The Struggle of Trying to be Original

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An original pencil.[/caption]

In 2004, Christopher Booker published a book called The Seven Basic Plots, in which he states there are only seven basic plots: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. Other people will argue that there are eight basic plots, explained in terms of stories we all know very well: Cinderella, Achilles, Faust, Tristan, Circe, Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus, and The Indomitable Hero. You might agree with the people who say there are nine basic plots, or with those who claim there’s only one.

As a writer in a world where a billion stories are told every day, it can be hard to come up with a completely original idea. Nonetheless, many authors have come to the realization that old stories can always be retold.

Some writers have opted for literary spin-offs, in which they retell the story we already know from a different point of view. Take J.M. Coetzee’s Foe for example. This book narrates Robinson Crusoe’s story from his shipmate Susan Barton’s point of view. The play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard is another great example. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the play tells the story from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s, Hamlet’s friends, perspectives.

Others have been so inspired by the adventures and stories of the characters that they decide to write books based on them, but with a twist. Jane Austen’s books have inspired generations of writers, encouraging them to tell new stories based on the pocket universes Jane created. You might have watched The Jane Austen Book Club, a movie based on Karen Joy Fowler’s book. This book tells the story of five women and one man who create a book club in which they only read Jane Austen, and how her books influence their lives. And, even if you don’t read Jane Austen, you surely know about Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, which is based on Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Many writers have taken classic stories and retold them in their own way. Whether they take the same characters and tell the story from a different perspective or base their work on a key element from the original narrative, these new stories are a representation of the reader’s perception of the story. Edmund Wilson said “no two persons ever read the same book.” Well, some take it a step further and add no two writers write the same book. Retelling a story is not unoriginal if we take into account that no one perceives the book in the same way.

Rather than show there is no such thing as an original story anymore, modern adaptations prove classics are timeless. They also bring new generations of readers into the lines of people who have laughed and cried with the characters. But more than anything, they prove these stories are still relevant, no matter how much the world seems to change.

We live in a globalized world in which everything moves too fast. Every day new problems arise and new solutions are provided. However, we humans are still the same. We still have the same concerns and the same hopes as we did when human civilization began. The fact that we keep telling the same stories, as adaptations, spin-offs, or a conscious take on one of the basic plots, does nothing but emphasize the universality of human experience and its paradoxical diversity.

We are all different, that is true, but there is also a lot we share. Stories bring us together in writer and reader communities of all sizes. The fact that a story can touch people hundreds of years apart is the biggest proof we have that something can be universal, and that no matter how different we are, we are never alone.

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