“Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.“

―T.S.Eliot

I use to think that stealing was wrong. In many cases it is, but when we are talking in the context of literary forms or writer’s ideas, stealing is great! I have been trying to write completely original Dungeon and Dragons campaigns for years and for a long time the word “original” meant that stealing was bad. So a lot of times my campaigns would flop and end early within just a few months. I believe this was mainly because I just could not create quality content fast enough, and for D&D that is not good. Over the past few years, I have developed more relaxed feelings around stealing other people's story ideas. This has really come to the forefront of my brain-mass as of late, as I am trying to write chapter outlines for Roll with Advantage Season Two.

Before we really start to get into it here, I would like to be absolutely clear and note that this topic is about the stealing writer’s ideas, not about stealing how the writer conveys those ideas. There is a distinct difference between those two concepts and I will lay that out as we continue through this post.

Stealing from the greats

Let’s first talk about what I think “stealing an idea” means. When I steal ideas from writers, I really try to boil their concept down to a core concept. This is like reverse engineering the story to find it’s elevator pitch. So, if we study Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, we notice that the core concept is that there are two factions in a bloody feud and there are people from each faction that can overcome this feud to love each other. That is the basics. But wait! Have we not seen that core concept in other places? The answer is “Absolutely”! This core concept is stolen so heavily that it has become a very common conflict in many forms of storytelling, whether it be books, articles, video games or D&D campaigns. This isn’t stealing to me, using the core concept in another story and writing it out in your own words. Flesh the concept out, build new and interesting scenery and characters. When you are done, your idea will be something very different from what you stole from, but they will be rooted in similar concepts, sort of like stories that are cousins.

The best places to steal these ideas for your own brain’s digesting is in media that you enjoy or inspires you, places like books, poetry, movies, music, comics. Really this stuff can pop up at any time, so it is important to try and consume media in order to help keep your creative well full.