To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “The trouble with dumb bastards is that they can’t imagine such a thing as being smart.”
That is why only dumb authors say that originality is an illusion.
Smarter authors might say, ‘originality isn’t always that marketable because people like predictable plots.’
There are around 60 unique stories in the Bible, many of which are based on older stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh or some Egyptian proverbs.
A person who can’t remember 60 stories will conclude that any new story is just a re-telling of a story in the Bible. They’ll say: ‘there is nothing new under the sun’, as though that sums up life, the universe, and everything. What they really mean is that there is a lot of stuff under the sun – so much that they can’t keep track of it all.
I find that a mathematical analysis of originality helps.
10 factorial is 3628800
30 factorial is 265252859812191058636308480000000
There are 130000000 books in existence and 2000000 books published each year, half of which are nonfiction, so a ten-point plot overlap is to be expected in any given year, especially if it is part of a trend, but a 30 point plot overlap is not to be expected, especially if there is no trend.
Can I use someone else’s idea to write my book?
You might have a formulaic, ten-point plot buried within a unique, 30 point plot, or you might have a formulaic, three-point plot buried within a unique, 10 point plot. For reference, Cinderella contains a 10 point plot and a 200-page book might have 30 plot points.
Not everybody is capable of surprising or teaching an audience by creating a unique plot, but, then again, most audiences don’t want to be surprised or taught that much. That is one reason why professional writers have learned to be unoriginal – predictability sells. The other reason is that if a professional writer doesn’t have any life experiences other than the consumption of formulaic media, whatever he writes is going to be, you guessed it, unoriginal. Real-life is full of originality.
Audiences like formulaic stories because they are comforting and people who think in a focused fashion are easy to surprise – even with an old formula.
Take my husband, for example. He is a successful person who is good at Sudoku and who manages 70 people, yet he will watch the most formulaic films with full attention because he focuses to a degree that I do not. He will jump whenever a monster appears on the screen, even though it is obvious that a monster is about to appear on the screen. Our minds are structured very differently.
I think that he mirrors the emotions in the characters more than I do.
I usually stop watching most movies or tv series halfway through because I can guess where the plot is going and I don’t feel like I am learning anything.
I did however watch this film to the end because I was laughing so hard.
My novel was plagiarized within four months after I published it and instead of letting that get me down, I intend to milk that fact for all that it is worth.
My novel made such an impression on someone that he paid a ghostwriter to have it rewritten in condensed form and he paid to promote it. How flattering!
The image in the header was taken from this article on the neuroanatomy of a rapper’s flow state.
Kirsten Hacker 
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