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6 Responses to “What’s the difference between taking inspiration from something and ripping it off?”

1. Just Kelsey, on May 21st, 2009 at 6:53 am Said:

   Inspiration is where you take a shadow of an idea, give it a twist, then use it. Ripping-off is where you take an idea, bones, flesh and skin, and use it without much change and try to pass it as your own (aka. plagiarism).
   Like, if you found a rusty, old wagon. Inspiration would be taking a wheel to put in your own wagon. Ripping-off would be greasing the wheels and new paint and saying you built it yourself.
   (I love figurative language.) Hope I helped…
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2. charmedgirl517, on May 21st, 2009 at 7:06 am Said:

   Ripping off, to me, is taking the same words, like plagiarism, or taking the sentence and switching things around. Taking inspiration would be borrowing an idea and forming another idea off of it.
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3. mathieu, on May 21st, 2009 at 7:20 am Said:

   Taking inspiration from something is like watching it or reading it and then you are so excited with the feel of it that it makes you want to write whatever you are writing about more because its like the same genre.
   Rip-off is like you watch something or read it and then you think its a clever idea so you write the same thing but just a little differently.
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4. Isabella, on May 21st, 2009 at 8:07 am Said:

   you can take inspiration from something and have it be completely different
   for example picasso was inspired by the human face; he made it very different though (that is just kind of a joking example but i think it gets the point across)
   if it is a lot like something else then i would say ripping off; if it has an original spin then it was inspired
   
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5. Lynci, on May 21st, 2009 at 8:50 am Said:

   I can only answer for myself, of course, but I was inspired to write two novels as a result of reading a sentence in a nonfiction book which my sister owned at the time. Somehow the concept imparted by that sentence seemed to open a “door” within my brain or mind. Since my books are novels, they obviously are not “rip-offs” of the inspirational writer’s declarative sentence; in fact, in my opinion, my stories are entirely unique. I self-published my books, though, in order to avoid rejections which I felt were certain to result from my efforts to sell my creations to legitimate publishing companies. I’ve read numerous attempts at creative writing offered here at Answers and conclude that the vast majority are vapid attempts to re-write “Twilight”, for instance. I think that if one is unknown and desires to become a published author, he or she must somehow conceive of an original plot for a novel or else produce an unusual twist upon a theme which is previously popular. Becoming a critically acclaimed and affluent published writer requires talent and good fortune, in my opinion. One who plagiarizes another’s ideas is unlikely to succeed!
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6. Phyllis L, on May 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am Said:

   If you feel you have made a creative effort, you may have been inspired. If you have used another persons creativity, you have ripped it off. If I see a painting of a landscape with a rocky surface in it and it makes me think of a stone cottage I lived in as a child, and I then write a story based in the attic of that stone cottage, I was inspired by the landscape painting. If I read a book by Jane Goodall and then write a mystery where the solution is found in the camp of a researcher in Africa, I was inspired by Jane Goodall’s work. If I write the story of a young English girl who is sent into the wilds of Africa to study chimpanzees, then I am ripping off Jane Goodall’s biography.
   References :
   Studies of the copyright laws make a clear statement that a persons creative ideas cannot be copied. There are cultural icons that can always be used, for example, the Easter bunny can be used by anyone, but the Easter bunny can not be used in the same way as someone else has used it.

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