Larry M. Coleman

Last week, we talked about unintentionally borrowing from someone else. This time, let’s look at a master writer who intentionally ran with an idea that had already been done: Douglas Adams taking inspiration from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

In case you can’t read it, here’s the important part:

Ford and Aleric [who would end up having his name changed to Arthur Dent]… find that many of the eccentric alien races they encounter epitomize some particular human folly such as greed, pretentiousness etc., rather in the manner of Gulliver’s Travels.

I have several times mentioned that when I sat down to write my first novel, Ride On, I went into it with the intention of taking The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, setting it on Earth, and mashing it up with a treasure hunt. Originally, Karl was modeled on Ford Prefect and Richard was supposed to be his foil and his Arthur Dent. The slapstick buddy comedy started to run out of steam after a while, but also by then the two had grown into their own characters. There is still a tinge of Karl’s Ford Prefect-ness in him, but that comes from his archetypal role rather than any intention of keeping him the way he was originally conceived. I am proud to say that Richard became a much less flat character than Arthur Dent as he grew from the butt of Karl’s jokes into a leader in his own right and a full peer of Karl.

But even Douglas Adams, someone I looked up to when I was writing, had someone he looked up to. Through these connections, Ride On reaches all the way back to Gulliver’s Travels. It’s okay to be inspired by others; in fact, the greater the author you aspire to be, the greater the authors you should be influenced by.

Raymond Queneau, a big name in French literature in the mid-twentieth century, once observed that “Every great work of literature is either the Iliad or the Odyssey.” If we go back further, even those were built on stories that came before them. A giant’s shoulder gives a great view. Take advantage of it.