Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.
Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Ew! It’s Hot In January!
Kelly was hoping for a nice day so we could take a walk.
Blech!
I was thinking that the 50-degree temperatures that were previously forecast is about the upper threshold of my tolerance for Kelly’s idea of a nice day, but today and tomorrow are forecast to be in the 60s.
Yuckorama!!!
The good thing is that I get to take a walk with my sweet, beloved wife. Makes it almost worth the “nice” day…
Ick Therapy
If you’re like me and you hate warm/hot weather, you can cool off with this lovely snow scenery. You’ll probably want to mute the music and put on your own favorite tunes. I’m not a big fan of whatever you call the “music” that the video creator chose.
Unique Up On It…
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. ~Oscar Wilde
Unique is in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of instances of people who think they had original ideas, only to find that it’s already been done by someone else.
Marvel and DC actually hijacked each others’ characters relentlessly. Even when something is a derivative work, it still winds up being unique. Sometimes, it’s better than the original. Often, it’s worse. Sometimes it’s just as good (or bad) but is simply different because of the creators’ perspective.
There are cycles in cinema, TV and writing. War movies ebb and flow. Swords and sandals had their day. Zombies, vampires, werewolves do the Virginia reel with aliens, mutants and post-apocalyptic warlords. Sweet romance and Harlequin-style soft porn trade places or even duke it out toe to toe in the public eye.
So, is anything really unique?
I guess it’s really nothing and everything. Is that a Schroedinger’s Cat joke? No.
Basically, there are very few original ideas under the sun. People tend to think in gross archetypes when you boil down a piece of work. There are hours of thought on this on YouTube and various sites devoted page upon page to this analysis.
What makes anything unique is a matter of the individual creator’s (or team of creators’) perspective, talent, style and work ethic.
If you ask four people to draw a bowl of fruit, you’re going to wind up with four different pictures. It’s inevitable. On the surface, it seems like the same picture. You’ve got an apple, an orange, a banana and some grapes in a bowl. All the same picture, right? No, not so much.
You’ve got the one person who went to art school and can give you an almost photographic representation of the bowl of fruit.
You’ve got the other person who can barely draw a stick figure. Their picture might get someone to guess “bowl of fruit” when playing Pictionary but is otherwise pretty atrocious.
The third person might draw a decent bowl of fruit but not use the same shading or choice of colors as the art student.
The fourth guy seems like he’s off his meds and does a cubist version of the bowl of fruit that doesn’t even attempt to look like a bowl of fruit but rather a depiction of how the bowl of fruit makes him feel.
There will always be some individuality in the production of any given piece of work. You can have four different productions of Hamlet that are absolutely incomparable to each other because of the perspective, talent, style and work ethic of not only the director but also the performers, stage crew, editors and everyone involved. On the other hand, you can have what the producer thinks is a completely unique piece of work that turns out to be a completely crap knock-off of another work that he happens to have been “inspired by“.
For instance, I remember watching the movie Amadeus back in the 80s. I wore my VHS tape out. I just love that movie. I’ll have to get it on DVD sometime. They had a budget that obviously exceeded the budget that Bill had for putting on Amadeus at NCC, but Hollywood didn’t have Connor. I singularly enjoy watching my son’s performances. A bunch of college kids and a massive army of professional performers will produce a different show. It may be the same basic story but it’s a completely different show just the same.
That’s why I’m not getting hung up on whether or not certain character names have already been used. I’m not trying to rip anything off, but my Conclave are different than DC’s Conclave. They have different members, agendas, backstories and so forth. Clearly, I don’t want to name anyone Peter Parker or Clark Kent but I’m not going to get hung up on the fact that there’s already a Captain Freedom in The Running Man or that Marvel has a Foxfire. Those people are not my characters. The Running Man from 1987 has nothing to do with The Running Man from 1963 and Marvel’s Foxfire has nothing at all to do with the Foxfire book or the 1955 Foxfire movie, neither of which have anything to do with the 1996 Foxfire movie. I’m not using Batman or Superman or anything that can clearly be designated as the sole intellectual property of someone else. Even if I did trip over someone’s copyright, my characters, places and plots are clearly not those things nor are they derivative of those things. My work is my own. If it seems similar in broad strokes, that’s the genre.
Superhero stories have certain tropes that help define the genre. Genre helps define reader expectations. If that makes it a derivative work, too bad. I can only be so unique and still conform to a genre.
So, what the hell are you even on about, Rob?
I’m simply saying that my choices are the ones I felt needed to be made for my story. Captain Freedom in my story has a completely different background and motivation than Captain Freedom in The Running Man. I think that’s completely okay. My story has its own characters and plots. Hopefully, that won’t be a problem once it goes into print.
I’ve gotten to a point where rewrites are needed. Some stuff needs to be fleshed out. Some stuff needs to be trimmed out. Some stuff needs to be added. Some stuff needs to be clarified. It’s a pretty good story, but stream of consciousness is just a point of departure. I need to wordsmith it to make it truly excellent.
This isn’t a case of delaying due to perfectionism. The work actually needs to be edited and refined. I’m not Mozart. I can’t create perfection in the first draft. That’s not my gift. My gift is creativity tempered with analysis and intuition. I did the wild creative bit. Now, I need to do a bit of polishing so it can get published.
It’s supposed to be 60-something tomorrow. Nice weather for Connor to go back to school in but, thank goodness, winter kicks in again on Monday.