Can any story actually be original now?

[ReservoirAngel]

As a society we've been telling stories now for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, so I'm finding it a little stupid when critics, either of film or of video games, criticise a game's story for being unoriginal. It seems a little redundant for that to be a complaint nowadays, especially when considering something I vaguely remember from my Media course in college.

Basically, there was this guy who essentially said that ANY story in the world will ALWAYS fall into one of 7. There are ONLY 7 stories in the world, and every narrative thing, be it book, video game, film, TV show, whatever will always fall into the pattern of one of those 7. He also mentioned 'archetypal characters'. in that every charatcter ever invented will fall pretty much perfectly into one of several types of characters.

I'll try and find specifics of this guy and the specifics of what he said, but that's what it comes down to. Only 7 possible stories, and only a fixed number of character archtypes.

so with this in mind, do you believe that it's actually possible at all to have a piece of narrative media that is truly original?

 

[Royta]

You can say that about anything. Illustration, art, games, movies. Technically everything has been done yes. But not the combinations and a writers own twist to things.

Being 100% original is out of the question at this time, but being original by using source material and combining and fusing parts of it to form something new and great, is possible.

 

[ZiggyE]

Stories can be original, we just need to break the mould.

Which is very hard to do. Humans have, for generations, been raised on stories. And now, no matter how original you can be, you will always fall back on at least one of these core basics.

Stories can be original, whether humans have the ability to break the mould is a different question entirely.

 

[Dioxide45]

Well. Nothing will be completely original anymore, but making a good story nowadays comes down to mixing various parts of other stories to create something that is, in its own way, original. It's not a Black and White "Original and Stereotypical" system, it's simply the "Shades of Grey" system, with varying degrees of originality.

Similar thing goes for characters. Good writing will make the most basic, archetypal character interesting. So long as you flesh them out and make them a "3D" character, the experience should be enjoyable for all involved.

 

[Count Igor]

Well frankly, there are arguments on both sides.
After all, you could say all World War films/games are unoriginal, but you could also say that they each had completely different settings and plots, people and controls.
So it just depends which way you look at it. For example, if I ripped off a Robin Hood book and called it Bobin Wood, with Garry of Gisborn and the Captain of Mottingham, that wouldn't be original because they're almost identical to other characters.
If I called it 'Night in the Wood' with George the Giant, Peter of London and the Captain of the Night Watch, I think that's pretty original, as it bears little resemblance to any other book/film.

 

[Zhukov]

Making a completely original story is extremely hard. Perhaps even impossible, depending on your definition of "original".

But that doesn't mean we can't still make stories that are less un-original then a Michael Bay film.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

They can have the same feel to it, or a similar plot structure, and this may mean unoriginal to anyone. But you can change any story up to be more original with plot twists.

 

[tlozoot]

Yes, all stories will, after a certain amount of boiling down, be the same. Harry Potter is only really a rip-off of the King Arthur legend in many ways, but it's easily different enough to warrant being a separate tale.

We can never come up with something truly original that sits outside a web of influences of everything that has come before it...but we don't need to. It doesn't have to be too different for us to enjoy it. Part of what we do when we consume a narrative is compare it to ones which have come before it. What's a plot-twist if not a story you think you've seen before, and can tell where it is going? We nee similarities as points of reference, and that's not really a bad thing.

 

[Merkavar]

i feel when people say its unoriginal they mean that in recent times someone has done it better. say someone releases a game so similar to halo but the characters are a little 2d in personality and the story is non existent then it would be unoriginal but if they made a game similiar to halo but made the characters have depth or a more gripping story then no one can claim its unoriginal even if its basics are the same as halo.

 

[Jonluw]

Snippety

Are these [http://www.suite101.com/content/the-seven-basic-plots-a58402] the story archetypes you were thinking of?

 

[LightningBanks]

Ive noticed that despite how grim things get, there is always a good/generally acceptable ending. What about if everyone died in Harry Potter etc etc. You could have a story of good vs evil and actually have a bad ending, full stop. I know some films do, but the sequals always sort things out.

And I know good/bad endings in games, but the band endings seem ineffective, as if its just a cheap way of saying 'youu suck at our game'

 

[viranimus]

Basically, there was this guy who essentially said that ANY story in the world will ALWAYS fall into one of 7. There are ONLY 7 stories in the world, and every narrative thing, be it book, video game, film, TV show, whatever will always fall into the pattern of one of those 7. He also mentioned 'archetypal characters'. in that every charatcter ever invented will fall pretty much perfectly into one of several types of characters.

The funny thing is, that notion is based off the notion set forth by the greeks that there are only like 20 different stories said to exist and all stories can be pigeonholed into them. So narrative is not the only thing unoriginal.

I prefer to think of it like this. An original idea is like a once in a lifetime event. Given that entertainment is an extremely important part of our life and development, its left to the craftsman and artists to give their impressions on existing ideas and hopefully give a glimmer of something different along the way.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

When people criticize a story for being unoriginal or derivative I think that's odd because that's something inherent to the nature of storytelling. Humans have been designing stories out of the same backdrop, characters and events for thousands of years. You'll probably find that a lot of the classics are either re-tellings or re-imaginings of stories the creators heard earlier in their life. While direct copying is of course plagarism, asking someone to create an original work without drawing any inspiration from other works is a lost cause, as even subconsciously we think in terms that we can personify through real world examples.

 

[tlozoot]

Ive noticed that despite how grim things get, there is always a good/generally acceptable ending. What about if everyone died in Harry Potter etc etc. You could have a story of good vs evil and actually have a bad ending, full stop. I know some films do, but the sequals always sort things out.

And I know good/bad endings in games, but the band endings seem ineffective, as if its just a cheap way of saying 'youu suck at our game'

Your typical Tragedy usually ends with everything gone to hell, though even in most of them there's often some of the good guys left to potentially sort things out after the curtains fall. Perhaps a story in which the bad guys win outright just isn't cathartic or attractive to us. Stories need resolution at their end, and if the bad guys win then...it just feels unresolved.

 

[Xanadu84]

I'm reminded of a storyof (I believe Mozart) walking along a beach with a friend of his. His friend said, "I think that all the great music has already been written". Mozart said, "I agree...oh look at that! The last wave is coming in".

The problem with this comes in a definition of "Same". An alien might take The Davinchi Code and Romeo and Juliet, and say, "They're the same. They have people. There's words. It comes to a conclusion. Its the same story." Other people will argue that a cheap knock off B movie (Paranormal Entity, Transmorphers, Snakes on a Train, etc) is different from the original (Usually for copyright purposes). What it comes down to is that pretty much since the dawn of stories, all any author has done is taken a story and changed it to try to add something new. If there are 7 story archetypes that fits all stories, that doesn't mean that creativity is dead, in the same way that Math isn't simple because its it is made up of only 10 symbols.

 

[TiefBlau]

Everything is original.

The real question to be asked is, "How original?"

 

[Folksoul]

It's not THE story being told. It's HOW it's being told that matters.