Have you ever used another story as inspiration?

I think we all use stories as inspiration, consciously or subconsciously. I mean our imagination builds these stories from our experiences and memories, not out of thin air, so it would be only logical that the worlds we build would have bits and pieces of other peoples worlds in it. After all, there is no such thing as an original story ra ra ra and we're all retelling the same seven stories with our own twist la la la.

That said, I try to not blatantly rip off others work. I read a series that(I have no idea how it got published) was such a BLATANT rip off of Ann Bishop's 'Black Jewels' series and Laurell K. Hamilton's 'Anita Blake' series that the author even wrote a forward saying how she ripped them off. Not in those exact terms, she called it inspiration, but it was the weirdest fucking book, almost like fan fiction mish-mash of those series. I read it before I started writing and even then I was like 'Wow, that's some balls on both the author and publisher's part'.

Let me see if I can find the books...

Found it: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RWQVTE/?tag=absowrit-20

I'm sure it happens all the time, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes because you're yelling at a book, "No! That's not what should happen next!"

As for me, I am at the moment working on a book inspired by The Prisoner of Zenda.

I'm currently working on an idea inspired by themes in Sense and Sensibility and Bridget Jones' Diary, with a twist. Of course Bridget Jones' Diary is self-consciously influenced by Austen itself, and I recommend that, so it can work.

I used parables from the Bible for a series of romances I wrote.

I think we all do it, either consciously or sub-. There's said to be how many "original" plots. The number varies. 6? 8? Don't know and actually don't care.

I know retellings of classic fairy tales are hot right now. TV has jumped on that bandwagon, but in our market, Melanie Dickerson has a YA series based on these. Don't let the anachronistic covers fool you (they're at least 100 years too "late" for the setting of the story), they're terrific.

I have definitely used other authors' novels to give me a "mood". I started my first trilogy after reading a hugely popular series of books, and I used them to help me gauge the levels of sex, violence, etc. that the readers were likely to enjoy.

My current WIP is inspired by a fanfic I read a long, long time ago.

I take from everything. Little pieces, like Legos.

Nothin' wrong with getting inspiration from other stories. Where else are you supposed to get it from?

I'm sure borrowing from Dumas is fine. Some stories are so good they translate easily into different settings and time periods. You bring your own voice to the table in the way that you choose to translate them - what emphasis you put on which characters and emotions in the story, and what style and tone you use.

Sounds like fun to me - happy writing!

Fantasy author Steven Brust wrote an entire series, "The Phoenix Guards" based not-too loosely on The Three Musketeers", albeit set in a world where some people live a very, very long time (and thus, instead of Twenty Years After we get 500 Years After).

I remember reading a book (Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth) and thinking about wishing a particular part (about a long journey) were told in more detail. So I did that in my next book - put the characters on a long, harrowing journey, and told of what happened along the way.

This question reminds me of my favorite Jim Jarmusch quote:I love when authors or filmmakers take classic stories and add their own unique spin. Of course, you want to make sure your idea is distinct enough to stand on its own, but like those before me have said, we're all just rewriting the same stories. The trick is to write them in such a way that readers don't realize they've already read them.

One of my favorite fantasy series is by Juliet Marillier, where she takes Irish fairy tales and novelizes them. I kept reading through one (Daughter of the Forest) thinking 'I remember this!' - a girl with 7 brothers, evil stepmother; stepmother turns the brothers into swans. Girl must stay silent for the two years it takes her to knit sweaters out of thistles, one for each brother, to transform them back.