Good Writers Borrow, Great Writers Steal – T.S. Eliot
The quote, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal,” is a T.S. Eliot quote that, as Lee Ellis, in a 2010 New Yorker “Page Turner” said: “mean[s], in this context, the act of taking from other texts themes, ideas, rhythms, structures, but not the sentences themselves.” I think most writers understand this—although yes, with ChatGPT and other AI applications, some writers now take the quote seriously. Nefarious meanings aside, I don’t know a single good writer that claims to not have “stolen” something from the writers and books that have influenced them and their writing. And there’s something to be said for that, because it shows a level of honesty, integrity, insight, and, frankly, the reality of what writing is—i.e., the consumption of writing, the study of the things we steal as writers (the themes, ideas, rhythms, structures, etc.) as mentioned above, the goal being to help guide us through the very difficult process of writing so we take the nuggets of wisdom from the history of writing while kicking the coal we create aside for the betterment of our works.
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
I read or saw an interview with Lauren Groff (I think it was her), where the interviewer pointed out a similarity between her latest novel at the time and some other author’s novel, and Groff smiled and said something to the effect of, “Yep. I did steal that from [enter novelist’s name here].” She wasn’t saying she had plagiarized the other author’s words, but rather some idea or convention that she took from that author and used in her own novel. It’s part of the craft, and it’s something I do myself all the time. I remember I did that in one of my (currently unpublished and still being edited) novels. I had read Nicole Krauss’s fantastic novel The History of Love. In that novel there’s a scene between two characters where, if I’m remembering correctly, one character (maybe it was the protagonist Leo Gursky) realizes that the person they are speaking to is their long-lost friend.
She wasn’t saying she had plagiarized the other author’s words, but rather some idea or convention that she took from that author and used in her own novel.
It was a powerful scene, and I took the idea of that and incorporated a version of it into my novel, which tells the story about a woman with mental health issues and how she came to have those issues. Instead of having friends meeting on a street, I had a mother speaking to her mentally ill daughter through a door. The mother hadn’t seen her daughter in years, and they were both afraid to interact with each other. As I wrote the scene, it brought a lot of emotion to me, and I cried. A lot. I knew I had a great scene, and I had stolen Krauss’s and made it my own. I’m pretty sure if Krauss ever gets to read it, she’ll say, Hey, that’s my scene! But she’ll also understand how it isn’t. How I made it my own. And why it’s okay to have done so.
Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992. The story is a retelling of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” The incredibly popular novel, James, by Percival Everett*, which took the country by storm only last year, is a re-imagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Per Penguin’s website: "One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mails to his father," begins Zadie Smith's portrait of two families bound together by professional jealousy, female kinship and class conflict. E. M. Forster's 1910 drama Howard's End begins like this: “One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister". And John Dufresne’s Deep in the Shade of Paradise is often read as a re-telling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, these authors directly and indirectly “steal” lines and/or plots from previous works, but they’ve made them their own. They tell the stories in their own ways, being cheeky (as in Smith’s use of what is, in essence, the same opening line), or through the overall plot of another writer’s novel and/or play. Some of what’s “stolen” is easier to identify; some of it isn’t. Either way, the new work(s) are welcome and appreciated additions to literature.
As a writer, one of the things I’ve talked to beginning writers and nonwriters about is the difference between “writing” a novel from scratch, meaning one without historical references and settings (think historical fiction and/or previously published works or plays or whatever) and one that does use known settings, such as WWII, 911, a Shakespeare play, or some other work that a writer takes and makes their own. In general, when you have a world—Vichy France during the war, Elsinore Castle in Denmark (from “Hamlet”), or slavery in the antebellum South, you’re unburdened (in one way, anyway) from having to use your imagination to create a setting for your work. I have written novels where I’ve done both—created a world that had no previous reference to base my work on, and others that have (I wrote a WWII novel about a bomber pilot where I interviewed Liberator pilots and researched thousands of hours on what it was like to be a pilot during that time period). For me, it’s infinitely easier to write my novels when they’re based on true events. The reason for this is I don’t have to explain everything to the reader. They know, even if only tangentially, what happens; my job is simply to tell a story in that setting and/or context. Am I “stealing” by doing that? Maybe, maybe not. I guess the answer is in the eye of the beholder.
For me, it’s infinitely easier to write my novels when they’re based on true events. The reason for this is I don’t have to explain everything to the reader.
In an article on Medium.com, Mohammed Nadir, writes “Robert Jordan, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin are only some of the remarkable writers who admitted to stealing ideas.” He’s right. And there are many, many others who have done the same and continue to do the same now. Are there bad apples out there that actually steal other writers’ works line by line, i.e., plagiarize their works? Absolutely. Writers such as Dan Brown, Jane Goodall, Alex Haley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, have all been accused of plagiarism, and some of those accusations proved true. Other writers have been “caught” using too much Wikipedia in their works without giving attribution to the site. Whether these instances of using others’ writing and texts were purposeful is up for debate. But these are exceptions, I believe, to what most serious writers do when they reference or use other works as influences for their books.
At any rate, I’m with T.S. Eliot. I’m also of the belief that there are no new stories, only stories retold. To mention Mark Twain again: “There is no such thing as an original idea,” and I believe that completely. As an author, it’s your job to make sure you’re simply telling stories in your own way, no matter how closely it may be to a work or works that came before yours did.
Cully Perlman is an author, blogger, and Substantive Editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
*I do not receive any payment whatsoever for references I make to books in my posts.
Keith Richards said he never played a chord he didn't steal.