I read once that one way to be 'unique' (note the quotes) is to see a subject/event from an unusual POV. I try to do this by stepping outside of accepted beliefs and sometimes it actually works.
Hi, The more interesting questionto me is how original do you really want your work to be? I ask that because I have written two extremely original plots. In one - The Man Who Wasn't Anders Voss, my protagonist was a man beamed to another world - exept that the transporter was a murder the original create a duplicate at the other end type device. Large parts of the plot were based on the philosophical question raised by the duplicates paradox - when is someone else similar to me to be me? I have never seen another book with this plot. And even though as a trekkie the philosophical implications of the paradox intrigue me - I haven't even seen a lot of threads in various philosophy fora about this particular paradox. So I'm willing to rate this work as highly original - at least in my own view. It's also my worst selling book by absolute miles! I wrote a short story called Genesis which is based around a time travel paradox - the violation of the conservation of mass / energy across time - relating it as an explanation for the big bang. Again, very original. And again a horrible seller. But I wrote a book about a young wizard rescuing a bunch of children, escorting them to safety, finding love and saving the world - Maverick - a tried and true trope, and it's on its way towards 10K sales. Go figure! I don't think originality is really what readers want. Cheers, Greg.
IMO, thinking outside the box is the way to go. But at the same token, all we really have is our own ideas. How others decide to interpret it is another topic on its own. The biggest tasking we have as writers I think, is to try to convince readers that we can engage them in discovering something new (or almost new). A well read person is the hardest to convince and that's the audience I am trying to shoot for. Easier said than done though.
Yes, and who's to say that my outside-the-box won't be someone else's inside...? way inside... like, maybe even dead centre?
I'm not so concerned with originality as with an original take on something. I think sometimes striving for originality can backfire. I recall a guy who decided to fill his book with trope opposites but was so fixated on the gimmick that they still behaved like tropes because he kept harping about them. Kinda reminds me of A Shark's Tale.
I don't really see anyone doing anything like my stuff. People sometimes tell me it reminds them of this or that writer, but none of those are consistent. Most often they just ask me what drugs I'm on.
A lot of elements of a particular story may not be 100% original, but there could be something there that is, maybe simply a character(s), but the plot itself could be familiar. I immediately think of Avatar, whereas a lot of people felt it wasn't original at all. But that's not true. The story itself has been done sure, but the idea of making the humans the enemies, and the aliens the good guys had never really been executed to that extent. And to have such a grand scale film explore such recognizable themes, such as deforestation is really unprecedented, as there's no true blueprint film to draw from prior to Avatar. But there are also other elements within the film/story, things sprinkled in here and there that are "original." A bioluminescence jungle was a unique setting. A Banshee was a unique creature. The concept involving the roots of trees being a network had obviously never been done. These are things that had never been seen in a film ever. But the most amazing accomplishment in my opinion that the story achieves, is making YOU root for the Navi. With that said, I feel I'm currently writing a horror script that has a plot mechanic within it that is 100% original and has never been done before. The setting is familiar, but the core concept that revolves around this specific plot device is something that could result in subsequent scripts, a horror franchise if you will, and is actually very scary how I execute it in the writing. I'm confident in that without even having people read it yet, although I have pitched the idea to some family and friends and they have expressed the potential and the commercial prospect of it.
Well how original is a story that starts off with a man cutting off his own fingers? ... but I have had ideas a lot of time that I later see elsewhere and it gives me a feeling of deja'vu. One idea I had was about a story about the USS Indianapolis. It's the ship that Quint talked about in the movie Jaws. It is a real boat and people really did get eaten by sharks and stuff. Then I found out that some big name guy and his wife were in the process of making the movie for it. I haven't seen it yet but I'm sure it will come out soon. Wait here is the IMDB page. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2032572/ It says Nicholas Cage is supposed to be in it too.
You might want to check out All Quiet on the Western Front. It's one of the few war stories (as in WWI or WWII) that shows a German as the protagonist and, by extension, the Germans as the good guys. In that story, the reader ends up rooting for what we traditionally think of as 'the enemy.' Just saying.
Everything that I've ever written has been inspired by either a real life event or something that I've watched/read. I, personally, don't think that anything is truly original.
You've obviously never seen the film. It is nothing of the sort. Back OT: all stories are about conflict at their core. Everything else is just added flavoring on top. Writing is really about what you can do with the core issue. For example, there have been hundreds of gangster movies made. Why is Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction such an outstanding example of the genre? Rich characters, incredible dialogue and the whole tale is drawn way outside the normal lines. It takes an oft-repeated story (gangsters killing people) but tells it in a way completely unique. This is our challenge as writers.
No, it's about The Great War. Written in 1929. I guess it could be propaganda for the Kaiser? And the protagonists are German because the the author was German and the book was written in Germany about Germans.
As writers, we shouldn't worry so much about originality of concept as predictibility of result. We want readers to get taken totally by surprise. Give them a story arc and a conclusion they haven't thought of at all. Tip the boat over. They'll remember you and forgive you.
Not this topic again... I once tried to relay the most debauched tale of anteater coupling ever told, by painting Myrmecophaga tridactyla pheromones onto a rotten log. My human audience had no idea what it was about and thought I was weird, while my anteater feedback was "Yawn. Sniffy told the same one last Friday and his SPaG was better," with no mention whatsoever of how I'd actually painted letters that could be arranged into the word "suffering". My personal framework (all generalisations): - Originality is entirely subjective, and rather than a dichotomy, is probably a spectrum stretching from "trite" to "original". - If something is too avant-garde it will alienate parts of your audience; if something is too tried-and-true it will bore parts of your audience. Preferences vary. Compromise (but how much?) is probably key, and probably involves remixing or repeating-with-variation, as others have mentioned. (An important point here is that originality is not necessarily desirable, as many former lovers have told me...) - Originality should be considered within the constraints of your work (form, language, style, genre, etc). The more constraints, the harder it is to be original. - Whoever interprets the work (creator or audience) does so from their own base of experience/expertise (with this in mind, if you want to be considered original, write for children). Some won't have heard anything similar before, others will have, but may not appreciate the novelty you've brought to the table. - Perhaps the best approach is to consider how much you want to write for yourself vs others, then try to estimate where the compromise would lie on the originality spectrum (and then scrutinise whether you're hitting your target as you write/edit). To answer the actual question: I don't think my WIP is entirely new-and-different, but that's by design - hopefully the trope variations and holistic combination of elements is original enough to be interesting. Haven't started drafting yet as I'm a meticulous planner, but responses to some writing exercises have reasonably matched what I've aimed for. I'll bookend by finishing with the same joke I started with... but if I rephrase, is it really the same joke, and have I really bookended?: Apologies to those who've heard this all before!
I try to make my stories and universes as unique as I can but I do get quite a lot of inspiration from other stories, universes, etc.
Most stories involve familiar troupes and classic events that are unescapable due to the nature of living in a world with other people. However I hope that all writers try their best to write something original and at the very least I think most manage to put an original spin on it. As for me, I try to turn convention on it's head a little. So it's original but it needs the convention first to push away from. This leads me to say it's hard to clasify how original it is, but I try.
I'd like to think my work is unique (woudn't we all,) but my novel feels original because I've written a same-sex romance--set in 1660s England, when the word "homosexual" wouldn't be in existence for roughly another 230 years and same-sex relations were a capital punishment and labelled as a 'vice'. I also have a more typical plot line of a rich girl being in love with her parent's servant, but it's a parallel to my main couple. I flipped the script in another way too--the rich girl is supposed to marry my main character, and as he has no interest in girls, he is being force to marry someone he doesn't love, when it's usually the girl having to marry a guy she doesn't love. And I'd like to think putting modern issues in a historical context can give a lot of insight about how we live today.
Scholars have been regurgitating philosophies on just this for centuries now. It usually boils down to the basic fact that there are, in the broadest sense, a very limited number of plots available and that nothing, no matter how bizarre, will ever fall outside them. I'm not really sure if I agree with that line of thought, but I can't really find any fault in it either. I've found a few lists of some posited "broad plot" ideas compiled here: http://www.fiction-writers-mentor.com/how-many-plots-are-there/
Humans are pattern-seeking organisms and novelty-seeking organisms. Give them a healthy dose of both and you've created something that's both interesting and accessible.
