Hello all! I'm a pretty young writer, but I want to come out of my shell and actually share my stories with people other than my family. The problem is, I have a habit of coming up with "ideas" that I subconsciously copied from someone else. I really hate it, and I want to check if my recent idea is unoriginal before it's too late This is what the story is supposed to be: A lowly secretary and several others are revealed to have been kidnapped, murdered, and replaced by robotic clones. A gritty detective follows all the clues he can before he meets the same fate as the others. A boy, (feminine, naïve, bubbly) possibly a relative to the original detective, manages to catch the culprit(s) by diving into their mechanical world via disguise. Thank you!
Some people say all story ideas are copies. And to some extent that is true. Don't worry about it, write it, that's where you make it your unique story.
Everyone starts out copying ideas. This is normal. It's because the human experience is limited. And most writers who are young are just trying to find their own voice. I would rather a young writer just write, even if the ideas aren't all that original, then become so discouraged at being unoriginal that they fail to write a single word! There's always rewrites and you won't publish your first story anyway. You just won't.
I remember watching Avatar and thinking if I wrote my book people would assume I got the idea from the movie. The great Caparg Tree of the Pellad Kingdoms, and a people who live primarily off the trees in hamony with nature etc. Like the above post says, don’t worry about it too much. Just make the idea your own because the chances are someone somewhere has already had a pretty similar idea. When I used to write short stories whe I was younger I used to unconsciously mirror my environment and tell a story through it. I still sometimes realise after writing somethings that I’ve pretty much made an abstract version of the coffee shop I frequent without fully realising how wound up the characters in my narrative relate to the people who work there and the people I occassionally chat with there. Keep using your experiences, and to create more dynamic themes and ideas be open to new experiences and different sorts of people. After time the richness of life will make any idea you have for a story shine much, much brighter. You’re young, so enjoy, explore and write with freedom. Good luck
More than likely you will not "copy" something. If you get invested in it enough, you will want to change things around, probably to the point the source(s) you used for inspiration are no longer recognizable in the work.
Glitter is right. It's not about copying, it's about telling the story you want to tell when you read other stories and you apply your own life experiences to those stories.
Please, please, please don't worry about whether or not you're copying a story (you're not). The best thing you can do, the BEST THING YOU CAN DO is write. Write your story, write as much of it as you can, write RABIDLY AND VICIOUSLY!! And put as much of your current self into it as possible--your thoughts, feelings, worldviews. You will thank yourself five years from now, ten years from now, when you have pages and pages of work from your youth, I promise.
The most important thing you can do for yourself right now is write your story, however you conceive it. Just writing and completing a whole story will teach you more about writing than any other method I can think of. (After you've written dialogue, for example, you can then learn about writing dialogue from experts. When they explain what works and what doesn't, you'll know what the experts are talking about, and can work that into your editing process.) It doesn't matter if your plot echoes other stories you've read, as long as you're not intentionally plagiarising somebody else. Quite a few popular authors have built a career on writing stories that are similar to what other people write. People who liked reading the 'original' (if they even know what that is) will probably like a spinoff. But in the meantime, you will be learning to write. Ideas are one thing. Writing skills are another. A skilled, experienced writer can take any kind of overused plot and shape it into a good story that will sell. A writer who has fantastic original ideas but no writing skills has a lot more work to do. The best way to learn to write is actually to write, as @Infel said. Write, get feedback, make changes, write again, get feedback, make more changes, write, get feedback, make yet more changes. It takes a while. Don't let the fear of making mistakes or writing the 'wrong thing' stunt your writing growth. Writing is a risk-free activity, and a lot of fun as well. The only risk comes when you actually publish it, but before that, you can make as many changes as are necessary to get the story exactly as you want it. And unless this is an assignment with a deadline, there is no time limit on how long it will take you to achieve your goal.
Just wanted to say I think your idea is pretty original and sounds interesting. I think you've got a good idea here. And this is not a story I, personally, have heard before. But like some others have said it's all about the delivery. I don't like to think everything has been done before or there are no more original ideas. I believe I have original ideas all the time. Sure there are a million bank robbery stories, but how many robbers carry out the act wearing stilts? I don't know if that's been done before, but it feels like a fresh idea to me. And I like feeling that my ideas and stories are original. It's sort of important to me and the way I work. If it's been done before, I don't really want to write that story. But if I can take an idea and put everyone on stilts, well, then it's a different story. I need that feeling that I'm doing something a little different than it's been done before. So, I do know where you are coming from with your questions. I will say it again. I think your idea is original enough that you should continue with it. And as you write it, it will morph into even more originality. Sometimes I like to take a simple idea and turn it on it's head, maybe spin it around a few times. And those simple ideas can turn into complex stories. They pretty much do every time for me, leaving only a faint trace of that simple idea. Good luck with your project. I think it sounds great.
My protagonist Rose is loosely based on red riding hood. I’m not copying it word for word and the story idea is original. Don’t worry about something being to similar till you get to the editing stage of your manuscript.
Something I'd consider copying would be like this famous movie right here, ---- What kind of story(s) do you think you're copying? Because, personally speaking, I haven't read any story with what you described.
If you are worrying about "copying" ideas from already established stories, what matters is the intent. Are you deliberately taking an idea as your own without acknowledging the source? Is it just a coincidence? And if you do consciously take an idea (maybe not a whole plot, but a general theme, setting, or character archetypes), are you using your energy to try to make that idea your own? For example, overused story plots I love are epic quests, and prophecies with an unwilling hero/heroine. It's been done before, and it will be done again. But I take those archetypes and use them for my benefit, changing the way things happen so as to try to subvert established expectations. I want to take something I've always liked but make it unique. I want it to have my voice. And I will gladly acknowledge the fact that I was inspired by stories I personally enjoy. There is nothing wrong with that. All of us become inspired by the books we read, the movies and shows we watch, and even the video games we play, and that's just human nature. There's never truly been an "original" story for a long time. All that's happened is that people have found ways to take an established idea and make it stand out. We have tons of stories with elves and dwarves and dragons, but each has something that makes that story's elves, dwarves, and dragons interesting and different.
'The Lion King is not based on any existing fairy tale or work of literature...' Except The King of the Jungle and maybe Hamlet.
Mark Twain once said, "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope." And that was in 1907. A lot of what people write is inspired by what they experience in their everyday life, whether that be what they saw on their way to work, what someone said as they was passing them on the street, etc... The media we consume, in turn, has a profound effect on the creative part of our brain, as it's a stimulus that's specifically engineered to reach out to it. However, there's a huge difference between copying and inspiration. Inspiration is seeing something and being so emotionally moved by it that you believe you should create something similar to it. Whether that be theme, setting, characters, what have you, you deem that aspect to be worthy of repeating. However, you combine your own thoughts and experiences into that aspect to create something new and wholly yours. Copying is the simple act of ripping off characters, plots, settings, etc... from a story and adding them into your own without adding any of yourself to them. For example, the most recent story I wrote, They Didn't Need an Exorcist (shameless self-promotion is shameless), was completely inspired by another story I heard on a podcast that portrayed an exorcist going to a house and realizing that he wasn't dealing with a demonic possession, rather, an angelic possession. I found that concept fascinating, but morphed it into something new from my own ideas. The one question that pops into my mind, and that I ask myself when I'm faced with the same dilemma you are, is this: What makes my idea different? Asking this question can very often dispel any worries because, when you start listing out the differences in your idea compared to the one you believe you're copying, you'll start to see that those differences will almost always outnumber the similarities. If they don't, then you'll just have to tweak the idea in your head until they do. I hope that it was at least a little helpful.
I have this, maybe a little naive, idea that we are all unique beeings. If you put a little of yourself into your story it's going to be unique.
Pretty much, every story is derivative. Even Einstein's famous e=MC^2 can be traced as a restatement of earlier works. If you do come up with something truly original, no one will understand it. Just tell a good story in interesting words and don't be afraid to get it wrong.
Don't worry about copying too much. I collect 70s gothic romance paperbacks. Their similarities are frightening. Everyone of them rips off Jane Eyre. This is how story structure originates -- One hit and the others follow. You'll add your own flavor. Besides think of your own reading habits how many books have you picked it up cause it sounded like something familiar. Readers love originality but they also love familiarity. I don't think I've ever read a truly original story most everything sounds like something. It's the authors twists that make it 'original'.
