‘Well stolen is half-composed’ - the art of content theft

It has been said that any book you pick up, any song you listen to, and any painting you admire is simply a copy of something else. So how is it that we can produce apparently original content in a world of replicas?

Stealing from the start…

The beginning of your career as an editorial thief is all about going back to basics, and stripping a story or piece of work right down to its core. Consider the art of newswriting. The news stories you see in the national press are written using a standard structure, which we all recognise. Characters and events change but the format remains the same.

Done right, news stories are partially stolen – the very core is something we have been stealing from our predecessors in the business for years and years.

In fact, it has to be this way – the form that you adopt in your writing is actually a clue for the reader. You use it to set up expectations that you can then satisfy. Without the stolen structure as a guidepost, people become lost.

Who to steal from…

American composer John Adams once said: ‘Well stolen is half composed.’ While there is never an excuse for plagiarism, using other people’s ideas does not always constitute theft.

If we can learn from our peers, adapting the tactics that they used to achieve success and sharing our own ideas in turn, the whole team becomes stronger. So, perhaps, the word ‘steal’ could be read as ‘celebrate’. It’s an homage to the successes of those around us.

At CPL, our team has a tremendous advantage over in-house editors who work by themselves. With a dozen experienced writers sitting next to each other, this kind of cross-fertilisation isn’t just a theoretical possibility – we’re actively learning from one another every day.

Breaking the rules…

So, if we’re always borrowing from each other, what part does originality play?

For a start, a lot of creativity is about synthesis. Taking two unrelated ideas and seeing how they fit together. In this case, it might involve taking a structure or feature idea from a consumer magazine and applying it to a membership publication, for example.

But there’s another aspect to originality. Pablo Picasso didn’t paint cubist masterpieces before he could draw a face from life. Salvador Dali’s bizarre paintings aren’t unreal – they’re hyper-real, exaggeration based on accurate observation and difficult lessons about light and shadow.

Originality means breaking away from what has gone before. But unless you know the rules in the first place, you can’t break them in an effective manner and produce great work.

That’s the value of having experts on your side. And as an editor at CPL, I am delighted to have a range of creative professionals on hand to help me do that day in, day out.