INFLUENCE

INFLUENCE – the effect of something on a person, thing, or event.

There is great deal of talk about the extent to which a writer can (is allowed) to be influenced by another writer. I have read some writers talk about being ‘influenced’ by something they have read… and those writers very quickly saying ‘but I haven’t stolen from any other writer’. I am interested in this and interested to know what this means. One writer I know wrote on her blog that she had been struggling with a story she wanted to tell and not getting it right… maybe even for years. Then she read something by someone else and ‘discovered’ the structure that would make her story work. She would be quick to say that her story was influenced by what she had read, but she would not dare admit that she had ‘stolen’ something from this other writer. Personally, I am not sure that she hasn’t taken something from this other writer, and if we conclude that she has, then I know that I don’t have a problem with her having done so.

So why am I bothering to raise the matter if it is one that causes me no real concern? I do so because I think there is something very important in that example, something that I feel is at the heart of the debate on plagiarism and which is at the heart of creativity. It has been said so loudly already that it seems absurd to have to say it again, but I do: we do not, any of us, create in a vacuum. We create within the world that we inhabit, and we create as a response to that world and everything in it. This includes the things we read about and the things we see on our screens and the things we hear about… everything really. There is a whole world of ideas that passes through us all. We cannot help but take from that world, sometimes not even knowing what we have taken and not knowing from where we have taken, and we create from the raw material of that world. We cannot help but be influenced by everything in that world. But what does the word ‘influence’ mean here?

The language used to discuss plagiarism is very emotive. We talk of theft and we castigate the plagiarist as thief and criminal. What the writer in the example above would not admit is that she has stolen anything, but it is clear that had she not found her structure in another’s work then she would still be struggling with her story. She is quick to give what she did a word that is less loaded: ‘found’ instead of ‘took’ or ‘stole’. But it is not clear what the difference here is. To me, at least, it is not clear.

And examples of this kind of ‘influence’ are legion in every writer’s work. There are honest writers who will tell you as much. It would be an odd work indeed that we could say of it that it was free of the influence of any other work. So, when a writer does not hide his/her borrowings, isn’t he/she just being honest about a practice that all artists do? Isn’t he/she just openly admitting the influence of another on his/her work?

Another writer I know openly admitted that a story she wrote was influenced by a great writer that she admired. But when she was challenged about the extent to which she was influenced, she got very defensive, claiming that her story was totally different and she was doing different things from the original. I happen to think that her story has some different things going on in it, but I can also see a great deal of similarity between the two stories. So what’s going on here?

Writers are people. People do not want to be publicly castigated for what they do. This woman writer does not want public disapproval, so she defends herself against the charge of ‘too much influence’. Her storyline is similar to the original (the same arc), her characters are similar, her setting is similar, her beginning and her ending are both similar. But there are marked differences. She won’t admit to any of this because to do so would take her perilously close to what others would call plagiarism. I can sympathise, especially as this same writer has publicly taken the high ground in stating what is and is not plagiarism in another’s work (actually, her confusion on the matter was evident when, after castigating someone for plagiarism of her work, she later admitted it was changed enough in this other person’s work for it not to be plagiarism!).

Why are lawyers called upon to argue cases of plagiarism in our courts? Isn’t it precisely because the whole notion of plagiarism of ideas is an artificial construct and an imperfect one and one that goes against thousands of years of history and evolution that has brought us, through the transmission of ideas, to where we are today? Isn’t it because the question of plagiarism is not always easy to define. Straight copying of another’s words is obvious and quite easily proven. But the using of another’s ideas is not only more difficult to prove, but prosecution of such goes against the whole way that art and creativity works.

The writer who found her structure in another writer’s work defends herself by saying that if the two works were put side by side then the ‘borrowing’ would still not be obvious; does that make her ‘theft’ more or less honest? The writer who admits she was influenced by a great and published writer in the story she told, was only doing what is natural for a writer or an artist, and there is no need for her to come all over defensive, even when if her story is laid side by side with her source work, the similarities are evident.

So, isn’t ‘influence’ just another word for ‘plagiarism of another’s ideas’, and a bit like calling a spade a ‘digging implement’ instead of what it is? And if we cannot ever escape the influence of the work of others in what we write, shouldn’t we be more accepting of the fact that ownership of creative ideas is not only not possible to defend, but not desirable either?