Plagiarism or inspiration: How being inspired by Middle Earth and Narnia nearly ended my book

 We all gather inspiration from some place or another, but when does inspiration turn to plagiarism?

My love for stories and writing began with C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, of course it's going to show in my writing. When we humans care about something or someone a lot, we tend to imitate it. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery (Charles Caleb Colton). Many of the creatures, places and characters of my world are inspired by those of Narnia and Middle Earth. But when does inspiration turn to plagiarism? How do we draw the line between influence and blatant copying?

This question has haunted me ever since I started writing my book. Because it's a fantasy novel set in a different world with elves and magic and strange creatures, it's hard to avoid 'copying' Lord of the Rings or any other fantasy worlds or stories, especially since LoTR is the fantasy story on which most fantasy stories are based. I spoke about how difficult it was finding a name for my world in the previous post (Introduction: Who am I?). There are so many fantasy books, games, movies, etc. that it's hard to create original stories and characters without copying them. 

While I was getting a name for my world I took a bunch of letters, scrambled them up and put them together. There would be no way that word already exists, would there? It did exist; it was a town somewhere in the Netherlands. I needed a title for my book and literally every name I could think of already existed. The problem is; there are already so many different stories available on the internet. Finding original names and storylines is becoming increasingly difficult. 

What will we do then? Give up writing just because this character from a 2019 Wattpad has the same name as my fantasy kingdom? Here is my opinion: 

Accept that your ideas are not original. Everything has been done before (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Nothing is original. Take a deep breath and calm down - you'll be fine. 

Alrighty, now that we've sorted that out, we come to the original question: What is inspiration and what is plagiarism? I think it depends heavily on the context and story you're writing. I had an existential crisis while writing my own story when I realised this one character I wanted to introduce was very similar to Tolkien's Tom Bombadil. I was so distraught that I was ready to scrap the whole character, but I decided to get some outside opinions first. Here's what someone told me: "There are millions of stories out there; you're bound to find similarities. A lot of stories were inspired by LOTR and Narnia. The beautiful thing about art is it doesn't die; it transforms."

And there is the conclusion of this blog: Art doesn't die; it transforms. Using other stories/worlds as inspiration isn't plagiarism, it's appreciation. I'm not saying you should go write a book about a short, hairy character named Godo who finds a magical bracelet that he has to take to a volcano to be destroyed. But if your character has similar characteristics as Frodo, or your world has similar properties and names as Middle Earth, I'm sure no one will mind.