Hey, so I've come up with an idea for my NaNo, but I don't know if it's too much like a real life event that happened. I'll give you the synopsis, then tell you what event I'm afraid it's too similar to. Synopsis: It started out simple enough. Greg ran away from home on his 16 birthday with a backpack full of random items. He stopped and decided to steal a bike. Before he left though, he took out a sharpie and a pack of stickers out of his backpack. “Sincerely, ” he wrote on the ground next to where he took the bike from. This simple act causes a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Greg becomes famous as the Smiley Face Thief, the new Robin Hood of his generation. Pressure mounts for him to get progressively more divine in his mysterious thefts. Stealing from the rich isn’t good enough nowadays. He becomes a symbol for hope to thousands of Americans, including famous people (yes, I know that’s pretty general). But at the same time, he is a thief. Soon the cops are after him, hunting down the Smiley Face Thief. Bad things happen as he narrowly escapes kidnap (also general). Greg can’t run forever. But what’s a Smiley Face Thief to do? --------- That's my plot, or at least a very basic outline of it. But looking it over, I'm afraid that the plot is too similar to "The Barefoot Bandit" thing that happened earlier this year.Am I just being paranoid, or is this too much like a real life event? Thanks for the help!
Write it. Cogito will soon post his template post, "Just write it, all anyone else will say is 'Great' or 'It's a ripoff of ___." Write it.
As long as you keep it as original to your initial ideas and plan then it's fine. Honestly, I would purposely chose aspects and situations for your story that were very different from the real-life event, making it as contrasting as possible and very much your own creation. Maybe you got a little inspiration from "The Barefoot Bandit," but that's were the similarities end. Good luck. Your story sounds quite exciting. EDIT: Ditto Mallory
Thanks guys for the advice and compliments. I've noticed that my work can get pretty inspired by what I'm reading/watching at the time, so I'll try and make an effort to let my own personal ideas shine though. Thanks again!
Hey, you're welcome, fellow wrimo. Your idea sounds very engaging, and naturally, don't all writers gain some inspiration from circumstances that provoke them? That's my exact case. I mirror quite a few situations and instances from my own experiences in my writing.
Here is the promised (threatened?) template post: How many people have written stories around real life events? For example, how many stories have been written around the assassination of John F. Kennedy? And yet every one is a separate story, even the well-packed subset of time travel stories about preventing the assassination. It isn't a set of evbents that makes a stories. It is how the characters respond to the events and influence them, and where the author directs the focus. Don't worry about similarities to other stories or to real events. Just write the story, and give it your own spark of individuality.
So what? This might sound rude but that's the simplest answer I could think of, and probably that's the attitude you should have writing the story. Your idea also has the potential of being a good script.
Exactly. Who cares if it's similar? I could write a book about a Colonial detective and guess what? There are already THOUSANDS of books about detectives in the Colonial period, some set in the American Colonies, others set in London. It's what I do to that premisis that makes it unique enough.
