Influences come in many sizes.  Sometimes an entire work can reshape the way I think.  Other times, a passing remark or a small moment in one scene of a movie can alter the plot of whatever I’m working on.  It all depends on how the world strikes me at a certain point in time.

My current work which has no title (the rough draft is almost done) was inspired by the story Death Note.  This is a Japanese tale that has been presented as a manga, an anime series, an anime film, and a live action film.  There might be other forms it has taken, but those are all I know of.

The story deals with a special notebook dropped into our world by a bored demon.  There are a few rules to this notebook but the basic idea is that if you write a name down, that person will die.  The book is found by a highly-intelligent, highly-ambitious, high school senior with little conscience.  You can see where this might go.

The demon comes with the book, so it’s always near our protagonist, following him around and making comments.  I loved that.  And it inspired the entire tale I’m working on.

I took that simple image – protag walking down street with a demon casually floating behind him – and built a story around it.  My story has nothing more to do with Death Note.  There is no book, there is no demon, there is nothing similar.  Just this image.

That’s about as much as I’m willing to say – I don’t like to discuss my current works because whenever I do, they fall apart.  I feel safe mentioning this much because I’m at the climax of the story and I haven’t really given anything away.

Besides, the point here isn’t what I’m working on at the moment, but rather how just a little thing like a striking image can spawn an entire novel.  Often new artists worry that if they use an influence too directly they’ll be somehow stealing.  While I don’t believe this is the case, I don’t want you to think that I believe in carte blanc regarding this.  There is a world of difference between being influenced and being a thief.

This has been on my mind lately because of the current questions regarding 50 Shades of Gray, the highly successful erotic novel that was born from Twilight fan fiction.  Fan fiction by definition is work inspired by another, but it goes way beyond that by using the same characters, locations, and stories.  As long as the fans writing these things aren’t selling them, I have no problem with it.  It is, as the name would imply, done out of fannish love, and if anybody were to make Malja fan fiction, I would be flattered.  But what of 50 Shades?  Is it right for that author to make millions without Twilight getting its share of the credit (and cash)?  What if the original story was a small selling, mid-list book instead of the behemoth Twilight?

That’s what bothers me here. Like it or hate it, Stephanie Meyer worked hard on Twilight, and it’s not right for someone to make money off of Twilight-porn.

If 50 Shades had been inspired by Twilight but also created its own world with other influences, that would be different.  My series The Malja Chronicles is often billed as Xena meets Mad Max.  Obviously, those two stories influenced the series.  But I was also influenced by Lone Wolf and Cub, a myriad of samurai movies, blues music, and many other stories (a bunch of which I’ve posted about in the past).  In other words, I didn’t steal one storyline, changed the names and called it something new.  Instead, I took the core concepts from a ton of different sources, mixed them together with my own personal experiences and creativity, and came up with something new.

To me, that is how it should be done.  What do you all think of the 50 Shades situation?