Imagination is a creative force that comes from the individual soul; fantasy is a non-creative force, it comes from the imagination of others. – Iris Murdoch
When I came across the quote from Iris Murdoch, I found it confusing: Isn’t fantasy a product of individual imagination? How is fantasy less creative than other type of imagination? Perhaps she is referring to fantasy as a literary genre? Either way it doesn’t make much sense to me. You could equally well say that all literature comes from the imagination of others—unless you are the author, of course.
And imagination, well it may come from within, but it is no island; imagination feeds on what we learn from stories and experience. Inspiring fiction, fantasy or otherwise, incites the imagination and makes readers fantasize about the characters and situations in the story and even write about the characters. And I’m not just thinking of those steamy scenes between Frodo and Sam. Some of the fan fiction is really good and original.
The line is quite blurred anyway; take The Seven Percent Solution. Nicholas Meyer uses characters and situations—Holmes cocaine addiction— from the Sherlock Holmes canon and provides an alternative story for the period between Holmes supposed death and reappearance. The end result is both true to the original stories and a creative in its own right. Another example of literary fan fiction is Philip Jose Farmer, who wrote Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke as well as using Sherlock Holmes in his other works.
Even the Bard took inspiration from other people’s stories and characters: the story of Romeo and Juliet to take just one example was told by others before him, but Shakespeare added his own touch and some twists to make the story truly immortal. And Shakespeare’s play has of course been inspiring number of others, like Laurents, Bernstein and Sondheim, who created the musical West Side Story.
I could go on and on presenting respectable authors who have been borrowing characters and situations from others, but I think this is enough to show that borrowing from other people’s imagination can be quite as creative as using your own. I’m inclined to agree with Neil Gaiman that playing with other people’s ideas and work is a perfectly valid way to make art.
