Do you have a wee girl or boy at home who likes to fling their arms around wildly while singing about letting go? Did you get cabin fever over the festive period, stuck in a house with little sisters or grandchildren playing the movie on repeat?
Ok, perhaps we set ourselves up for this one when we introduced a Winter theme for Issue 4, but still, we were amazed by the number of submissions received (of all genres) that touched on the plot of Frozen. Perhaps Disney has punctuated this movie with subliminal messages encouraging its audience to go away and write, although all we noticed was a rather perturbed looking reindeer.
Let’s face it, with such an array of writers out there, it is almost impossible to come up an idea that is original in the truest sense of the word. It can be a great writing tool to use the world around us as inspiration, and often the created world will sneak in. The problem comes when the idea being coined in fact comes from a source that is both memorable and iconic. Touching-things-that-turn-to-ice is right up there with vampires-that-shimmer-in-the-sun. We can borrow and tweak within reason, but some things are off limits.
Ironically, Frozen itself took inspiration from the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Snow Queen. Could you spot the resemblances in the finished movie? Probably not. The professionals went in, pulled the plot apart and left us with something markedly different. So next time you are inspired and feel creativity fluttering in your belly like a bluebottle against a window, stop and think. What makes your piece different to others that come before it? And is this difference enough?