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Being a college student with an "English Something" degree, I am currently in a Fiction Workshop class. In this class we get short stories or exerts written by our classmates each week. We read and comment on the stories. While the writing a much better than I had originally feared, I can't help but notice a lot of characters and plots seem to be taken almost directly from other tv shows, books, and even anime or movies.

I know you are suppose to start writing by copying a style you like, then developing your own...and that imitation is the greatest form of flattery..but does coming across almost direct replications of characters bother anyone else? Or do I need to get off my high horse?

There to me is writing what you know and taking SOME mannerisms from a few places but to copy a chara from a story is just wrong. Its like a few people we know that will take a chara right from a show slap a new name on it and call it original. This is not creative writing this is going hey I cant right but I can make crappy fanfic let me steal something and make it work.

Have you talked to the person who wrote the story in the first place? Perhaps they didn't realize they copied a story--or if they did, you might be able to suggest ways of how to make it more original and thus guide them to better writing.

There are only so many plots out there in the big vast world, so you can't fault them for that. But if you see too many references that are taken from a specific show, I'd suggest commenting about possible plagiarism and seeing if that doesn't have some effect.

Good luck.

Aw, that's rough. I think what you have to keep in mind though is that it's a class, so they are trying to learn how to write. I'm in a similar class and my one friend is getting the same frustrations. I keep reminding him that people are there at the class to learn to be good. You can't expect great right away So just try to be patient, and offer constructive criticism in a kind way!

I get inspired, but I try really hard to keep my characters/plots away from movies and whatnot. It's actually why I don't watch a lot of TV/movies because I don't want to take directly from it without realizing.

My biggest issue so far is just two weeks after finishing my NaNoWriMo novel I watched a movie with almost the exact same plot. I'd never heard of it, never seen it (I would have remembered - it had an amazing plot ), but I even made the main character look like the protagonist.

It happens, but I know what you mean. Sometimes my friends get super excited and want to show me their amazing story and imediately I can tell what they were just watching.

I'm always a little put off when I create a character and later discover they're essentially the same individual from some other show or book I haven't watched or read, yet, but I do particularly detest intentional direct replicas of characters. A particular example is that I saw a character who was essentially based off of the Avengers version of Loki, but as a wolf (oh, and they thought Loki was originally a Marvel creation, rather than a twist on Norse mythology).

I agree with TheLily, though; sometimes it's hard not to unconsciously take from movies/books/etc.