Nature Abhors a Vacuum (But You Gotta Keep The Carpets Clean)

[grav_ity]

As I expected (and feared), TWoP posted a thread about how reality TV shows would be improved if they incorporated elements of The Hunger Games. Some day, I will learn my lesson with this website, I promise. ;)

Anyway, in the comments of the post, someone commented rather harshly about Suzanne Collins having "cribbed" her ideas from Battle Royale, and how it was so obvious, and that it would be better if she just admitted it. I was already aware that Battle Royale existed (when I recced the books to speedy_leen, she got her roommates to read it by saying that they were similar), but the comment made me angry, so I did some more research.

Collins claims to have had the idea based on the myth of Theseus, wherein Athens is required to send 14 children ("children") to Crete every year so that the Minotaur can eat them. It makes sense when extended through the book. In Battle Royale, the "death match" is a form of social control. In The Hunger Games, it's the enforcement of abject terror and misery. I think that difference is small, but it's also key.

In any case, I do believe that it's entirely possible for Collins to have written the entire thing without ever having heard of Battle Royale. For starters, BR was only translated into English in 2003. The Hunger Games was first published in 2008, but she was probably working on it for longer than that.

Let me give you some personal examples. When I wrote the first draft of "The Stone Thief", I called the city Valdemaar. On December 1st, I found out that Valdemar is actually a country written about my Mercedes Lackey. I've read some of ML's stuff, but not those books. And when I typed Valdemaar the first time, I just threw letters on the keyboard until I saw something I liked! Similarly, I have thought of my "untitled wing!fic" as "Knife" from the very beginning. When I wrote the short story, I thought the name was too obvious, but now that it's novel-sized, it works out. I didn't meet rj_anderson until months later.

There's also a chance that one of Collins's test readers had read/heard of Battle Royale and mentioned it to her, and then she purposefully stayed away from it. I have yet to read Tamora Pierce's "Melting Stones" because I am currently writing books about people who do magic with stone. I've signed that book out of the library THREE TIMES and talked myself out of it on each occasion.

I suppose my point is this: there is a somewhat limited pool of ideas out there, and most of them come from older myths and legends anyway. It's the plotting and the character arc that make the story, and these are two areas in which Suzanne Collins excelled. No one writes in a vacuum, but it is possible to create a vacuum around you on purpose when you're writing. I'm about as unprofessional as it gets, but when I am writing I a) stop watching Legend of the Seeker (on account of it being fantasy), and b) stop reading Tamora Pierce (WHICH IS HARD TO DO!). Mostly, I just wish people would THINK before they talk about stuff on the internet.

Comments

[sache8.livejournal.com]

How about how Laura and I centered our magic around the four elements three or four years before we watched AtLA?

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

That is super common, in and of itself, I think. The world is set up to make us think like that. My book magic is centred around FIVE elements, but only because I first learned about Quintessence from a question on Jeopardy.

[speedy-leen.livejournal.com]

Okay the Hunger Games could only vaguely, VAGUELY, be based off of Battle Royale. The only thing that is similar to each other is that children are killing each other.

In Battle Royale a whole class is chosen, and the environment doesn't try to kill you.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that the commenter had not actually read The Hunger Games at all, only the book jacket. I don't think it's based of BR at all. They simply came out too close to one another.

[speedy-leen.livejournal.com]

Battle Royale has been out for awhile, 10 years I think. But I agree with your point.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I checked. It's only been out in English since 2003, and THG came out in 2008. That's not really enough time for her to come up with the idea, write the book, plan the series, and get it published.

[eolivet.livejournal.com]

Preach it! I thought of you when I read TWP's article about that. I had to hear for years about how LOST wasn't original because of "blah blah some sci-fi stuff only diehard fans have heard of."

(Plus...doesn't it seem more likely that if the books were based on anything, it was a nod to the much more mainstream reality TV craze [which certainly pre-dates 2008]?)

My husband just finished the first book in the series and is teaching it to his high school kids this year -- he couldn't put it down!! I don't think most of them have read it, so he's pretty excited about teaching it. :D

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

IT WAS SO GOOD! I loved all three of them, and I am kind of excited to learn that they are teaching it in schools already!

I really do believe Collins when she says that the stories were based on the Thesues myth. The TV show aspect of it is different from reality TV (seriously, read "Catching Fire" and then try to think about Rob and Amber without wanting to throw up a little bit), and it's really sort of only a vehicle to tell the story, which isn't about TV at all (except it kind of is? But more in the "Big Brother" kind of way? And by that I mean The Book, not the show).

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time. Lots of people said KNIFE reminded them of THE BORROWERS -- but I have never read THE BORROWERS or even picked it up off the shelf.

I was terrified to read Laini Taylor's DREAMDARK: BLACKBRINGER for ages because she had written a fantasy involving a small, dagger-wielding faery and crows, and I was certain there would be a depressing amount of overlap with KNIFE. But when I screwed up my courage to finally read her book, it was completely different. (And good!)

I think of it this way. You can have two recipes that use the same ingredients, but if they use them in completely different ways and proportions, nobody is going to mistake them for the same dish by the time they come out of the oven. And I think the same is true of things like BATTLE ROYALE and THE HUNGER GAMES.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

That's a good way of looking at things! My "Knife" is actually an idea I got from listening to laura_josephsen talk about one of her characters. The two characters are COMPLETELY different (well, they have one physical trait in common), and the books will be separate entities.

I remember reading somewhere that Tolkien and Lewis actually came up with the idea for LotR/CoN during a conversation, and then went off it totally separate directions. Even if it's not true, I still think it has elements of truth to it, and if it's good enough for Tolkien and Lewis, then who am I to turn up my nose? ;)

[laura-josephsen.livejournal.com]

You know, the funny thing is, I was reading (or skimming, since often it was like *HEAD DESK WHY AM I READING THIS*) bits of the "Maximum Ride" series by James Patterson. The whole series is about this group of kids who were genetically altered so they have wings. And in one of the books, one of the kids was so upset and frustrated with being different and being chased, and was talking about getting her wings removed. She didn't, but the fact that she was contemplating having them lopped off so she could be "normal..." Well, yeah.

Plus, of course, there's the beginning of X-Men 3 (which I HATE, but it only just occurred to me) with Angel trying to cut off the wing stubs that are growing. I'm sure there would be other examples, if I poked around.

Remember in my NaNo novel last year when I went out of my way to point out that everything is kind of recycled plot? Some people just write it well, and some people don't, but every story that I read always has elements of another story I've read. But you know that I often take cliches and then see how I can portray them in my own way. ;)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

It's weird how things turn out. Because I shunted Knife off and tried not to think about it, it grew from a short story into a novel!

In the original X-Men comics, Angel does indeed get his wings cut off, and replaces them with metal ones. I forget who builds them. It might be Apocalypse, and Angel might have been evil for a while. It's a bit foggy. Basically, I have to decide if my winged people have hollow bones or not...;)

[laura-josephsen.livejournal.com]

Yup, I remember that about Angel. Pretty sure it was Apocalpyse that was responsible, and Angel was evil for a while. (His skin also turned blue.) Of course, later Angel's wings regrew and I don't think he was blue anymore, and then he found his blood could heal other people? It's been soooo long since I read the X-Men; I have so many comics in my attic, LOL. But I hadn't even thought of Angel at all when I was plotting my novel.

My winged people do have hollow bones. Physically, they're only different from humans in three ways. (One has to do with hearing and other senses being more sensitive.)

I think half of the work I've had to do in this novel has been sorting out the world, though; the characters and people groups came to me so easily. And most of figuring out the world hasn't been deciding what the world should look like, (since that came pretty easily, too,) but instead, it's been figuring out the details of how exactly all of this technology works. That has been exhausting, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. (I hope so, anyway!) There's still SO MUCH plot I have to write, and things I have to tie up by the end, and some threads I left dangling that I would like to get back to, but I'm not sure just how yet...

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

The only real choice I've made so far was to have the world shaped like a bowl...and everything else just kind of appeared. I'm enjoying it, though. Making stuff is fuuuuun!

[karma-aster.livejournal.com]

Gasp! You expect people to THINK before putting thier deathless prose and ideas on the internet? Blasphemy!

Really, there are very few completely original ideas out there, especially given how much people borrow from mythological archetypes and folklore. Every story comes from someone's experience, and some experiences are very universal.

Hey, even Shakespeare wasn't above stealing from older stories and making them his own. I mean, you ever hear about this little pastoral novel entitled "Rosalind", which you might possibly know a bit better as "As You Like It"?

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Mostly I just don't like it when people are stupid. Clearly, I am in the wrong business. ;)