etc.
I don't reference ideas I like nearly as much as I try to improve on ideas I thought could have been done better. I feel like my ideas are better that way.
'you can find inspiration from video games' Funny, almost all of my fiction writing is inspired by video games in some shape or form That said, I prefer to borrow ideas from things I strongly disliked rather than things I did enjoy most of the time, since I prefer to attempt to improve upon ideas that had potential but failed in some way
When I saw the smooth animation at the end there I started wondering whether I'd somehow missed a bunch of episodes where the production quality improved. That whole bit got a good laugh.
Wow. I needed to hear this. I have been putting myself under so much pressure to be original that it stopped me writing for years. I've become aware of how silly this is more but being called out like this was a good kick in the butt to help along the way. Seriously, thank you.
I made a fantasy series about a small group of friends who save the world over the multiple entries, but the small roster has the advantage of me being able to flesh out their personalities and how they play off each other as the series plays on. With each entry, new characters are added, but not too many to the point where you lose track of them. I always keep in mind the "less is more" rule. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to attract readers, as long as it's worth reading and people get what they came for.
That's one useful, i always told my group of work about that when doing a Visual Novel; "Less is more" whenever they try to expand the lore to the infinite, i had to step them down a little bit and make them remember that. Mostly, because the reader should understand what he is reading
i think the core to making an "original story", is to understand a few principles: 1) a lot of concepts nowadays are nothing new. what was done first has been milked enough in popular culture. it's like DNA, you don't get a strand out of nowhere, you need a template in order to form a strand concept, and there's honestly nothing wrong with that. the exceptional ones are the mutations that can either flourish into something really good, or really bad. how do you get those mutations? quite simple: 2) expose yourself to your environment. take everything in. something objective, or abstract, or a mix inbetween. could be a text from a book, or philosophy, or a maths equation, or a table, or even just a leaf, or the idea of happiness. in fact, maybe it can come from you, who you are, what you are, maybe even from a self reflecting perspective. when you build experience, its all a matter of how creative you are to use what you see around you, in ways you can think of. maybe look at a traffic light, and think of it as a creature, or maybe read on plant biology and go goofy with a plant traffic light. maybe find some silly ancient philosophy, and make it into the metaphor of the creature, what could it represent, and why? that there would be your mutation, a formation of strange concepts incorporated together in a way so harmoneous. and all you needed to do was be greedy and take the world in, from your own experience. maybe expand on your experience and find things you didn't know before, like vague history, or cultures. 3) the most original thing you can do is to think about the world from a perspective that is uncommon, or perhaps even taboo, or unpopular. something that questions your own morality, or the morality of the society around you. how do you write a story around that? again, like 2, you need to experience the world, look at things and mash them together, borrow concepts already done and expand on it, and you could ultimately turn it into a meaningful metaphor about something. in fact, a story is ultimately a reflection of your perspective, how you feel about things, and why. 4) the design of your world, characters and story could mean many things. art is meant to reflect an idea, so go crazy with it, give meaningful designs to a character to hammer down a point about them. think of how Dark Souls, Bloodborne or Elden Ring does this, everything all interconnects with a common theme, everything relates to each other, and the designs all tell a story themselves. do exactly that, with point 2). personally, at this point, it's impossible to make anything that's grandeous, new, and completely original. every concept has already been done, or rebranded. evil AI, helpful AI. magical zombies, viral zombies. anime changing forms/modes, or shouting out an attack, or charging an attack. the hero vs the villain. the prissy damsel vs the cutesy heroine. "bird wings = freedom and good, bat wings = bad. reversing the roles too". its important to acknowledge, you can't really come up with an original idea. what you can do, is borrow, and add your own interpretation, or borrow and amalgamate concepts into something. some things might look generic, hard not to. but it's all i can say, as an amateur.
Even if you write something that already exists, people will be able to tell by your tone that you came up with it yourself. Original ideas are typically written with care, plagiarism is written with pride.
"Once a writer has restricted their perspective to encompass the narrow definitions of genre - only then can true originaly be obtained" every sci-fi editor ever.
When someone says, "Every idea has been done before", they mean it. The world can only come up with so many base formulas before they run out. The trick is to tweak and improve on those formulas to make your story stand out. Also, I just realized that Greed has one thing that nobody else on this channel has: actual charisma.
For so long, I myself have been writing a big fantasy epic. I'll be honest, it has a lot of inspiration and influence from MANY sources (the list is too long), though with all the influence combined, it ends up turning into something original. Note: I also revise the story to fix previous errors.
I feel like obsession with Originality™️ partially stems from intellectual property laws. It's hard to imagine that a culture willing to freely spread creations would value originality. At that point the only thing of value would be creating something good, no matter how much of it is derived from what came before
The problem is how the human brain works. You hear, read, or even watch a story and completely forget about it. However the memory is still within subconscious mind and when you think you come up with an original idea, you’ve actually just unlocked a forgotten memory of another story.
I'm re-reading game of thrones after several years of not reading it, and there was a spot where I was like: ''wait didn't I write that???''. I had somehow written one paragraph almost word for word into my own story without realizing it.
my usual approach towards originality tends to be "take a familiar trope and change something about it" and it's mostly because I tend to enjoy novelty myself more than anything with wanting to impress my audience
Thank you for calling out that good writing is better than focusing on original ideas. I had a phenomenal original idea for the deep twist at the heart of a cosmic horror tabletop, and yet the actual tabletop campaign was a mess of barely connected plot points. One of many reasons why I had to drop it. It was just too much effort to run, and not all that fun. My new campaign setting I'm working on, which is just "Cozy and generic fantasy world, with a handful of nifty smaller world-building tweaks mostly there for flavor and character options, built around a main plot that's heavily inspired by Hand of Fate 2, just a little different" feels like it's going to be SO much easier to run, and a LOT more fun. XD
Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage and likely a few other characters, wrote an essay on how to write a pot-boiling novel. It's formulaic, but it is a good formula. Worth finding and understanding. Propp's Index of Folklore motifs is also worth a read.
You can do worse than pulp writers when it comes to learning how to make a living by it. Too many people don't understand that reaching for the art (which is a perfectly valid way to write, let me be clear) is going to be a lot less rewarding than they usually think.
XD This honestly somewhat reminds me of when I make headcannons for my characters. I just watch people's headcannons and adapt the parts I like (along with making sure it fits with cannon..)
This reminds me of a romcom I’m reading. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the fabled love triangle TWA has taught me to always implement. There was that one time we were introduced to a childhood friend who would usually be a love rival but instead she turned out to be a -supportive friend- terrible character who -gave him great advice- was useless to the story! The story is often taking -overused- classic tropes and -plays with them in creative ways- disrespects the genre!
The only _real_ time unoriginality is a problem is that if it reminds somebody of something else so much that they can only focus on how reminded they are of the other thing... or worse, how much they'd rather be reading/watching/playing the other thing. But even that's highly subjective and prone to personal biases, because people do tend to make the wildest stretches when it comes to comparisons (see: Digimon and Pokémon being accused of ripping each other off when actually the two franchises have almost nothing in common).
The worst consequence of chasing originality is that any sort of new premise needs its first excecution to be a bestseller or a masterpiece, otherwise the whole idea will be labeled "bad" and most writers will ignore its potential for decades
I really needed to hear this, making my constant crippling demons that make me feel bad for not being original into a sarcastic caricature just heals my heart. Thank you JC!
I noticed that I've read books where I know that if I wrote it, I would have been kicking myself going "No, this has been done before a million times. I'm such a hack, I'm just ripping off other ideas." And yet because someone else wrote it, I actually loved it and never once thought that it was unoriginal or ripping off something else. It helps to recognize that my issue is one of being hypercritical of my own work and setting unrealistic standards that I would never set for anyone else. So moving forward, I can take a step back and try to ask myself "Would I judge this if someone else wrote it?"
When I was a preteen, I came up with an idea of a cowardly 15 year old forced to jump from reality to reality until he found a way back home. Then I watched the pilot for Infinity Train and slowly dropped the idea when I realized I would never be competent enough to escape the shadow of of that masterpiece. I've never watched Infinity Train, even though I really wanted to because I thought if I did, I would inevitably copy their Ideas in my writing and make my own story even more similar to theirs In the end, there's no way to watch Infinity Train legally now, and I don't think I'll ever publish my old story.
Go back to your old story, but add something the Infinity Train doesn't have: DEPTH! Make this character of yours have a low self-esteem, even though he's smart and gets good grades at school, because a bully is jealous and beats him up. During his voyage from reality to reality, he learns different strategies and tactics (Kung Fu, psychology, making a group of friends) where he learns to face and handle the bullies. Make the character a DYNAMIC character that SLOWLY changes and grows during the story. I assure you, that is something Infinity Train can't copy.
6:36 you can almost hear the sounds of every single DM cringing simultaneously. We all learned the hard way that no mere cool idea has ever held up to a table full of people and the whims of the dice.
As an amateur writer, the best thing I can do to improve my writing is writing fanfictions. I'm not kidding, it helps so much. Find a good source material and do whatever you want with it. And please, go back to your old writings and rewrite them for whatever reason. Swallowing the cringe and going forward is the only thing we can do to grow and be better.
Remember, there aren't bad or good ideas, just ideas that are easier or hard to execute well, and learning how to do any kind of creative art is learning how execute an idea well.
12:55 This was playing in the other room and I heard this line! I ran in and wow! Good job on including more animation than you used to! 😊 I hope this helps you do more animation stuff you enjoy, whether or not it ever lands on this channel
I was not expecting a nod to Paranoia Agent! Such an often looked over classic. Now I know JP has great taste! Also, by the by, I love your videos. Always so helpful and funny.
thanks for the actually wholesome message near the end about writing what u love and loving what u write! It's rlly helping me continue with my resolution of writing for myself rather than so much about validation! also peak sarcasm as always XD btw, the sponsor ending bits have become something i look forward to with each video lmao
That fully animate Greed looked super great, no joke! Hope this indicates an improvement to the video quality in the future. It would make the videos even better to have smooth animation like that.
I find this is a big concept in game design as well. So many people think a good game is _____ genre with a twist rather than _____ genre executed well.
My biggest fear is that my fantasy world will become "too weird" for people to read. Especially now with how popular low fantasy is. Like I'm not even sure people will want to read a fantasy story without humans. I like that idea but whenever I bring it up, most people react like it's the worst idea ever. But then they don't bring a good reason. They say that I basically loose all the possible POV characters. Like... humans don't need to follow humans in the story. We can realate to god damn animals (most disney/dreamworks films are about non humans: Animals) so I don't know why the idea of a protagonist being elf, dwarf, tiefling or something different is so hated by so many people.
"I wrote something original. It drove everyone who read it insane and allowed the Old Ones into our universe, but it was original." Sutter Kane.
Slutter.
Banger of a movie
Or maybe it’s a common genre among those inspired by the Old Ones…
I don't think death note has to do with it.
Who doesn't read Sutter Kane? Or Garth Marenghi, author/editor/producer/actor of the amazing series "Dark Place" and the second best horror author of the 1980's (after Sutter Kane) provides advice that all aspiring authors should follow.
As someone who browses TV tropes way too much, this certainly hits way too hard.
Yes I have been on that site a lot I have learned a lot and sometimes wondered which tropes I was using
TV Tropes is informative but also addictive at the same time.
There's a reason I swore off TVtropes
My father loves to talk about the "originator" of a trope or stock story, and I just pull TV Tropes up to show him how much older it is.
I use TV Tropes to look up tropes for my favorite game (Undertale) and...Yeah.
"The worst story in the world is still infinitely better than the best story in my head because at least the worst story actually exists in the real world."
I was not expecting such a motivational quote from Terrible Writing Advice to make me get back to the grind of querying agents.
I gotta make a map for my fantasy setting but I don't wannaaaaa
@@MythicMachina Keep in mind that making a basic, simple map for your world isn’t a bad thing. Hell, you can draw just a landmass and some border lines to start, no names at all, and that’s perfectly ok. You can build upon it and improve whenever you want from there.
That’s what I did for my own.
Time to get back to my story about the gay ✨magical✨ detectives
@@wiffywiffy7896 Yessssss!
Also clishees a that for a reason, its good similarities for audience to latch onwile fleshing out more.
Just remember aspiring writers: Being original takes the form of either flagrantly ripping off older works with little to no modification, or obsessing about having your book reinvent fiction, while never actually writing anything.
Hope this helps!
I borrow elements from various past works all the time and try to morph them into my own work with my own personal flairs
Heck even science fiction genre is older than a millenia remember the automations in greek mythology???
@@scientistx5717 and of course they were sometimes used for sex, proving the Greeks beat scifi writers in that department by millennia as well
Yup. There are two main trappings of people trying to be original, rather then writing story. Even if Van Gogh stated that best authors are those who rip off from the best. Either:
1) Trying subvert common cliches, forgetting that most of those were already subverted long time ago and those become new cliches. Or simply pretending to be original, purely because lack of knowledge that what someone think is original was already done dozen times. For example "The Happytime Murders" may seam original until you realize that "Meet The Feebles" from 1989 exist (and is way better).
2) Focusing on coming with "new" ideas via comparison with TV tropes. And then creating incomprehensible mess as those random and commonly bad ideas (Tropes exist because there are reasons why specific plots are popular). Look, Pink Floyd The Wall as a movie (I know it is music video, not the point).
@@unicorntomboy9736 I like to take stories I have read, create fanfiction from them, then find a way to merge two fanfictions together. The result tends to be sufficiently different from either parent universe that it works.
I think the best way to overcome cliches is simply to ignore their existence and try to write something personal and special to you specifically. If your writing is emotional and personal, than any cliches which appear in your story won’t matter and won’t break the immersion. Think of Lotr. Is it cliche by modern standards? Absolutely. Does that do anything at all to break the immersion? Absolutely not. Don’t worry about being original, just write the story you would want to read.
This is an excellent comment among others. Take this updoot along with this adblocker. The Knights of Artistic Integrity stand with YOU! :D
Spot-on. Even Shakespeare wasn’t writing original premises he just took old ones and built his work upon them and went out of his way to do a good job
adding your own spin and style can make even a stale premise fresh and original
Yes! Because you being you is original enough!
@@matityaloran9157 I think Shakespeare had a pen pal who smuggled Romeo and Juliet books from Italy. Isn’t it funny even now?
9:26 Reminds me of that one Tumblr post.
Writer: "My cake isn't nearly as good as that one over there..."
Reader: "Holy shit, two cakes!"
I saw that too.
@@Karak-_- Me three
I saw that post. It reminds me of growing up watching cartoons and despite the fact most 90s-early 2000s weren't the most "original" ideas, there were still mountains of beloved franchises. "Oh another cartoon about heroes, or robots and science, or magic people? cool, just means there's more cartoons to delve into"
@@icebearnicho8256 my favorite aspect of those shows was that it was just a fun world to dive in where anything could happen
I also like more grounded works that simply give you the rules of the world as you watch others use them to their advantage but there will always be a part of me that will miss the "Well I guess the Martian god died trying to save his planet from a meteor and now it's heading straight for earth" aspect of it where shit just happened and you had to make sense of it
My favorite version of that post is the reader going “I FXCKING HATE CAKE!” And blowing up both of the cakes with laser eyes
Two painters stand before an easel
One holds a wide palette with multiple different colors, and mixes and combines them to create a piece that draws on older works while interpreting them in a new, interesting way
The other has spent all that time trying to invent a new color
"Hmm… how about blorange? Ah, shit, that's just brown with extra steps. C'mon, c'mon, you can do this…"
Me using infrared colored paint
“It was a color out of space…!”
a *mysterious colour unlike anything seen on earth* "
@@ConnanTheCivilized octarine already exists.
As one of my professors said to us in senior year of art school, “Everything’s been done before, but it’s never been done by you.” :)
Says countless copy and paste isekai authors.
@@psykofreac9188hey sometimes those isekai are actually pretty great. Uncle From Another World 💥💥💥
gahgagahgghghahgg I guess I HAVE to write, now
@@psykofreac9188Skeleton Knight in Another World begs to differ.
I’ve been struggling with my story because I felt like it “wasn’t original enough”, but after watching this, I feel a lot better about my story. I really needed to hear this.
Stay with it, friend. The ones who make it in our mutual game of writing are the ones who go the distance.
Focus on telling your story the way it needs to be told and worry about originality later. Chances are, if you end up loving what you wrote, others will too and originality will be a happy coincidence.
Pure Originality is extremely difficult,
But originality as in not having stereotypical stuff is easy (well, not really, but just do the opposite sometimes, aka subvert expectations)
Long before this video came out, I've always relied on the "two cakes" analogy for my stories.
Legitimately, most of my favorite stories could be called “unoriginal”. The Lord of the Rings was explicitly modelled after European epics and mythology, after all. The trick is to have a different angle to come at the story-LotR has the main heroes be the unremarkable regular folk rather than the people “destined for greatness” (they get to help, so it’s kind of a best-of-both-worlds scenario, but the hobbits are the crux of the story). You can get a lot of mileage out of “Here’s a familiar story, but with this key detail changed.”
Can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that JP took the time to fully animate greed for a gag. That stuff takes Time, so much Time!
And then the conspirator too.
Unless he's using AI to do it. Should be possible.
I think this is a bigger plot point than just a gag
@@stever1705 Agreed, I think there's something bigger going on with the fully-animated segments
@@AndrewHalliwell it might be flash-like animation.
Ah being original
The thing people sometimes try way to hard to do over.. writing an actually good story
Only sometimes?
I feel like you could say this about anything though, the difference is in trying to find the nebulous abstraction that makes up a "good story" being fresh _is_ pretty high on the list.
I remember racking my brain to have my superheroes characters have crazy ass powers/Names to not look like I was copying any Marvel/DC character.
@@futurestoryteller yeah that's true
I notice it a lot with DND characters actually. Where people need to have "original" characters
Too
Ah yes another day of religiously following twa's advice to write the bestest story ever
And then bathe in moolah forever after.
How goes the triangle
Ah yes, I too religiously follow his advice
I'll definitely write that story. Yep. Soon.
969 likes nice!
"Oh my god, he's fully animated!"
Greed just keeps getting snazzier and snazzier each episode.
"He's too dangerous to be left alive!"
Everyone seems to have noticed he's fully animated but has anyone noticed that his infinity gauntlet stretches all the way to his shoulder now? And that it seems everybody is getting new suit upgrades?
The conspirator got animation too at the very end
@@averageexistenceenjoyer3950 Oh yeah. It seems to not just be an upgrade in animations but have an in-universe reason for existing.
It kind of makes sense. He's making a shit load of money, so he probably can afford that stuff.
Now I'm wondering if he grows more powerful the more money JP makes from this channel.
Me reading: This is SO GOOD. I want more exactly like this.
Me writting: This was already made, who'd want more of something already done.
You hit the nail on the head there
Yeah. Noone wants their project to be just like everyone else's. There's no fun in creating something like that. What makes it original is your take on the trope or story. You're you and you're not going to tell your story in the same way another writer is. But you still want it to stand out from someone else's who writes similar types of stories.
They way that you tell a story is the real original thing here. Its the process, not the end. Otherwise people should just go to the end line of the book.
@@joslyncarter4813 it is spelt no one ya oaf
As soon as I saw Greed have an actual walk cycle, I knew things were getting even crazier
I love how the video is satiric, while the chapter names are the actual good advice.
@@LazarusBell Outro was pretty good, too. While we're playing the fools.
Yep, And if you take in account its sarcastic ther is really god advice what "totally not to do ever" like using tolkiens sources and inspiration insead him.
When there's a green question mark on screen, he's usually postulating what the real answer is in the form of a question
Just the other day, I saw a post from someone claiming they had a pottery class where the instructor had everyone split into two groups: Group A had to crank out as much pottery as they could to receive a good grade--quality didn't matter, only quantity. Group B *had* to submit one and only one perfect piece of pottery in order to receive a good grade. At the end of the semester, most of the really good pieces of pottery came from Group A. The reason? (supposedly) Group A focused on cranking out pottery, not caring what the quality it was, *BUT* in doing so, they obtained experience in creating somewhat decent pottery. Group B spent so much time on researching what made great pottery that they never sat down and actually made pottery until the last week of the semester.
Definitely a bs story but the underlying moral is sound: crank out crap; eventually you'll get to the point where it becomes less crappy until it's actually somewhat good. Then go from there.
ah yes, the art of polishing a turd until it turn absolutely golden (then flip it for actual money you can use to further your work)
I personally saw the story as a metaphor for people who want to start writing. One person spends so much time researching creative writing that they don’t even start, and the other one immediately starts writing and, well, it’s shit. But the experience eventually gets them to write a bit better. So yeah, I should stop researching, sitting on my ass, and just START WRITING.
@@BazzyBaka yep, that's where I was going with it. What eventually got me to put words down on paper was me telling myself, "No one expects it to be Shakespeare so just write." That got me at least eleven "books" so far, even if it's on AO3.
Aight but I still don’t understand how one is supposed to identify, learn from, and then come up with improvements on their mistakes. If you keep practicing the same error, what changes? And even if you can recognize what you did wrong, that’s no guarantee you’ll know what must be done to improve it. That’s what I struggle with the thought of. Is it all bs?
Uh, learning from mistakes is a pretty basic trait that most humans possess. If you genuinely don’t understand how continually practicing something will gradually make you better at it, I don’t know what to tell you.
One time I started writing a story. I got through three chapters. One of my family members asked what the plot was. I told them, only to realize I had accidentally written the Lion King.
And the Lion King have a lot of common with Hamlet. 😅
@@Frendlualso also Egypt mythology (the story between Osiris and Seth).
So in the end being *that* original doesn't matter, the more important thing is how you can give your own touch to your story
Interested to hear about your story.
@@skalessibbons7349 It was something I tried writing when I was 13. The main character, Amadeus, is a prince living in a prosperous kingdom with the king being his stern but loving father. Then, his father is killed, the palace burned, and he is forcibly exiled after a plot led by his uncle to overthrow the kingdom succeeds. The plan was then for him to work together with survivors of the coup to retake the throne. It was actually a significantly less interesting version of the Lion King, perhaps with extra middle schooler edge.
I did the same thing once except I realised I accidentally wrote the Incredibles instead!
Reminds me of a quote that roughly goes: Be someone who never finishes anything. If you have a thousand one-of-kind ideas, publish them all messily. Give the seeds to those who can nourish and grow them all with you.
I stopped caring about originality long ago. I feel so much freedom, and now I write exactly what I want:
A story about a space princess who can bench press planets, tanks supernova explosions and fights unknowable star-eating horrors, led by a dark knight who can shred the heroes to pieces in combat and on the dance floor.
Every step the characters take can destroy entire cities. Their punches vaporize moons. The fights are measured in light-minutes. Even the sweetest, cutest, smallest child character has a kill count in the hundreds. And there are mech knights with flaming swords, and giant kaijus, and the knights ride the kaijus.
oh so it's a dragon ball clone
@@andrasfogarasi5014 More like Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k, for the multiple factions involved, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann for the over-the-top insanity.
When u adding beam clashes and screaming to get a new transformation
Beautiful
Wait a second, light-minutes measure distance, not time!
My favourite story along these lines involves a forum fight between Jim Butcher and some guy about whether good ideas or proper execution were more important for writing a novel. Butcher eventually accepted a challenge from the other guy to take the worst ideas he had, and try to make a book out of it. So the guy said "The Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon". A few years later, we wind up with the Codex Alera.
Yes, and Codex Alera is the tropiest Fantasy series, but yet was super engaging. I loved it.
His story about Dresden Files is actually similar. When he was in college he was trying very hard to be original and one of his professors sat him down, told him he had the talent but needed to stop being afraid of tropes. So he wrote the first Dresden book with as many tropes and cliches as he could think of to try and prove them wrong....welp...
Codex alera was really good. If that's a true story it makes the whole thing better. Same with the dresden files.
When the audience say "wtf are you talking about?" then your story is original enough
I wonder if it's true that anime has done everything: how about this, an evil emperor destroys the world, a great hero saves the day, and takes over as the benevolent king, but really the king and the evil emperor are the same person, he just ruined everything so people would love him more when he took over in his new identity, and ushered them into a free and prosperous society.
Dead Astronauts.
@@futurestoryteller There are lots of stories whose premise is somewhat close to that, but with better motivations and goals.
@@futurestoryteller damn.... Thats so messed up. But i have heard the similar story of it but just remove the isekai super edgy self character harem nonsense, there you have it nice story. Sometimes isekai anime either is so bland cliche it looks the same or complete satire. Like there choosen one that wants to be farmer because hes paralyze entire life or President Putin goes to isekai. Japanes people really have crazy idea, but i dunno why they adapt the bland cliche one instead
@@Bagas-nf2dx money is your answer. This clishes work, just like stupid romantic novels work.
Originality is one of those things that feels like it's in a weird cultural place. It's vastly over-stressed most of the time, yet when it is completely absent you can really tell.
Early pixar had so much original ideas to offer back then from Toys had feelings, a society of monsters, Romance for robots; because they poured out so much good stuff its kinda hard for their new movies compete with that
"Creativity is the art of hiding your influence" -a Black Mesa scientist
Parts of this remind me of a thought I had: Creatives are measured by what they can create, not what they can imagine. Too many people think or proclaim they're "creative" because they're day-dreamers and imaginative.
"Creative" is not the same as "imaginative."
Honestly this is one of the reasons why copyright law is so loose. You can have a story incredibly similar to someone else, but change a few things and it is fine. There are just only so many ways to make great stories. Any sort of strict copyright would kill everything.
What about the trademarks? They’re often for the bigger franchises and brands.
@@SlapstickGenius23 trademarks don't protect stories they protect a brand
@@iksskan9147 ohh. Do you think so? Did Tarzan already become a brand decades back?
@@SlapstickGenius23 Tarzan is in public domain, you are confusing it with Disney's Tarzan which is trademarked, also for the sake of specificity a trademark protects a mark aka a symbol, name, smell so on, the point of a trademark it protects the distinctive characteristics of a company.
You should also look up Winnie the pooh and the expiry of its copyright (copyright expires after lifetime of author + 60 years after death, trademark on the other hand can be protected indefinitely assuming you keep renewing it) the day the copyright for Winnie the pooh expired there was a trailer for a Winnie the pooh horror movie.
@@iksskan9147 Tarzan is owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ estate, even though the stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs himself (while still featuring him) are public domain.
Honestly, I am one of the people who believes in the idea that mostly nothing can be discovered at this point, but that refers mostly to TROPES, not ideas, which I would put moderately far behind it on that race. Maybe I'm being generous though, I mostly refer to very specific scenarios regardless of the familiar building blocks used to write those very specific scenarios, soooo. But, that being said, you can always make a unique story, and like the channel implcitly teaches, its okay if you use tropes, just use em well and put your heart into it.
For example, if I want the mentor death trope, a common trope to be sure, I can at least make the mentor a great character, handle their teachings well, maybe throw in their impact on the world, so that they didnt just appear to teach the MC and then drop dead, but were just another great character on the journey.
I mean if it’s only done once has it really been discovered?
What does it mean to be truly original? Does being original requires you to not use any of the tropes? To create completely new genre, or just sub genre? If it means creating new sub genre then I believe it is still possible, but you see. It actually requires knowing a lot about genre as a whole. But that's not enough you also need a lot of dedicated work and passion. Tolkien who is said to be father of fantasy, he did not create it from thin air, he studied various European myths, legends and other stories for years if not longer. Creating something original is way harder than media wants you to believe. Media makes you think that only chosen ones have souls and are able to create something new, while it's probably true that not everybody is able to do it. Bigger problem is that it actually requires dedication and years of hard work, something that many people who believe in this pseudo intellectual power of originality don't have at all. Like Raskolnikov who wanted to prove to himself he is one of greater people than common pleb without really understanding what it truly means, so do these authors are doomed to fail and they will either think they are unoriginal or delude themselves that their stock_story#4518 + 3 weird gimmicks, is a peak of originality
I mean given Tolkien use his experiences on being an solider in WW1, him being a environmentalist and studying languages, loving norse/germanic mythology and even his views on religion and mortality (as in being a religion denomination minority as in being a catholic in the UK) to put his own spin on fanasty.
Exactly, and besides, even if you reuse character/plot tropes, the way you mix it in your own way will still make it an original story
@@mrszmatan2727 i think you nailed it, 3 years ago i started to really spent time in writing, being research about things involving storytelling (structure, dialogue, conflict, etc), and everything else to make it feal real (psychology, history, martial arts, other works, etc), and i still see how much books i have to read, but thats a bad advice, sadly, you should begin the earlier the better, i have like the main story i want to tell, but i dont have the experience to pull it off, so i have to put it in stand by and start to make other shorter works to actually write something, so i get the experience and hopefully reputation to maybe one day being able to have the experience to actually make a good story out of that idea, its painfull having to wait, but i think its more painfull knowing the potential of your story and blew it up bcs impatience or actually knowing is beyond your current capabilities, its the difference between being a one hit wonder, an amateur and having a fruitfull carreer out of your art
The great thing about unoriginal works is they have a sense of familiarity. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes I rewatch the same shows even though I know how it goes, because I like to vibe with the characters.
Or to put it another way. Once you've read the alphabet once, everything else is a remix. Depending on how deep you go, nothing original has been created since the Big Bang.
On the other hand, every single thing is original in that it's a unique variation of what's come before. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you drive somewhere.
If inventors were worried about originality, we'd still be in the stone age
not to mention different people coming up with the same ideas can still identify new things. its especially nice when the dudes were chill with each other. take galvani and volta, for example, both trying to figure out electricity and while volta discovered the more valid explanations he still was respectful of galvani and thats why both are revered today.
Originality isn't black and white. If you're too broad then everything is either "made of atoms" or "an abstract concept". Many times, it's easy to tell what's more or less original than others, countless writers use this notion that there are no original ideas use it to justify not even trying with their story and just copy and paste what's done before with no creative input. But anyways, if you consider multiple ideas in the past and find a new way how those ideas work together well in synergy, that itself is an original idea.
@@psykofreac9188 I was doing a funny, I couldnt fit that much nuance into it
@@psykofreac9188 This is something i struggled with for a while. A few years ago i tried making a story about a war between alien robots only to realise i straight up copied Transformers 1 to 1. Years later my stories are now a far cry from what it was before. Still has Transformers inspiration but this time spliced with DNA of other shows i like
In short; Stealing one idea is plagiarism, stealing multiple ideas is inspiration. And so i stole way too many ideas
@@adamshafeeq8685 Basically, don't try to write "original stories". Write "stories with original ideas" even if it also uses unoriginal ideas. It's okay to use unoriginal ideas as long as you lead to something original. For example, a story about wizards itself isn't an original concept as it's used in countless stories like Harry Potter and Fairy Tail. However, Natsu never played broomstick basketball and Harry never ate magic rocks to use its fire properties as fuel.
Lol I love how only Greed is animated and has voice syncing. Or at least until the animation rig.
He consumed the budget to add it to his own model quality.
The rig with the password, "password1"? That's the stupidest password I ever heard since "1-2-3-4-5"!
I can never be original, but at least I can fool everyone else into thinking I am
Too many online grifters live on such. Odd how their own content winds up being beyond derivative.
@@johnathonhaney8291 The joke is that this applies to every writer because nothing is original anymore
I think I read a comment on some other video about creative writing that was "Nothing is original anymore. You cannot create something out of nothing. You must steal. And you must learn to steal well."
Kinda similar to you comment. XD
@@johnathonhaney8291 Almost like everything is.
I used to have difficulty coming up with original ideas. Now I just think "what do I really want to read/watch right now but can't find anything like it no matter how much I search and ask around?" Or "I liked what I thought this story was about, but it turned out completely different. I really wish it was more like my first impression from the synopsis"
Either one of those gives me ideas for original stories. Then I write them with my unique perspective. Voila. An original story.
Tip for any aspiring writer: A story is like a recipe for food. Yes, you can make food that is similar in scope to others, or that uses similar, if not the same, ingredients. But you can also change to recipe slightly depending on your tastes or others' tastes. Maybe you throw in a new ingredient that someone else didn't consider, or you put more of one particular ingredient into the recipe than what it normally calls for. Heck maybe you decide to swap out one ingredient for another. Will it taste perfect? Probably not. Will it taste good? Maybe. But regardless, you at least made it your own, and that's all that matters. Don't worry about trying to impress others with your recipe and just focus on trying to make something you would enjoy
This... Returned something to my memory. I'm like this - i have never written a thing, because what's the point if I'm just not gonna be original? BUT the reason I think this is because that's how people treat it sometimes.
I remember writing in HS. And I came up with a story idea, maybe for myself, maybe for a project. I ran it by my best friend, and his response? "nah there's so many stories like that, super unoriginal"
....he's right, it was an isekai, very unoriginal, I do appreciate the honesty. But the negative feedback burrowed its way into my mind, categorized itself as "don't do this". Don't be unoriginal. People don't want the same story, isekai is overdone.
.... Nevermind that every season there's like 3+ isekai anime that air. Nevermind that I had read several different "other world" stories up until that point and never got tired of it, to this day.
But man having your best friend, or any direct audience, communicate to you that being unoriginal is bad.. It crushes a whole vein of ideas. I started thinking my stories are better in my head anyway - they're written for me to enjoy, nobody else, no judgements of an audience, no writing to cater to anyone else's expectations. I am creatively free if I keep it in my head.
But no, you're right. I should have just written what I wanted. Gotten better at the actual writing, no matter the content. If others read it and like it, great. If only I do, fine. I could have developed the writing experience and skills, then aimed at a target audience later.
But nope. I did not do that. My fault for taking criticism so fatally, but I also forgive myself because it is not easy to stay motivated when your support group inadvertently shuts you down. I still appreciate his honesty. But ouch
I say writing in a genre isn't bad so long as you try to do your own thing with it. In your case, you could look to the previous TWA video on Isekai stories and go from there.
@@wariodude128
If I wrote a story today it wouldn't be an isekai, probably. I still enjoy reading/watching them but I don't really daydream them anymore.
My understanding of storycraft since then has significantly deepened and I've watched many TWA episodes including that one. TWA didn't exist when I was in high school though.
I could probably outline a good story but I lack the ability to write it. Word choice, dialogue, pacing, etc. I've considered drawing it in some fashion.. But that's a whoooole other thing
You shouldn’t stop writing isekai because it’s unoriginal. You should stop writing isekai because it’s shit.
Oof... I'm so lucky I got my isekai-like idea started a year before SAO was animated and gaining popularity. But it's still been hard feeling like my thunder was stolen and seeing how much better the genre could be if only "I" had been at the helm.
Then one day I looked up, surely isekai wasn't defined by SAO, Alice in Wonderland is one just like that, right? And sure enough, it's really a tale as old as time. But the reason we keep telling it is because new iterations of the same idea always spark wonder in a new generation. The paradox is nothing and everything is original simultaneously - because every one of us is original in who we are, as no one shares our exact pains, our exact experiences, our exact interest, or our exact opportunities. It's not about the work itself being original- it's about how well you can capture your own heart and put it on a page for the world.
TheHigherFury , I hope this helps you move forward with your idea. Your voice deserves to be heard. Putting yourself out there is terrifying, critique can absolutely be traumatizing. But I hope like a third act in a story, that your darkest moment of self loathing brought on by your friends renews into a glorious moment of renewal and faith.
My fisrt story, was in fact, an Isekai in a Roman world with a very few yellow-eyed mutants. The thing was that happened like 7 years later after the MC, got isekaid, so the story, was more about him dealing with the problems that he experienced, at the beggining and how he develops trought the story. So the fact of being Isekaid, it's just a little detail, not the main plot, and the story, wasn't about the isekai thing at all.
Paraphrasing from Tumblr, on fanfiction (which is a whole another discussion on what originality is)
Me writing fic: this story has been done, this ship is stale, this kink is overdone, everything is old
Me reading fic: omg this one scratches the itch JUST SO i hope the author has written 10,000 others just like it
I love fanfiction. I struggle to come up with ideas that sprout on their own. I'm much more of a vine person - I can take another story and grow my own ideas on it until the result is beautiful and completely different from the original structure. But, like, it couldn't exist without that structure. And THEN, when my ideas are fully grown and have developed their own stems, then I separate them from canon and breed them together to form a story that is for all intents and purposes original, though if you ask me I will happily admit it is a merger of two fanfics (or a fanfic with some other canon universe). By that point, all I have to do is change the character's names and appearances to eliminate the last remaining traces of canon.
I love fanfiction, and will defend it to the last of my strength.
@@sarahvunkannon7336 Those can become legit original works. 😁
Everyone and their brother knows _50 Shades of Grey_ was a Twilight fanfic with Edward as a human instead of a vampire.
_Freedom Planet_ started off as a Sonic The Hedgehog fan game starring OCs.
_Them's Fightin' Herds_ was a fanmade My Little Pony fighting game until Hasbro sent a cease & desist order, so the team tweaked the ponies into other quadrupeds (like a cow, a sheep, and a llama).
These are hardly the only success stories. 😋
My favourite author is the almost epithome of that.
I hope you like awkard boy interacting with murderous girl, because if so you are in for a ride.
This has been something that I've been dealing with.
Being original has become such a hard step, because at this point a lot of things have been already made, with many stories sharing a lot of elements but with one or two different events.
Basically, any idea anyone has, can be and was already made before, and that idea just has slightly changes.
To overcome that thought and take it out from my head, was simply ignore it, and do what I want to write and present to the world.
Make something original is almost impossible, but doing something yours, with your essence and style, is more important.
Being original is kinda overrated in my opinion. I like a lot of shows that are all pretty similar, to each other, but it's these similarities that allow their differences to shine through so brightly and have all the more of an impact.
This is actually a problem of perception, you are (or perhaps were) over-inflating the significance of the similarities and underestimating the value of the differences.
Think of the seven stories. The only thing this truly speaks to is our obsessive need to catalog things. How can "The Quest" be different than "Voyage and Return"? Sure, the return adds something, but it's arbitrary, right? And what does it add? Rebirth maybe. I bet you can easily George Carlin and the Ten Commandments this isht and break it down to less than seven.
Happy ending.
Unhappy ending.
Tragedy.
That's one I saw in an article lately - don't ask me the difference between unhappy ending and tragedy. So there's only three stories then? How about this.
Attempt to overcome obstacles.
There you go. One. There's only one story in the history of the universe. I copyrighted it. Now no one can tell stories again.
At a certain point it's really not all that different from saying "Writing a story is unoriginal, so I can't write a story and be original" It's just not a very rational or productive way to look at originality
Or take stuff from other stories, plop em together and see what happens
I prefer stories with a fresh take on an old trope rather than totally original.
Like The Boys(superhero genre), Shrek (fairy tales) and Blue Lock(anti teamwork and sports)
12:41 I physically recoiled when I saw full animation on a TWA character
Ikr! I was like “what the heck?! Is that an actual walk cycle???”
I think the best way I've ever heard originality described was along the lines of "just because your story is original doesn't mean it's good, just look at the human centipede"
I think the best quote I’ve ever heard to describe creativity is “Creativity is the art of hiding your influences”
Even if your story uses a few cliches or tired tropes, it’s about approaching them from a new perspective, rather than going off the rails entirely.
As great as it would be to see a new, groundbreaking story that redefines a genre or creative writing in general, it’s still incredibly rare; in between each one, there are going to be bad ideas that don’t work at ALL, or sometimes bad executions of a good idea.
The most original thing you can do is write what YOU want to write, and revise it until you’re content with your final draft.
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
-C.S Lewis, a pretty well known writer and provider of my favorite quote on originality.
I'll be honest, I think this is the best video you've made in a while. I can't count how many times I've felt called out in the video lol
TWA is continually outdoing itself, every time I think "this is it, this was the best episode" he'll release another, greater call out that has me in stitches. What a brilliant mind
You should reupload this same video in a few years
You should reupload this same video in a few years
You should go for an entirely original video essay in a couple seasons
You should reupload this same video in a few years
You should reuploadbthis same video in a few years.
Wow, what an original video. Haven’t seen this one before…
This is one of my favorite quotes from youtuber Cosmonaut:
“Original ideas doesn’t make a movie good. You can still make a good movie even if it has no original ideas. Stranger Things doesn’t have a single original idea but people still love it”
“The worst story in the world is better then the best story in your head - because the worst story in the world exists in the world”
Best writing quote of the series.
"Fully animated JP can't hurt you."
Fully animated JP:
To answer "Why are there so many Isekais if they don't make money"?
1) It's the anime that loses money. The light novels they originate from literally only takes like 3 people to make and can be churned out on a monthly basis. Therefore they can shove out "quantity over quality" and still make decent money. Not much, but they don't lose money. Animes, however, is a huge project with hundreds of people working on it, so when they adapt the same Isekai clone for the 1000th time, well of course it's a whole different problem altogether.
Mid to small anime studios don't really have much choices on what they make. They can't afford the licenses to or can't offer the budget for big-name writers to sign on letting them adapt their story. They often don't have the time, buget or manpower to write an original, or just don't want to take the risk. That's why their "best choice" is to adapt low-tier, cheap stories and pray it makes enough money to keep the lights on, which unfortunately most times, it doesn't.
2) Light novel recruitment systems, namely publisher contest and web novels, are really, *REALLY* bad at selecting fresh, new ideas. They put waaaaay too much emphasis on making things as simple to understand as possible and puts the most importance on the first few chapters. This means people trying to write unique ideas, long term plans, or basically any stories with any exposition actually have severe disadvantage in being discovered while stories that uses archetypes, locations, and tropes everyone are already familiar about have a huge advantage.
3) It's Japan. A country that still uses fax machines in 2023. A country that sticks to outdated, ineffective and abusive work ethics even if it means economic stagnation and miserable society. They're terrible at changing the status quo, even if it means taking losses.
Ok I’ll admit I’m kinda lost on why the isekai animes are being made if they just lose money on them in doing so. Can’t they predict trends by now?
@@emblemblade9245 No
4. Their appeal. Knowing the general consensus of average anime fans (y’know, the horniness and whatnot), and the fact that a lot of isekai stories tend to feature milquetoast/audience surrogate MC’s with little to no personality other than “I have an op ability and a harem of conventionally attractive anime girls”, the appeal of isekai to anime fans may contribute to their popularity and appeal.
(Oh, and one more thing about the harem: don’t forget the slave girl and the 10 yr old who’s actually 9999999999 millenniums old, so it’s okay!!11!!11!)
I wish I had this video, like, 10 years ago. Maybe 20. Originality, in the purest sense, is truly a holy grail.
Yep, in the sense that it's an unattainable goal and therefore valueless.
more like El dorado, because ity dosent exist. You cannot invent something without something behind to preceed it.
"Story structures work kinda like religious dogma in that the writer should adhere to them zelously" Has got to be one of my favorite quotes and will think this every time I have to write a story
I would love it if JP made a navy blue coffee table book titled "Best Story Ever!" thats just tips and quotes from this series.
I'd buy it
Damn, JP, you surprised me two times. The first time you decided to fully animate the sponsorship wars. The second time was when the animation was surprisingly good. Did you learn this yourself from skillshare classes?
Honestly and truly, this is the TWA episode that hit the hardest for me. I've said myself that ignoring how other works have influenced one's own motivations and writing styles is a fool's folly, yet hypocritically have never finished a full draft of one of my own stories because of a search for the unattainable "perfect" resolution that hasn't already been done before. TWA is one of the best series for writers, and I hope that it receives all the love and attention that it deserves.
I think the best reaction to “your idea’s been done before” is “cool, how did they do it”. I get into a lot of new media (and drop them bcz adhd) through their similarities to stories in my head.
I want someone to write a book about a hero, but told entirely in the form of self aware short stories about fully flushed background characters who's stories intersect with the hero by verying degrees. Kind of like one of those documentaries where they tell the story of an important event through interviews of people who were there
Ciafas Kain in Warhammer
My friends read a book like that but I'm not sure it's available outside of Finland
Driftwood, by Marie Brennan. The focal character never appears in the present time of the story. The story is framed as a memorial to him, with various characters recalling how he helped them.
"Am I conflating my sense of self worth with what basically amounts to day dreaming?" Hello 911? I'd like to report a hate crime. Yes, a UA-camr shot me straight through the heart with facts and logics.
"Nevermind that the worse story in the world is still infinitely better than the best story in my head, because at least the worst story *actually exists* in the real world." NO, STOP!!! I'M ALREADY DEAD!!! 😭😭😭
I’ve been sitting on a book for years now because I think it’s great and I don’t want to open it up to criticism. If it stays in my head, it’s the perfect story.
It's illegal to call 911 for frivolous reasons.
@@canaisyoung3601 it's even worse to not understand a freaking joke.
@@GrndAdmiralThrawn If it stays in my computer where no one can watch it, it also never gets criticized, but at least it exists lol.
I know you normally lay the sarcasm on thick, or add little written gags, to help sell that people should be doing basically the opposite of what you are saying, but it hit weirdly hard when the "real" JP came through super strong right before the "Sponsorship Wars" section. I'm not really a writer, but I do enjoy the art of storytelling and your series has always been a fun look at the almost neurotic way that people can look at stories and story telling.
As a beginner, I feel called out with the "amounts to no more than daydreaming", and I love it.
Been binging your channel for like 3rd time now.
When I was writing my book, (that I'm still working on) one of my beta readers said that it reminded them of another show because of the story structure. That ate me up for quite a bit because I thought that meant I was a hack.
Then another beta reader told me that the book was fresh and innovative and I should get it out. (Am still currently trying to work on that)
'Unoriginality is a criticism' is subjective. If your story reminds you of other things, use that to your advantage. You're never gonna write something original. So write you instead.
Don't freak out that first beta reader was right. I stopped writing for YEARS because I got the impression EVERYTHING I wrote reminded me of something else and I just couldn't write an original plot. I couldn't get a plot that someone would not say, "I've seen that before; its an old trope." That's just the point; every plot, character and theme IS an old trope. Its HOW YOU PUT THEM TOGETHER that makes the originality!
I never cared about being original, I thought that I wanted to include things from stuff that I like because I wanted to write what I myself would enjoy. Therefore I'd attract an audience that has the same tastes as I do, and so I'd also have a decent idea of audience expectations and know how to entertain them the best. It also helps a lot to get inspiration from reality as well as mediums you're not working in. For example, if you're writing a comic book, you can find inspiration from video games, etc.
I don't reference ideas I like nearly as much as I try to improve on ideas I thought could have been done better. I feel like my ideas are better that way.
'you can find inspiration from video games'
Funny, almost all of my fiction writing is inspired by video games in some shape or form
That said, I prefer to borrow ideas from things I strongly disliked rather than things I did enjoy most of the time, since I prefer to attempt to improve upon ideas that had potential but failed in some way
When I saw the smooth animation at the end there I started wondering whether I'd somehow missed a bunch of episodes where the production quality improved. That whole bit got a good laugh.
"Creativity/Originality isn't easy, but it IS simple: Just do what YOU haven't seen done before." -Paraphrased advice from Eliezer Yudkowsky
Wow. I needed to hear this. I have been putting myself under so much pressure to be original that it stopped me writing for years. I've become aware of how silly this is more but being called out like this was a good kick in the butt to help along the way. Seriously, thank you.
Isekais with "twists" that want to be different than any generic isekais be like:
That part at 11:05 actually kinda scared me. I don't think I've ever seen him more serious about something.
I made a fantasy series about a small group of friends who save the world over the multiple entries, but the small roster has the advantage of me being able to flesh out their personalities and how they play off each other as the series plays on. With each entry, new characters are added, but not too many to the point where you lose track of them.
I always keep in mind the "less is more" rule. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to attract readers, as long as it's worth reading and people get what they came for.
That's one useful, i always told my group of work about that when doing a Visual Novel; "Less is more" whenever they try to expand the lore to the infinite, i had to step them down a little bit and make them remember that. Mostly, because the reader should understand what he is reading
i think the core to making an "original story", is to understand a few principles:
1) a lot of concepts nowadays are nothing new. what was done first has been milked enough in popular culture. it's like DNA, you don't get a strand out of nowhere, you need a template in order to form a strand concept, and there's honestly nothing wrong with that. the exceptional ones are the mutations that can either flourish into something really good, or really bad. how do you get those mutations? quite simple:
2) expose yourself to your environment. take everything in. something objective, or abstract, or a mix inbetween. could be a text from a book, or philosophy, or a maths equation, or a table, or even just a leaf, or the idea of happiness. in fact, maybe it can come from you, who you are, what you are, maybe even from a self reflecting perspective. when you build experience, its all a matter of how creative you are to use what you see around you, in ways you can think of. maybe look at a traffic light, and think of it as a creature, or maybe read on plant biology and go goofy with a plant traffic light. maybe find some silly ancient philosophy, and make it into the metaphor of the creature, what could it represent, and why?
that there would be your mutation, a formation of strange concepts incorporated together in a way so harmoneous. and all you needed to do was be greedy and take the world in, from your own experience. maybe expand on your experience and find things you didn't know before, like vague history, or cultures.
3) the most original thing you can do is to think about the world from a perspective that is uncommon, or perhaps even taboo, or unpopular. something that questions your own morality, or the morality of the society around you. how do you write a story around that? again, like 2, you need to experience the world, look at things and mash them together, borrow concepts already done and expand on it, and you could ultimately turn it into a meaningful metaphor about something. in fact, a story is ultimately a reflection of your perspective, how you feel about things, and why.
4) the design of your world, characters and story could mean many things. art is meant to reflect an idea, so go crazy with it, give meaningful designs to a character to hammer down a point about them. think of how Dark Souls, Bloodborne or Elden Ring does this, everything all interconnects with a common theme, everything relates to each other, and the designs all tell a story themselves. do exactly that, with point 2).
personally, at this point, it's impossible to make anything that's grandeous, new, and completely original. every concept has already been done, or rebranded. evil AI, helpful AI. magical zombies, viral zombies. anime changing forms/modes, or shouting out an attack, or charging an attack. the hero vs the villain. the prissy damsel vs the cutesy heroine. "bird wings = freedom and good, bat wings = bad. reversing the roles too".
its important to acknowledge, you can't really come up with an original idea. what you can do, is borrow, and add your own interpretation, or borrow and amalgamate concepts into something. some things might look generic, hard not to. but it's all i can say, as an amateur.
Even if you write something that already exists, people will be able to tell by your tone that you came up with it yourself. Original ideas are typically written with care, plagiarism is written with pride.
Message received- I will now patent every possible story concept to ensure only I am able to produce original things
"Once a writer has restricted their perspective to encompass the narrow definitions of genre - only then can true originaly be obtained" every sci-fi editor ever.
When someone says, "Every idea has been done before", they mean it. The world can only come up with so many base formulas before they run out. The trick is to tweak and improve on those formulas to make your story stand out.
Also, I just realized that Greed has one thing that nobody else on this channel has: actual charisma.
For so long, I myself have been writing a big fantasy epic.
I'll be honest, it has a lot of inspiration and influence from MANY sources (the list is too long), though with all the influence combined, it ends up turning into something original.
Note: I also revise the story to fix previous errors.
I thought they were talking about persona at 9:00.
Yakuza like a dragon also works if you count Kiryu as a supernatural being(which he basically is)
I want to make a novel inspired by Persona 5
I feel like obsession with Originality™️ partially stems from intellectual property laws. It's hard to imagine that a culture willing to freely spread creations would value originality. At that point the only thing of value would be creating something good, no matter how much of it is derived from what came before
The actual animation gave me chills...
The problem is how the human brain works. You hear, read, or even watch a story and completely forget about it. However the memory is still within subconscious mind and when you think you come up with an original idea, you’ve actually just unlocked a forgotten memory of another story.
I'm re-reading game of thrones after several years of not reading it, and there was a spot where I was like: ''wait didn't I write that???''. I had somehow written one paragraph almost word for word into my own story without realizing it.
my usual approach towards originality tends to be "take a familiar trope and change something about it" and it's mostly because I tend to enjoy novelty myself more than anything with wanting to impress my audience
Thank you for calling out that good writing is better than focusing on original ideas. I had a phenomenal original idea for the deep twist at the heart of a cosmic horror tabletop, and yet the actual tabletop campaign was a mess of barely connected plot points. One of many reasons why I had to drop it. It was just too much effort to run, and not all that fun.
My new campaign setting I'm working on, which is just "Cozy and generic fantasy world, with a handful of nifty smaller world-building tweaks mostly there for flavor and character options, built around a main plot that's heavily inspired by Hand of Fate 2, just a little different" feels like it's going to be SO much easier to run, and a LOT more fun. XD
Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage and likely a few other characters, wrote an essay on how to write a pot-boiling novel. It's formulaic, but it is a good formula. Worth finding and understanding. Propp's Index of Folklore motifs is also worth a read.
You can do worse than pulp writers when it comes to learning how to make a living by it. Too many people don't understand that reaching for the art (which is a perfectly valid way to write, let me be clear) is going to be a lot less rewarding than they usually think.
@@johnathonhaney8291 why not romance writers? They have made cliched formulas for a long time.
XD
This honestly somewhat reminds me of when I make headcannons for my characters. I just watch people's headcannons and adapt the parts I like (along with making sure it fits with cannon..)
every single angsty oc sound i see is now part of my story
This reminds me of a romcom I’m reading. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the fabled love triangle TWA has taught me to always implement. There was that one time we were introduced to a childhood friend who would usually be a love rival but instead she turned out to be a -supportive friend- terrible character who -gave him great advice- was useless to the story! The story is often taking -overused- classic tropes and -plays with them in creative ways- disrespects the genre!
“Be Original” is like telling a kid to “be normal”- neither concept exists & trying to do either only brings misery to everyone.
I agree
The only _real_ time unoriginality is a problem is that if it reminds somebody of something else so much that they can only focus on how reminded they are of the other thing... or worse, how much they'd rather be reading/watching/playing the other thing. But even that's highly subjective and prone to personal biases, because people do tend to make the wildest stretches when it comes to comparisons (see: Digimon and Pokémon being accused of ripping each other off when actually the two franchises have almost nothing in common).
The worst consequence of chasing originality is that any sort of new premise needs its first excecution to be a bestseller or a masterpiece, otherwise the whole idea will be labeled "bad" and most writers will ignore its potential for decades
"Art is theft." -Pablo Picasso
"The only art I'll ever study is stuff I can steal from." -David Bowie
the best writing advice I've ever heard was from a lovely lady who said "the most original writers are always the ones not trying to be original"
Oh my god - the actual animation used for Greed in the sponsorship wars section was so surprising, wow! Outdid yourself, TWA!!
I really needed to hear this, making my constant crippling demons that make me feel bad for not being original into a sarcastic caricature just heals my heart.
Thank you JC!
I noticed that I've read books where I know that if I wrote it, I would have been kicking myself going "No, this has been done before a million times. I'm such a hack, I'm just ripping off other ideas." And yet because someone else wrote it, I actually loved it and never once thought that it was unoriginal or ripping off something else.
It helps to recognize that my issue is one of being hypercritical of my own work and setting unrealistic standards that I would never set for anyone else. So moving forward, I can take a step back and try to ask myself "Would I judge this if someone else wrote it?"
JP singlehandedly made me quit writing because I'm too embarrassed on how accurate it is
When I was a preteen, I came up with an idea of a cowardly 15 year old forced to jump from reality to reality until he found a way back home.
Then I watched the pilot for Infinity Train and slowly dropped the idea when I realized I would never be competent enough to escape the shadow of of that masterpiece.
I've never watched Infinity Train, even though I really wanted to because I thought if I did, I would inevitably copy their Ideas in my writing and make my own story even more similar to theirs
In the end, there's no way to watch Infinity Train legally now, and I don't think I'll ever publish my old story.
Go back to your old story, but add something the Infinity Train doesn't have: DEPTH! Make this character of yours have a low self-esteem, even though he's smart and gets good grades at school, because a bully is jealous and beats him up. During his voyage from reality to reality, he learns different strategies and tactics (Kung Fu, psychology, making a group of friends) where he learns to face and handle the bullies. Make the character a DYNAMIC character that SLOWLY changes and grows during the story.
I assure you, that is something Infinity Train can't copy.
6:36 you can almost hear the sounds of every single DM cringing simultaneously.
We all learned the hard way that no mere cool idea has ever held up to a table full of people and the whims of the dice.
As an amateur writer, the best thing I can do to improve my writing is writing fanfictions. I'm not kidding, it helps so much. Find a good source material and do whatever you want with it.
And please, go back to your old writings and rewrite them for whatever reason. Swallowing the cringe and going forward is the only thing we can do to grow and be better.
Remember, there aren't bad or good ideas, just ideas that are easier or hard to execute well, and learning how to do any kind of creative art is learning how execute an idea well.
I'm too avant-garde for something as passe as a plot 🤣🤣
12:55
This was playing in the other room and I heard this line! I ran in and wow! Good job on including more animation than you used to! 😊 I hope this helps you do more animation stuff you enjoy, whether or not it ever lands on this channel
I was not expecting a nod to Paranoia Agent! Such an often looked over classic. Now I know JP has great taste! Also, by the by, I love your videos. Always so helpful and funny.
thanks for the actually wholesome message near the end about writing what u love and loving what u write! It's rlly helping me continue with my resolution of writing for myself rather than so much about validation! also peak sarcasm as always XD btw, the sponsor ending bits have become something i look forward to with each video lmao
That fully animate Greed looked super great, no joke! Hope this indicates an improvement to the video quality in the future. It would make the videos even better to have smooth animation like that.
I find this is a big concept in game design as well. So many people think a good game is _____ genre with a twist rather than _____ genre executed well.
My biggest fear is that my fantasy world will become "too weird" for people to read. Especially now with how popular low fantasy is. Like I'm not even sure people will want to read a fantasy story without humans. I like that idea but whenever I bring it up, most people react like it's the worst idea ever. But then they don't bring a good reason. They say that I basically loose all the possible POV characters. Like... humans don't need to follow humans in the story. We can realate to god damn animals (most disney/dreamworks films are about non humans: Animals) so I don't know why the idea of a protagonist being elf, dwarf, tiefling or something different is so hated by so many people.