Which do you prefer to do?     Start with perhaps the Brothers Grimm, Aesops fables or some other source and go from there, or come up with your own concept?  Do you find pluses and minuses of each approach?

"Stealing" could be a matter of semantics. A lot of new ideas are reworkings of old ideas - whether intentionally or not. As it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "...there is no new thing under the sun."

Adaptations or retellings of previously existing works are perfectly acceptable, especially when the source material is in the public domain. And as far as adapting the works of the Brothers Grimm, their work wasn't exactly original itself. They traveled around Germany recording traditional folk and fairy tales told by peasants, as well as people from the middle and aristocratic classes, and then published the stories in book form.

So truly fresh story ideas are rare, how well a story is told is more important in my mind. I love a good retelling of a classic tale as much as one which has never been told before. Especially if the "new" material is painfully pedantic and preachy, which is what you often get from beginning writers.

My 2¢

Ron G.

I enjoy applying my puppetry work to familiar tales and stories. The audience can instantly understand the story, and, assuming the story is worth enjoying, immerse themselves into that enjoyment.

There's a saying in the film industry that there's no such thing as a 'new' storyline. If you notice, most are 'boy meets girl, girl falls in love, they have a fight, break up, get back together", or some variation. At some point, you run out of decent plotlines.

As the others put it, there's a line between reinventing an old story (take a look at 'Clueless' and see how much it matches 'Emma' by Jane Austen) and simple copying. The trick is to take something old and do something new with it, something unexpected. Or simply updating it to match modern life, or giving it a futuristic bent... etc.

This post has helped me too...thanks for the input everyone.
Nina

Really old stuff is no longer under copyright law (published prior to 1923), so you are safe there.  Taking old stories and adapting or embellishing them sounds like a great idea to me.

See http://librivox.org/public-domain/#2 for more extensive rules on what is considered public domain.

There are also provisions for "derivative works" and (my favourite) parody. So go ahead and make a puppet mockery of Twilight or Watchmen!

IANAL, but here's one caveat about creating parodies of copyrighted material in the US - from what I've read the Supreme Court established that parody is a valid legal defense, but it is not a license to freely imitate someone else's work. So it may be OK to create a parody of copyrighted material, or it may not be. The copyright holder has the right to sue for infringement, and then a judge and jury determine on a case-by-case basis whether the copy is too close or not, whether the intent is to actually parody the work or not, and how well it satisfies the conditions of fair use. So while there is no hard-and-fast right to freely parody a copyrighted work, it can fall under the doctrine of fair use.

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_and_parody

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody#Copyright_issues


Ron G.

I've usually gotten material for my live shows from different sources. I have tried to write a few jokes, but they could use a lot more work.

I feel really let down by the lack of originality in puppet playwrighting.  The many possibilities that puppets offer should be taken up by enthusiastic puppet playwrights, but instead the story is often the most neglected part of the production.  Try to find scripts written for puppets, and you'll see that there aren't many.  Don't you feel that great puppets deserve new and exciting stories to perform?  I know that writing is the hardest part, but without it I think that puppetry becomes exactly what many people accuse it of being: A merely derivative art form.  Let's rejuvenate the puppet play by filling it with new story ideas and appealing to an audience with an interest in what could be, not just what was.