Making an idea your own

Ever watch Law & Order and know exactly what real life case they were trying to emulate? Did it make it worse for you that it had been based on a real life story? Usually not - at least for the public in general. They often take unsolved cases and put their own twists on them to make it so you have no idea what is going to happen next. In Spark of an Idea - That is the kind of thing we were talking about when we said make an idea your own. Now we don’t suggest you be so blatantly obvious about it as they are on TV, but you take an idea, even one people recognize, and you twist it into something you think is even more interesting. I always felt that I wasn’t explaining the principle right and it sounded like we thought everyone should plagiarize other works. Hopefully this illustration makes it a little clearer.