Anybody have that horrible realization that your novel's premise has already been done?
Today I discovered that my novel is essentially Marvel Comics' Civil War storyline--a huge, violent controversy about whether costumed vigilantes should register for the protection of themselves and others--but toned down and in reverse. (Registration has been in practice for several years at the time of the novel, and is eventually improved after some conflict. Oh, and there isn't a Captain America to be assasinated. :) )
And I haven't even read Civil War, so this came as a bit of a shock to me. The pressure is on for me to write it better than Marvel!!
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7,252 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 00 59
Neil Gaiman, the Graveyard Book. But I am rapidly trying to de-plagiarize.
----------I might just take up energy drinks.
200,001 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 01 18
Pffft, there's no such thing as a completely original plot anyway. Many of the best books ever have flagrantly copied other sources.
Lord of the Rings: bits of Beowulf and the Eddas.
The Aenid: shameless ripping off the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Divine Comedy; shamelessly ripping off every classical source up to that time
etc, etc.
Just write what you want, and who cares if it looks a little like something else! Do you still like it? Awesome, go write it. :)
----------50,017 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 01 19
Mine appears to be an amalgamation of John Green books/Huck Finn/all those "coming of age" type stories. I am so unoriginal.
----------"I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it"
10,035 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 01 28
Lots of my dialogue sounds like Dinosaur Comics! Is this good or bad? Who knows!
50,417 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 02 37
I do that a lot. See, I tend to see something and decide I like the idea and then spawn a plot off of that tangent, and too often I chunk it because it was too close to the inspiration.
Of course, it also happens that I'll think it sounds like something and I'll start panicking about similarities in my head until I get to the exceptions, and there are usually more exceptions than rules, so I'm immediately cured of my fear. This year's plot was entirely original, too, so I haven't had that problem. Yet. I'm sure someone's written something close enough to make my head try to explode out of sheer annoyance and embarrassment.
----------The search has begun, this is page one. Man meet your maker, I give you... the Author. --The Author, The Academy Is...
52,321 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 20 34
I read this post. And then my friend, who is reading my story, says this to me: "Your novel sounds a lot like Yu-Gi-Oh: Millennium World." My heart stops and then I realize she's right. But so what? I like to think I thought of it first (even though I didn't.) But honestly, is the ancient Egypt storyline overworked? I think that maybe it is. My friend is laughing at me for even mentioning Yu-Gi-Oh. But what can you expect from someone who is obsessed with Blue-Eyes White Dragons and who named themselves JediMaster? Nothing much. SARAH, STOP LAUGHING AT ME!
----------If Facebook, Twitter and Myspace all were destroyed simultaneously, 90% of teenagers in the world would either go insane, go into a coma, or die. If you are one of 10% that would be laughing, post this in your signature. *snickers*
Edited NaNo WC- 50,887
63,236 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 20 43
How could that ever be a bad thing? :D
----------Having been called in here very many times over the past few months to answer for this or that misdemeanor, Oliver was well acquainted with the room's nuances and eccentricities – most of them fungal.
50,212 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 20 55
My novel is about a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan London who kidnap a regular boy to make him become an actor, too. The actors are street smart and a little bit wicked, whereas the kidnapped boy is naive and innocent. I realized that this is awfully similar to Oliver Twist, and the adult managers of the troupe are pretty similar to Fagin and Sikes. A couple of people who I've told about the book have also noted the similarities.
50,321 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 21 02
I was contentedly writing along with my novel and told my roommate its premise and the surprise ending I have cooked up. Immediately, she brightened and chirped, "Oh, so it's just like The Uninvited?"
*headdesk*
What makes it worse is that it's really not. There's one similarity and she ran with it. (She's even told her boyfriend and his friend (who I was trying to impress) about that. I had to take her aside and say it's pretty rude to make comparisons like that.)
----------"It all started with the rook."
Yahoo: feepit_with_an_attitude
MSN: regalisrussian@hotmail.com
AIM: snohshine
Drop me an IM some time. :> I love writing buddies!
51,125 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 21 06
Don't worry about it. It's impossible to be original just tell your own version of it. It's happened to me a hundred times with stories I've never read or even been exposed to.
Just feel flattered that your ideas are good enough to be sold in a real market. Keep up the good work!
----------2005 "Cost of Living" - WON
2006 "Pandora: After the Box" - failed
2007 "Monkey Ex Machina" - failed miserably
2008 "Ships and Ports" - WON
2009 "Where Thunder Comes From" - WON
50,005 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 21 09
My actual plot doesn't resemble any existing stories I can think of (because it's just that absurd...), but I have been told that my writing style is quite similar to Elizabeth Peter's writing style in her Amelia Peabody series , which I actually have read. This worries me a bit because her books, while not overly serious, had a far more serious tone than I was hoping for for my light, whimsical little story. Plus I don't like the idea of ripping Amelia Peabody off. :P Oh well, I guess we're all influenced by what we are exposed to, right?
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Nov 15, 2009 - 21 54
I scavenged my idea from the remains of a couple of really bad stories I wrote back when I was eighteen or nineteen and wanted to be Neil Gaiman. One was basically "Sandman" fanfic with the serial numbers filed off and the other was a ripoff of "Neverwhere".
This one, the more I write it, is starting to more and more skirt the edge of being a combination of "Sandman" and "Coraline."
73,530 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 21 59
Hahahahaha. I like you already, and it's definitely a good thing. :]
----------livejournal, featuring thoughts on NaNo
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Nov 15, 2009 - 22 00
Mine is a lot like the show Supernatural, even though when I started I hadn't seen any of it and all of my knowledge came from previews in TV guide and my sister giggling as she watched it on Hulu.
Originally, I was worried it was going to be like Warehouse 13, but it's diverged a lot. And it no longer looks like I just created a Mage campaign because the magic system is completely different and really subtle.
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Nov 15, 2009 - 22 01
Mine's a parody of pretty much every nursery rhyme, fairy tale, and child's story that I can remember...so...uh yeah...it's all been done :)
----------To be serious, there are others that have done the same before me, like Jasper Fforde's Jack Spratt novels. However, I already knew this when I started.
Won! 2008: The Cruel Mother
2009: Pickled Peppers and Pipers
54,444 / 50,000
Nov 15, 2009 - 22 16
Not the whole plot fortunately, but I didn't realize when I named my main character's love interest Wilfrid that I was dangerously close to ripping off Ivanhoe... and then his personality and stuff made him even more of a rip-off. D'oh!
51,119 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 00 23
Ugh, I know. I was working happily on my novel, very proud of myself because I thought it was a totally new idea that nobody had thought up yet, and then I read a book and realized that the base for both plots are the same.
Now I'm trying everything to make sure none of the events that happen are the same.
54,444 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 00 29
*high fives you for managing to also rip off a 19th century book just by writing about England*. Hard to write about England without ripping off classic British writers, init? Did you include cross-dressing too?
12,153 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 02 13
apparently mine sounds alot like Pretty Women or whatever that movie with Julia Roberts was. I've never seen. Except mine wont have such a happy ending
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Nov 16, 2009 - 07 20
This is why I scoured the net for books and movies that were vaguely similar to my story idea. Then I watched/read them. That way I can steer clear of that.
But you guys shouldn't really worry too much. So what if the story's similar to another one? Chances are that's only because of human universals in cognition and metaphoric language. And that's a good thing, if you're able to tap into that sort of thing. Just keep in mind that your story should be told through a unique point of view. Once you have unique characters, and stick with them for your point of view, you could use another writer's fictional setting/plot elements and STILL come out vastly original.
It's the characters that make your story. Everything should just flow from them.
----------50,362 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 07 57
There *are* no completely 100% original ideas. What's original is what you, the author, do with them.
----------The Worlds Apart Writers' Hangout
A fun, casual forum for creative writers
http://moonmomma.proboards.com
64,635 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 08 27
As I said at the London kick-off party, I think the secret to originality is to steal from enough people that nobody can identify all your sources.
(Speaking of someone who's drawing, this year, on at least Kafka, Gogol, Terry Gilliam, Isaac Asimov, Asterix the Gaul and the Imperial Russian civil service of the 19th century.)
----------"Let me guess. He always cries at weddings, right?"
"Och, nay, na at all. 'E always cries at good plot exposition."
- Order of the Stick
50,212 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 08 58
*high fives you for managing to also rip off a 19th century book just by writing about England*. Hard to write about England without ripping off classic British writers, init? Did you include cross-dressing too?
Oh my, yes. There will be cross-dressing, followed by more cross-dressing.
112,069 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 09 16
I explained to my mom before NaNo what my novel was going to be about, and she said something about "Like Kingdom Keepers?" Thankfully, the only comparisons there now are it's in the Magic Kingdom at niiiiiiiiight, and the MC goes to the Magic Kingdom during the day. Every day. To the point of compulsive obsession that makes her eye twitch because she randomly runs out the door and runs on a bus and sometimes doesn't even know what she's doing. But, YAY FOR BEING SEMI-ORIGINAL 8D;
----------http://crimsonblaine.wordpress.com/