You Cannot have an Original Thought Nowadays - and that Isn't a Bad thing
I've already talked about authors "ripping off" one another's style's... Well the new Alex Rider series is out on Amazon prime. These books are the epitome of using another persons structure.
Anthony Horowitz, the author of the rider series, utilises the classic James Bond techniques.
Whenever I ponder this I wonder whether copying of styles is such a bad thing, always coming to the same conclusion. I don't think it is.
Many of my favourite series are well known to be heavily inspired by other works. Even the Northern Lights, and books of dust are inspired by Paradise Lost, says Philip Pullum - their author.
Overall the combination of new ideas combined with unoriginal ideas is a good thing. Getting a truly novel idea, after so many years of human life, must be incredibly rare, you would think. Yet we can never truly know what everyone has thought throughout the course of history.
Therefore, unless blatantly copying word for word, I would suggest using stolen ideas is a necessity in good works of creation, and that everyone does it - to an extent. I mean its not like everybody is using there own language to write a book, and I'm pretty sure when you read, "the trees swayed in the wind," that it isn't the first time you've heard such a description. But when we are reading we don't notice, or generally care.
That's why the morally ambiguous line is such a fine one. But its one I believe its we should work to conquer. I believe it may not be possible to have a truly original thought. I also believe that shouldn't stop us from sharing these potentially unoriginal thoughts, because by doing so you are making more people aware of something that impacted you enough to actually want to create something about it. A thought like this, one your are willing to delegate your time towards, deserves sharing again - thereby being brought to light to more individuals. And so the chain continues.
That's why when I read Alex Rider as a young boy I was not silently raging thinking, wow this is such a rip off, because the style is a good one and a powerful way of portraying a narrative; which means when it is combined with another idea, possibly or possibly not original - of using a popular style whilst changing the demographic to kids, the story, the plots and the ideas bring a whole new generation, or age group, delights they might have otherwise been denied for years - and possibly never discover at all.
That is almost certainly a good thing.
The James Bond creators thought this true so much they got Horowitz, Alex Riders author, to write official James Bond books.
As the saying goes, "Even if the thing you put out there is only going to help one person you should still put it out there so it can."
https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/philip-pullmans-introduction-to-paradise-lost
https://www.anthonyhorowitz.com/books/list/series/james-bond