Don’t Stop Consuming Content If You Are Writing a Book.

Writing a book or story can be difficult. One reason people may stop reading, watching TV, or doing something else to consume content is that they don’t want to copy an idea. I have seen this many times in my own writing group and have talked to aspiring authors who have thought the same thing. If you consume media, then you are likely to create a copy or something similar to an already existing story.

Let’s get this out of the way. No. No, you are not stealing an idea. There is a difference between blatantly stealing an idea versus being inspired by a piece of work. In fact, almost all pieces of work have been inspired by some work in one way or another. For instance, Dragon Ball Z, by the late Akira Toriyama, has inspired many works in America and worldwide. Many authors of different backgrounds talked fondly about his work and how it inspired their work, characters, and more. Sometimes, you get your story ideas and inspiration from other tales.

I admit I did this for a time when I was working on my first novel. I stopped watching cartoons and anime, I would only replay video games that I already played, and I stopped reading altogether because I feared that I would be copying someone else’s work. This was until I met an author who told me not to worry about that. He told me how stories like Naruto and Harry Potter inspired him to create his stories, and the character Kurapika Kurta from the anime Hunter X Hunter inspired his main character. It was something that I needed to hear from someone who was creating stories like me. I didn’t need to stop consuming my media because I was writing. In fact, many writers consume all kinds of media daily to get ideas for their books, scripts, and comics.

What a lot of people tend to forget is that an already existing character most likely inspired their first character. You may have created an OC that was inspired by Naruto, Superman, Spiderman, Goku, Gojo, or some other character from your favorite media. That's not a bad thing. I made my first character when I was six years old. I use her as my mascot today. She was inspired by Yoruichi from Bleach. Yeah, I changed the hair and eye color and made her my own character with her own story and background, but her look was inspired by Yoruichi nonetheless. Sometimes, it takes you finding a character in media to create your own. I have made many OCs in certain fandoms over the years, and as I started writing my own books, I took some of those OCs and changed them for the world of my novel. Sometimes, it's not just the character but the world and setting, too. Some people have been inspired by the worlds and settings of well-known media, like the world of the Promised Neverland or the world of One Piece. You get your best ideas from your knowledge and what you like; depriving yourself of said knowledge by limiting what you watch, play, and read is actually worse than getting inspired.

This advice is for new writers and aspiring writers of all content. You can be inspired by other works, but there is a difference between creating a character inspired by Naruto and creating a character named Truce Layne, who lost his parents at a young age and grew up to be Ratman with a sidekick named Sparrow and a villain named the Jester. Don’t think that consuming content will make your work any less original.