You can't read just one

Lay’s, the potato chip company, uses the slogan “Bet you can’t eat just one!” The slogan, which actually goes well with some biological research, applies to a lot of things in our culture.

If we like something, you usually want more. Who wants to eat just one chip?

This appears in storytelling, too. We complain a lot about reboots, remakes and sequels.

The Romans borrowed heavily and “remade” Greek mythology.

There have been sequels for almost as long as there have been stories.

Homer created “The Iliad” and its sequel “The Odyssey.” Virgil wrote another sequel called “The Aeneid.”

Virgil’s Aeneid inspired Dante Alighieri to write “The Divine Comedy.”

Alighieri’s poem inspired John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and Milton inspired C.S. Lewis to write “The Great Divorce.”

Originality is important, but we like repeated ideas. They help us communicate.

In storytelling, regardless if it’s on film or in a book, we use ideas shared throughout media or throughout a genre.

Memes, tropes and clichés are a form of communication. If all the villains in a show have red hair we automatically begin questioning the intentions of the casts’ new red.

Most of the time these things come about because they communicate ideas very well.

Language isn’t technically original. The words not created as part of language are called loanwords, and they’re just borrowed from other languages because they convey a meaning that’s difficult to express in English.