From: Raymond E. Feist
Date: 23 July 1999
Occasionally, though I think we're far more conscious of the potential, hence we tend to work harder at not doing it.
But there are "unconscious borrowings," from time to time. The Tsurani ship that crashed on the rocks looked exactly like the one used by Jafa in the Korda Brothers' Thief of Bagdad which I had seen as a kid. I didn't realize it until I saw the film at a retrospective art theater a year-and-a-half after Magician was published.
Sometimes it will be a name of a minor character.
But it usually doesn't happen with the big stuff and not as often as untrained writers are likely to be guilty of. Most of the time it takes practice, like anything else, to avoid that trap.
Best, R.E.F.
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