HOW TO: steal ideas 👀
Stop trying to be original!
Every month I’m gonna share revelations I’ve had on my journey to be the best storyteller/artist/creative I can be. We’re gonna start with a simple one.
“Before you become a storyteller, you must become a thief” - Jeff Goins
The best storytellers steal, you heard me, but they do so elegantly. They borrow ideas from many sources and arrange them in new and interesting ways. As my Father always told me “there’s no such thing as new ideas, just new ways to tell old ones”.
A storyteller understands that creativity is not about being original, its about learning to rearrange what has already been in way that brings fresh insight to material.
However there is such a thing as “The Etiquette to Creative Theft”. The true storyteller is a thief, but NEVER a copycat. Let me explain the difference.
Towards the end of 2022 I was really struggling creatively. Short format content was being pushed by all the major social media platforms, but I refused to dance on Tiktok. I wanted to make entertaining and informative shit. Netflix was my dream. All the content out there from people that looked like me was beauty or crass prank videos. How could I expect others to take my people seriously when there was nothing of substance out there?
I just couldn’t imagine how I could make compelling, impactful and entertaining content within this new format. I was really worried. And my numbers were plummeting. Until one day I came across a video by
aka @thekoreanvegan.
In her moody lit kitchen she cooked delicious Korean food. You heard every plop of simmering stew, every noodle swirl and pull apart. The uniqueness came from her emotionally narrating in her silky dramatic voice stories of her childhood, lessons she’s learnt and other internal monologues. You learnt how to cook delicious food, but you emotionally invested in her personal journey also. She was intelligent, excellent and relatable. I respected the content. I admired it.
Them boom. THESE were the videos I can imagine myself doing on socials. It hit me suddenly. Like a shibshib in the mouth. I felt a surge of inspiration. I studied her videos. Every angle, shot, lighting and choice of music. But I didn’t have the skills yet to create something similar.
So I stole it.
I used her videos as a template, bought the same portable stove and immediately experimented. Tirelessly practised. I cooked a simple dish, the video was actually really bad, but I told a story of how I hated to cook when I was young because my Dad would force me to do it with him. When he passed I suddenly found myself in kitchen cooking a lot in memory of him. It felt healing to make. I learnt a lot too.
When I finished the video. I sent her a message immediately.
Why did I do this? Because I adhere to “The Etiquette of Creative Theft”.
I had noticed that Joanne was innovating the food format. She was pushing the creative boundaries. The honourable Creative Thief identifies who is worth stealing from. And she was a master. I borrowed from her work and the Etiquette compelled me to let her know she inspired me and I’m learning from her. I cited her in my first video and gave credit. She was touched by my gesture and thanked me. Her work had pulled me out of my creative inertia, honouring it correctly was the least I could do.
But how do you create something meaningful and original without being a copycat? Once I mastered her stolen form, I pulled in other inspirations of mine. I began building on top of the form to make it better and more me. I wanted the feel of Korean Vegan’s work, the aesthetic of Wes Anderson, the politics of Riz Ahmed and the tone of Anthony Bourdain. I stole all of them and mashed them together.
That is the difference between the Copycat and the Creative Thief. The Copycat is an unoriginal hack, unable to make stolen work their own. The Copycat steals to imitate. The Creative Thief however steals to reinterpret and build on the work they have received. Every artist is inspired by things around them, but the master doesn’t stop there. They keep absorbing and adding these influences on top of things they are inspired by. Then and only then can you create something the world calls “original”.
From this point, over the period of months one of my most successful short format video series ever was born called “Simmering Memories”, where I make ninety second reels cooking a dish and narrating the story, history or politics behind it. The motto “if you listen close enough, food tells you a story” became a tagline.
The videos look ENTIRELY different from my first video which drew on the stolen template of Korean Vegan. What began as using her work to build confidence and a guide, evolved into something entirely fresh.
Simmering Memories is now so unique and popular when others attempt to replicate it, the style and format has been attributed to me. People commenting “This is a Nadir type video”.
You see creativity starts with stealing, but it does not end there. The creative process, when done right, culminates in something so interesting, that others are now compelled to steal from you. Jeff Goines says “That’s when you know you’ve done your job: you’re no longer the thief but the one being robbed”.
I get so many messages of friends and strangers sending me examples of people copying my work. “Are you ok about that?! That’s so wrong!”. The truth is I completely am. Some of those copies are Creative Thieves and some of them Copycats. Some will use my work to inspire and birth incredible new art, the unoriginal copies will fizz away into the ether.
I see so many people getting sensitive about others replicating work. The reason I’m not is because I know that my value and creativity is not the finished videos in those moments, my unique value and creativity is my ability to identify great art around me, rearrange it and evolve it into something entirely different. And no one can steal how I do that.
So, if you want to be the best storyteller you can be. Know your craft, and steal from the best. But steal elegantly, and always follow “The Etiquettes of Creative Theft”.
*All my ideas above are from reflections reading “Real Artists Don’t Starve” by Jeff Goins. Highly recommend to aspiring creatives.
I’ve been itching to continue with a sequel to a creative project that I have done in 2022. The difference is that this time I want to change the media of which I interpret my concept. I feel blocked and tied up to a chair (or slapped with a shebsheb) cuz everyone does photo journals. Hence ,, procrastination! I think I needed to hear that “that’s okay”, as long as I add my own spice to the mixture. Thank you Nadir ❤️ I said it once and I say it again, you should run for presidency bahahahah..
PS:: the disclaimer at the end with the ref to the book cracked me up .. GREATE EXAMPLE
This is a thought-provoking piece. Thanks for writing it, Nadir! We are influenced by others to a large extent in our lives as we do pick ideas both consciously and unconsciously. However, in the creative industry and in the 'social media' industry (if it be called that), it is quite tricking to incorporate an idea taken from somebody else as there has to be a fine line between 'copying' and do it smartly though for the person whose ideas are stolen, it does become frustrating! ;) In linguistics, we call it 'recycling' and more precisely 'recycling with a differance', that is, we pick 'learning objects' and use them in our own way by bringing in some variation and as someone said, there is actually nothing new - no new stories, but they are, in fact, "another first time" (said by a linguist).
Keep up the good work! Would love to see if you create a workshop based on it.