I keep trying to think of ideas and plots but for some reason i keep coming back to a plot with a plane crash and a story about their survival. I feel like there are a lot of books like this out on the market though. Do you think the whole "plane crash" thing is overdone? Or how could i try to set myself out from those other novels? Thanks!
In my opinion it is quite overdone, but if you find an exciting twist which separates it from the rest then it may work.
I also think it's overdone, but it depends on the story. If it's just "guy crashes and then has to fight bears and eat cockroaches to survive", forget it. The survivor programs currently on TV water down the idea even further. Unless you have some real experience with either aviation or survival it would probably not ring true, either. True stories like this, however, are always riveting, I find. And truth can be stranger than fiction in cases like this. If you want to read a great survival story ( a true one) read Desperate Voyage by John Caldwell. one of the best books I've ever read. He did confess to fluffing it up a bit, but still, great book. Earnest K Gann wrote a book about an aircraft crash and rescue in Canada that happened during WW2. Island in the Sky. He was involved in the Rescue. If you're going to do it, it would be worthwhile dissecting these two books. Also, there was a family that crashed and survived in Northern California in the sixties. I can't find any details. I don't know if a book was ever written about it, but there was a Life magazine article about it. They all perished after a prolonged struggle to survive. they found them years later IIRC. It'd make a good book.
pretty much everything's been overdone... but if writers let that stop them, we'd have no new novels to read, or movies to see... the key is to do it differently than it's been done before... and do it well...
This has been overdone majorly. But with that said, look at the TV show LOST; that took this plot and ran with it in directions nobody has ever done before. Into something completely different. Into something awesome (with the exception of the last episode, haha). You can write whatever you want, just make it good, interesting and new.
