I am always honest about it - my stories are pretty much their own however I know I got my ideas from He-Man, Torchwood, Dr Who etc Agatha Christie and Last of the Summer Wine are inspiring the latest series of books.
About a month after I started writing my story, I discovered a book called Evolution by Stephen Baxter. The concept was similar to mine. I picked up a copy and quickly discovered that Baxter's writing style was completely different than my own. I felt better. Then, when I got to the part of Baxter's story where he had velociraptors wearing leather belts and using whips to catch their prey, I knew that I was safe. That's also where I stopped reading the book.
We are influenced by all of that which has come before, just like those authors were influenced by things that they had read. It is fine to use similar ideas and things you liked from others, then turn it around and make it your own. Unless you're setting out to copy the other work you're on pretty solid ground.
"There is nothing new under the sun." <<That phrase is thousands of years old. Retell the story you like, but throw a twist into the plot. That's all that JK Rowling did, she basically re-wrote Star Wars, but had wizards and magic instead of spaceships and droids. It's called the hero's journey, and that is the basic building block of all modern story telling. Check out: The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. It is an invaluable tool for any story teller.
Yes, unfortunatley. Quite a few times. And on one hand it's aggravating and on the other it's promising because I can always create my own story out of the idea. I can retell it in my own way, with my own opinions, and my own voice. So don't give up you guys!
Nothing is entirely unique. How close was your story to the one you found out later on? Was it exactly the same? Was it somewhat different but with the same general plot and conflict?
I've only read the Wikipedia page, but there's not a lot about Gurren Lagaan which is totally original, the whole concept of living underground and being attacked by non human creatures has been done before and will be done again. Antz, City of Ember and Metro 2033 all had themes about soceities living underground and all three are unique and original. One of the few things they all have in common is a sense of comradely with thier fellow underground dwellers, a desire to escape and explore the outside, a lack of supplies and personal space and corrupt rulers. Try exploring these themes in different stories and you will have a very good plot.
^Well it was, up to that point, unique to me. And NO, it wasn't exactly the same and NO it didn't have the same general plot and conflict. (I pride myself on holding a different POV from other writers who I find common ideas with). What I choose as conflict is sometimes very different from another author's choice. And plot -- that's a whole other different question. Plot is how YOU choose to tell the story. And it, NO, wasn't the same kind of plot at all. P.S. If it was really, really similar, I would have changed my story. But it wasn't.
there will always be novels and movies that are similar... that's the nature of the creative mind... if you can dream up a plot, why couldn't someone else do the same?... the point to remember is that no two people will develop the idea and write the entire story in exactly the same way...
1841, Edgar Allan Poe writes a short story named The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The story is narrated by Auguste Dupin, a man that uses his astute logical reasoning to solve the mystery. 1887, Sir Arthur Connan Doyle writes his first detective mystery novel, A Study in Scarlet, where Doctor Watson tells us a story about a man called Sherlock Holmes. The latter after becomes one of the most important literary detective characters, famous by using his astute logical reasoning to solve mysteries. You see? As cleaverly said by daydreams, nothing is entirely unique.
I experienced this not too long ago. The thing is that I'd already finished writing the story months before the film (the movie adaption of Shutter Island) had even come out. The general plot was different but the roles of the sidekick and the dead lover, as well as the eventual climax and ending and the protagonists reaction to these events, were exactly the same. However, I'd never even heard of the book let alone read it before writing the story. Anyone who reads it after seeing the film will instantly think I've ripped off the idea from Dennis Lehane. If I'd seen the film earlier I think I would have stopped writing it. Even now I've been put off the idea of re-writing it.
You continue to run with it because all fiction falls into a handful of categories. Stories are bound to resemble other stories. Besides, it happens all the time. Consider, Avatar/The Last Samurai/Dances with Wolves all with a very similar story.
This reminds me of a thread I made about how my helmsman in my sci-fi story was disturbingly similar to Joker from the Mass Effect videogame series. The responses I got will fit here. The gist is, just take what you like about that story (or character) and alter it. Make it so it's uniquely yours. But if you think your story is too much like the other story that it feels like a fan-fic, then step back and examine the plot. You may have to shred it up and start all over again. I also agree with Bonesaw. The gist of those three movies is that an outsider winds up fighting for the nation/tribe his own country was at conflict with.
I have a bit of a habit of reading reviews to books/films/shows, mainly because I like to see other people's thoughts on a lot of work. The ones I really like to read are the negative reviews because I get a little more insight. One thing I've noticed becoming more frequent in complaints now, especially when it involves a series, is people complaining about disliking the moments that are meant to help develop characters and wanting to go straight to the "action," whatever that might entail. Maybe it's just because I enjoy watching characters interact, but I find it really odd how often I hear this now. I know that there's a lot of stories where character development can drag on for a long time that just seem to be taking up space, but it seems like a lot of the times people seem only interested if there's something exciting (again, whatever that might entail) happening in every moment of the story. So are readers/viewers just getting more impatient and/or have shorter attention spans, or are they just being heard more often?
The pacing of story telling has varied through the times. Right now we have a generally very fast paced story telling, with a strong visual focus, even in the written works. Compared to lets say the first half of the 20th century. If Tolkien written The Hobbit and LOTR today the pacing would been very different. The fast storytelling, it is not good, nor bad. It is just a trend. There have been other periods of time when people preferred fast or slow storytelling in different cultures, depending on every thing from printing method available, to how big part of the consumers was alphabetics, the local oral tradition etc. Dickens storytelling for example was quite fast paces because of the publishing format in magazines.¨ Trends come and go. And there is always counter trends, and exceptions.
I think TV is partly to blame for this. Books have been getting shorter over time. People just don't have the patience (and, in some cases, the time) to read a 800 page book (or even a 500 page book for that matter). It looks like the big books are reserved for those who really enjoy reading.
I am currently writing a chapter in which one of my characters is telling a ‘fairy tale’ to my 5 year old MC. This fairy tale is my own unique take on ‘The little match girl’. Now the problem I have is that the flow of the chapter seems a little stop & start and disjointed between the telling of the story and the interaction of my characters. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution, or do you know of a story in which something like this takes place so I can see how it's done.
It might feel more natural if your 5-year-old interrupts and asks questions a few times at the beginning of the fairy tale.
I read the book Think and Grow Rich - written by napolean hill he handled the story telling amazingly well to motivate the readers, refer to it and you will get a clue.
In one of my stories one of the main characters is sort of a storyteller and she mainly tells fairytales and legends. These extra-stories inside the "real" story explain the historical and mythological background of the protagonists and their culture. I always kind of segregated the "story-inside-story-stories" by giving them their own chapter. I didn't like them to be interrupted by questions and stuff, like it would usually (realistically!) be, and by giving them this kind of extra space I could cut out the actual protagonists and their actions. If any of you know Watership Down, I think there it is done in a similar way (as far as I remember at least, but when I read that book I was around 7). Of course my situation and story is absolutely different from yours, but maybe this is of some use for you...
if you have your storytelling character 'tell' the fairy tale in largish chunks, it may help to do those as block indents, with regular narrative/dialog in between the chunks... that will keep you from confusing readers as to what parts are the ongoing story and which are the story being told by a character...
