Inspiration VS Appropriation

Monkey See, Monkey Do (Monkey May, Regret That, Too)

They say imitation is the best form of flattery, dear reader, and, to a certain extent, they’re correct. Flattery suggests a certain respect, an inherent desire to imitate what one recognizes as a quality product or ideal and an admission that the writer can do no better. And, as writers, we often look to the real world for a sense of inspiration. I mean how many quotes do you see online of famous authors espousing the wonders of the quiet miracles that occur right under our very noses?

Why, how often do we draw on our own personal experiences or the experiences of those closest to us in order to inject some much needed reality into our work? What could possibly be wrong, then, with injecting our take on a people whose customs appear alien to us? A people, perhaps, to which we ourselves do not belong?

I speak now of a rather prickly subject amongst authors. A subject requiring no small amount of tact, grace, and understanding and one I am therefore entirely unqualified to discuss (you didn’t read this far without having already figured that out, however, so why don’t we both continue on regardless). No I’m not speaking of copyright infringement or copy cat writers (though please, lord, don’t be one of those people). No. I speak, of course, of inspiration vs appropriation.

You see, dear reader, sometimes authors tend to base some of the habits, traits, customs, or cultures in their story off of a real world culture. It makes sense in a way: if done properly this can result in a tactful facsimile of reality, a catalyst which your readers can build upon to better understand the world you’ve created. Something familiar gives them a solid base to keep as the rest of the story unfolds, perhaps as more fantastical elements are feathered in. If done improperly this can all too easily result in a churlish parody of cultural values that both undermines your entire piece and leaves your readers with a faint urge to set down your book and wash their hands.

How, then, do we strike the appropriate balance and achieve the former rather than the latter? How do we differentiate between being inspired by something we see in a different group of persons and shamelessly attempting to rip it off?

Well, in short: don’t be a dick.

In the long: It is important to take inspiration from other cultures (especially those we aren’t familiar with) while actively avoiding trying to represent them in our work.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t utilize cultural enrichment in your writing (far from it) but the more inspiration you take the more you must concern yourself with not accidentally throwing in any harmful tropes, stereotypes, or cliches. Regardless of whether you’re writing sword and board fantasy, science fiction, or even a historical drama I cannot stress this enough: do your research. The glory of writing is that anyone of any race, religion, sex, creed, or whatever can write whatever they want about anyone they want but, once again, tact must be employed. Should any of us proceed without even a shallow attempt at grace we’re only setting ourselves up for an awkward email or two from someone of said culture wondering why we had the sacred whatsimajig of their people being used as a soup ladle, and all because we couldn’t be asked to do a quick google search.

Case and point: there will always be something- some nuance, some quirk, some essence of interactive spirit that you will be unaware of and therefore unable to succinctly capture that will leave your attempt to piggy back off the gravitas of an existing culture feeling as shallow as a duck’s asshole and just as fun to think about.

Now, plenty of writers have written about people’s going through hardships they didn’t personally endure. Hell, Leon Uris isn’t Irish and the book Trinity is all about setting up the Troubles and that book is widely regarded as bringing the plight of 20th century Ireland to the attention of a new generation.

Double hell, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by a white woman and that book’s depictions of suffering helped lead to the abolition of slavery in the US! I’d like to think everyone reading this agrees those are both points in each author’s favor, but I digress.

On the flip side of this take the recent movie The Woman King which caused no small amount of waves on the interwebs by portraying a tribe of African slavers as a group of noble freedom fighters. A simple role reversal of having the protagonists be from a victimized tribe and this movie probably would have been in people’s top 10 films for the year. As it was the story was surrounded by controversy as the instant someone googled the name of the protagonists they were met with a cruel twist of the dagger at discovering the people romanticized in the film as heroes were actually the ones perpetrating the very acts the story denounced.

Far from being scared off of writing about someone who isn’t exactly like yourself the important thing to remember is that while you can certainly take inspiration from people and events ripping them off wholesale is, well, lazy.

At the risk of sounding presumptuous writing is an art, dear reader, a craft. It requires we create something unique unto ourselves and attempt to convey it to other individuals via a medium. It’s fun, true, but also deeply personal. An experience wherein a writer may finish, gaze upon their work, and say “This was the idea I’ve toiled so hard to bring across the page.” Sadly, any direct insertion of a real life culture undermines all of this, for how can you claim to own that which does not belong to you? That which you yourself did not imagine?

Themes, speech patterns, styles of dress, food, perhaps even something as obscure as a puberty ritual: you can draw each of these from a people without reproach but when you try to say “this faction in my book is representative of the real life population in X country or Y tribe” you should probably work in receiving both some well deserved hatemail and a WWE style smackdown from the internet into your schedule for the foreseeable future.

Imitation may be the best form of flattery, dear reader, but appropriation is the death knell of creativity. It’s tempting, it’s easy, but don’t do it. Make your own world, your own work! People read fantasy to see the bold, the foreign, the new! Your book should possess all of these in your own unique voice. And, if your still not convinced just remember that if all they wanted was to see the world we live in today they could just flip on their TV and watch National Geographic instead.