Plagiarism

Sometimes creative writing is hard. For me, personally, I'm actually very bad at coming up with novel ideas. I suspect most people are, actually, but I can't exactly confirm that easily, so I'll just run with it. What I am good at is taking the ideas that other people have, and coming up with fun riffs off of it, and occasionally putting in effort to be atmospheric in my efforts to chisel the results into this stone you're reading now. A lot of people are afraid of stealing ideas from other people, but really why should you? You'll find most things that are worth thinking of have been thought of long ago by minds that appear much grander then our own. This illusion is not worth stressing over. Barring any tangible benefit you would receive from successful theft, I say you should steal as many ideas as you can in your personal life, and go wild with them. Your flavor on those tired tropes is what makes your creation yours. Does that story you wrote follow that popular plot line point for point? Great! What makes it yours? What did you change to make it your own? To make it better! Your creative process doesn't need to stop at "what's new" it can take old ideas and make them better; either a better fit for your purposes, or just better in general. As long as you don't stand to profit beyond your personal enjoyment, then I say take liberties with original content. And when you need to make a profit, fair use is a thing in most countries of worth, and the rest usually don't have rules about that stuff anyways.