Fiction: Re-Writing, Translating, Adapting, and Writing Masterpiece

Sometimes, when I wish to write fiction, I rather confuse how to start it. The problem is that I frequently find, there are many kind of fiction written, start from rewriten fiction, translated fiction, adapted fiction and so on. One of my friends then told me some tips dealing with it. Below are some tips I remember:

1. Rewriting
The fiction whichis written not based on our own idea. We just re-write the story. Mostly the fictions are folklores in the society which are difficult to traced who the author is, Sangkuriang, for an example. We can re-write the folklore, ofcourse in a better version.

2. Translating
The fiction is a translation of fiction from another country of foreign fiction. For novice authors translating fiction is a good start to write a fiction. From this point they may learn so many things dealing with fiction including idea exploration. As long as the fiction has a good story and it's not published yet or is unfamiliar to he society, the publisher such as children magazine will easily accept and publish this kind of fiction.

3. Adapting
For some fiction author, they are not satisfied if the are just simply translate the foreign fiction. Hence, they are adapting the fiction from another country. For example, a fiction from China will be different in their hand. They may adapt the story and take Javanese culture as the setting, change the name of the characters and finally it become a new fiction. Therefore, the author of such fiction should honestly state the source in the new fiction.

4. Writing masterpiece
The idea of the fiction is our own idea and we are free to state our name as the author of the story. Sometimes, maybe we are not so sure with the diction, evenles if the fiction take a far away country as the setting of the fiction. To convince the publisher we may state that the fiction is original and is written based on our own idea.

Then the next question is about fiction with famous characters in it, such as Kabayan, Abunawas, and other cunning character. For those kind of fiction, the author may take it as someone's masterpiece so that they can rewrite, translate, adapt or even take it as their own masterpiece.