My Current Plot Ideas Feel Terribly Unoriginal

Everyone says a writer draws inspiration from various sources to create work that is unique, something special to show the world that has never been seen before.

I'm struggling with this feeling, as my MC and plot feel rather "copied" from another source, even though I have put my own unique spin on it. I haven't even moved past the outlining stage because I'm stuck on making my story ring more creative, and I'm unsure if I'm simply overthinking it.

I'll spare the details of the plot ideas I have bouncing around in my head, but for an example:

My character is an intelligent teen who has forged a friendship with a long-time inventor. They live in a magical world with talented wizards and witches everywhere, and neither my MC nor the Senior Inventor (as I call him for now) has any magic. My MC has turned toward inventing in an attempt to prove himself to his father, who loves him and his other son, but prefers the brother due to his heroic feats (all surrounding magic).

I'm thinking about having an invention go ridiculously wrong, and my MC has to go through a series of conscience-turning decisions, resulting in his becoming a less-than-stellar person (not quite villain, but not exactly a hero either). I want to include a redemption arc, in addition.

Does this sound unoriginal? It feels entirely so, but I'm not sure if I've simply been overthinking it for far too long and perhaps need to take a step back from writing as a whole?

 

Yes, thank you I figured this would be the common way of thinking, so it's nice to know I'm likely overthinking it.

 

Here's the thing: there's a market for what you're doing. After I finish a very awesome thing, whether it be a video game, a book, or a movie, my mind immediately craves more. So I go out and look for things that have that particular flavor. I don't want it to be exactly like what I read, but I want that feeling back again.

So the success is not found in being "entirely original." It's the finding that balance between the familiar and the novel.

 

Readers don't want original. Readers want meaningful. Readers wants stories to communicate truths about life and humanity and to be provoked emotionally - provoked to rage, to tears, to laughter.

Take a silly children's film like Hotel Transylvania - I'm often struck by how silly and how far-fetched some of it is, the characters, the graphics, it's utterly silly. But, at its heart, it is about family, about the love of a father for his daughter, about acceptance of those who are different from you - and that resonates with people. And for that, it has 3 or maybe 4 films. It's a clear success.

Coco - travel the Underworld and discover the meaning of family. Original? Nah. But it strikes a cord, because we all fear losing our loved ones, we all fear regret, and we all hope we can make amends. We all want to believe in love everlasting and the unbreakable bond of family.

Esp if you're not too experienced - and you seem not to be - just keep it simple. First tell a meaningful story. Then worry about telling it creatively. Because it doesn't matter how creative you make your story, if it is devoid of meaning - devoid of story - your readers will not be satisfied, and will forget your book soon after. Tell a meaningful story - think of something without all the frills and bells and whistles, when all has been stripped and you're utterly naked - what's your story really made of? Is it made of something good? Tell that story, and readers will be talking about your story long after - whether it's original or not will be an afterthought. It won't even matter.

 

I see exactly what you mean, and by the countless hours of writing research I've done over past months, the conclusion I've come to is essentially what you've stated. If the reader doesn't care about the characters (as in the character's goals, fears, drives, all of it), they won't care about the story.

My favorite stories follow similar formulas, and I can guess how they might end even as I watch/read them, but I still love them. Coming down to characters and meaning.

At this point, it might seem as if I'm simply restating what you've already said, but that's because my head has admittedly become muddled from multiple hobbies taking up my thoughts and bringing chaos haha. Thanks for all the help

 

I agree with the other posts. Want to add: It's pretty hard to 'copy' another story by accident. Plot 'points' will always be unoriginal, but the content they consist of is where the wheat vs chaff lies.

Try not to listen to people that write off things by comparing a few plot elements:

"The Joker is just a modern Taxi Driver." (it isn't)
"The Hunger Games is just a rip off of Battle Royal." (no)
"Avatar is just Pocahontas with blue people in space." (not exactly)

Key term is 'write off.' They are fine broad comparisons of course, which is why they're used in the first place, but they distill the matter too much for any meaningful contrast.

 

I'm not sure Christopher Booker counts as a school of thought. It would be a very small, unlicensed school.

Stories reducing to 7/8/36 different structures isn't the same thing at all as there being only seven stories we can tell.
It calls to mind the fallacy of saying there are only 35 phyla in the animal kingdom so there are only 35 types of animal.
There are numerous taxonomic layers (types of types) between any particular story and one of Booker's 7 basic plots.

To put it another way, nobody keeps a "chordate" (or a "vertebrate" in abstract) as a pet. If they did, it would look like a disembodied hollow nerve cord and pharyngeal slits floating above a post-anal tail. It wouldn't be able to bark or squeak or mew - those things don't exist at this level of abstraction.

And if anyone wrote the story "Overcoming the monster," it would be similar.
The librarians would look at it sadly, give its grieving author their condolences, and take it out back and put it out of its misery.

At the same time, we can't pitch readers like this:-
"I made a new animal! You wanna see? It's got sleek, black fur. And it's very small. And it's got a twitchy nose and whiskers. And a long tail. And it eats leftover food." They've seen those before. They would have to be pretty hungry to eat one.

Whether something is a mass of godawful cliches isn't a factor of what structural story-type it hails from.
Non-fiction authors write the useful stuff like cows and sheep. As fiction writers - and especially as speculative fiction writers - we want to be producing exotic, beautiful animals - whose scales and feathers conspire to produce something never-before-seen. Something that looks like its literary DNA might all wander back off in different directions if it isn't bought right this minute, taken home, and fed fresh platinum beads round the clock in a controlled climate.

Yes... execution can do anything. But our mutant cerebral cortices, and the side effects of long nights drinking coffee to deadlines, and our lifetimes spent enduring critique - all the things that make our sentences more interesting than other people's - also tend to make our ideas more interesting.

 

Just my two cents, it sounds like more of a character driven narrative than a plot driven narrative, this doesn't complete excuse an overly generic plot but it definitely allows you to focus far more attention on the characters seeing how they are the main focus. The son looking for validation from his father trope has obviously been done before but that alone doesn't make it overly generic, so long as the characters development is interesting, makes sense and ties into some larger overarching theme that the narrative looks to explore I think using "generic" tropes is fine. It really is all up to how you make the reader connect with the characters, if the reader can't invest in the characters then there's no hope.

 

It sounds perfectly original to me, as well as really interesting. I have no idea what (you think) it's copied from.

 

Hmmm, I think it's because I took inspiration from a few sources, threw in my own creative twists, and now I'm simply overthinking it. I tend to do that haha.

 

The first book (s) you write are (probably) not going to be publish-worthy but they are going to give you invaluable growth as a writer. So...go ahead and write a story about Dodo Hagins taking the bracelet of power to throw into Mount Vroom. Trust me, I have some of my original notebooks I started writing stories in when I was 12....they are straight up pure cringe copies of Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. But I learned a lot doing it.

 

For the record, I have never read anything remotely similar to what you describe.

As for "being original", my advice is to just let go. Stop thinking like that. Sure, maybe you're not experienced enough to create something that's entirely your own, but that in itself isn't blameworthy. It just means you're still figuring things out, in which case demanding more out of you is unfair. I understand this can be frustrating, but you should really just slow down and relax.

Take a depth breath. You're still figuring it out, and that's okay. This is part of the learning process and it takes time.

Well then, you've pretty much figured out the basic trick, so to speak.

Truth is that it's impossible to create something out of nothing - we learn how to do things by imitating the people we admire. There's no shame in that. Rather than shying away from it, you need to embrace it: Dive deeper. The key is to identify only the elements you feel is absolutely true to you, contemplate what you wouldn't have done, and distill this into the essence of the story you want to tell.

If you've read or watched (or whatever) a story you like, that's always valuable to you. Remember that. But at the same time, always ask yourself what exactly it was you liked about it, and what you would have done differently.

The more influences you have, the better. Eventually, they will all merge into this huge Sea of Inspiration, with its own ecosystem of ideas that mingle and struggle and merge together. Anything you pull out of it will be distinct from the sum of its parts, because it's defined as your story far more than the multitude of stories that inspired it.

 

Catriona's two cents worth:

You're trying to write with a panel of highly critical editors peering over your mental shoulder. First order of business: lock the SOBs in a dungeon somewhere and forget they exist while you write your story.

Second: start writing. Whatever outline you have is enough for now. Quit messing with it. Sit down and write the scene that is foremost in your mind just as it comes to you, without worrying about how it reads, whether it follows the outline, where it comes in the book, or who you swiped the idea from. Treat it like a magnificent daydream and enjoy the experience without being critical of it.

Third: repeat until you're done with the story.

I've written a lot of words about a lot of people and things in the last sixty years. No matter how complete my original outline, my characters and my stories always end up surprising me. Trust yourself to tell your story and enjoy the process. An outline is just a jumping off place and by the time you're done, the borrowed ideas will have morphed into something that is your own.

 

your plot sounds familiar, but you only wrote three lines of it. There are a limited number of personalities (16?) for the billions of people that make this planet, and yet we feel a lot of different from each other because the combination of experiences that we live are different. The details and the dynamics among the characters define originality, in my opinion. When you see plots that are too similar it is because they are following a specific narrative trend, yet a few are good and most are average and a few are just bad. Readers go for the good ones, but enjoy reading the same plot in different shapes.
This is just to say that if you are interested in your plot and want to develop you should just go ahead and do it. If that is the story you really want to tell, then go ahead. If you really care and are excited about it, others will feel the same.

 

Honestly, no plot is truly original at the core. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy fights to win her back. Adventure to save "someone" from "something". Adventure to find the magic "something" that will save "someone". "Someone" dies or loses a jewel and "someone else" dives into the mystery. Books stand out in the details surrounding the plot. You have a great plot at the core. Once you flesh out the setting and characters using your own taste and background, it will feel original.

 

All stories are derivative. Remember that Archetypes drive the human psychie and that writing a story is less about being original and more about telling a meaningful story that people will want to read.

 

That's such a simple and easy way to put it, good for my tired brain

 

Your welcome.