How freeing to know that words can be influenced by the storytellers before us

In our race to create what we deem ‘new’ content, we knowingly — or sometimes unknowingly — piggyback on the ideas of other creators, writes Lindsay Woods

Recently, Elena Ferrante, bestselling novelist and columnist for The Guardian wrote: “There was a phase — fortunately long past — when I was convinced that a story either had to be absolutely new, comparable to nothing but itself, or it must be discarded. This was a very presumptuous and at the same time naïve attitude.”