So I've come up with a plot and characters I'm really excited about. For the first time in years I'm actually banging away writing the story rather than just planning and researching and it not going anywhere. My problem is, when I wrote down the entire storyline I realised just HOW close it was to an episode of something I used to watch. To the point where if you were to just outline it generally without using characters and specifics you might think I was describing the episode. I've mentioned it to a couple of people who have also seen the episode and one said she didn't think it was similar enough not to write and the other said that, although it was similar, to write it anyway and see if it ended up having tangents that distanced it from the similar storyline. But my worry is that, if I wrote it, I'm not sure it could be published being so close? Surely someone, like me, would come along and go 'hmm, that's an awful lot like that episode of Voyager I watched once...' Thoughts? Am happy to write down the synopses of both to let people compare...?
Thanks! Okay doke! My story outline: Essentially it's about a girl who's fourth in line to the throne and her family gets massacred, making her the heir to the throne. It turns out that the reason for the assassination of her family is because she's something called an Everlink which means that, in her sleep, she transports from the horrible barren reality of a world she's actually from, into a peaceful and idyllic real dream world with other people from her world. They wanted to assassinate her because the cause of the war torn place she's from is social divide. The nobles are in control of everything and the lower classes are nothing and its slowly getting worse. The noble assassin sect don't want Everlinks to exist because they want to be the only people who share information in this world. That way they can never really tell the nobles about the atrocities being conducted on the lower classes and everything stays peachy keen for them. Ultimately Everlinks are an unpoliced way for people to share information which is too much of a threat. She has to battle to both stay alive and keep the Everlink intact. The Voyager episode (which may not make a great deal of sense unless you know Star Trek, so apologies in advance...): There are a group of aliens connected and controlled by a hive mind and a queen. They're part of this collective out with their control. In this episode it turns out that when the aliens are 'sleeping' they go to a collective consciousness where they are as they were before becoming part of the hive mind. They fall in love and live completely normal lives that they can't experience while being 'awake'. The Queen finds out about this and, because she doesn't want them to have autonomy, comes into the consciousness and destroys them. In the end, the place no longer exists.
You're fine, in my opinion. I've never seen Voyager but, reading your synopsis, I recognised the set up. It's been done in many ways (that's not a bad thing by the way) and I don't think you could be accused of ripping off one particular instance.
I think you'll be ok, the description you gave of what you want to write left me thinking of the Russian Tzar Nicholas and family being murdered and only the kid Anastasia surviving.
In all honesty this seems like a mesh of Game of Thrones and one of those Hunger Games-esque series that have come out over the past few years (the name of which escapes me at the moment). Not that it's a bad thing. Your summary intrigues me and is something that I would like to read. Don't think it's close enough to warrant you worrying either.
Anastasia died. That was a fairy tale written because Anastasia was more popular than the rest of her family. She was an innocent girl, who some called kind, and people didn't want to think that her death was part of their revolution.
It seems more than different enough to me. You don't need to worry. I would be more worried about simplistic morals and stereotypical characters, although complex morality and characters are my thing, they don't have to be yours. You can do a fairytale-y story if you want.
I haven't seen Voyager, or read Hunger Games, or seen the Game's of Thrones. Even if I had, who cares? O Brother Where are Thou was nominated for two academy awards and a golden globe, and it's just a retelling of Homer's Odyssey, which can be argued is a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Write your story, because you had me at "So I've come up with a plot..."