"There is no new thing under the sun." So says Ecclesiastes 1:9. Nothing is original. Yet we strive as writers to be original. I know I do. Do you?
The eminent critic Howard Bloom said that Shakespeare invented the human, which is another way of saying that there can be nothing new said about what it means to be human. Yet for some reason, we still write. Why?
Do you seek to be original in your creations? Or do you simply create without a care in the world?
1 comment:
Most storytelling themes have remained unchanged since the days of our ancestors (i.e. the hero cycle, the quest, good versus evil, and so on). What does change, though, is people. Someone living in Shakespeare's time would be very different from someone living in the 21st century. These two people would have vastly different life experiences and would have different stories to tell.
I try to write with this in mind, knowing that characters are more important than the plot, which has probably been told before in some form or another.
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