Originality is a struggle for any writer. For example, my original vision for a spy series is blatantly modeled on James Bond, so I gave up. Likewise, my sections in Project DoM (the novel by myself and the absent, lazy DragonsDomain) is very similar to the Thief games - so I'm thinking of ways to differentiate it.
What REALLY annoys me is when I don't even know I'm not being original, and I think I am. Take the re-write of my James Bond series, for example. The hero now works for an organisation whose members faked their death to join - thanks to Gemz, I now realise that is rather similar to Men In Black.
But what REALLY REALLY REALLY annoys me is when I think I'm being original, have never seen anything that is anything like what i've done, and find that it's been done before but I didn't know. Let me clarify:
- When designing my own installment to the Zelda series, I thought it would be a great idea for the Sacred Realm to be a mirror of Hyrule. Then when I played, A link to the past (years after my ideas, mind you), it's already been done, and it's been done years before I started penning my ideas down.
- I thought it would be a cool scene in a spy novel to have a car drive off a cliff and land in the back of a Hercules or other big plane. At least five years later, I buy Star Trek Nemesis, and - lo and behold! - Captain picard drive a jeep off a cliff into the back of a shuttle.
- This one I realised today, and this is the reason I'm writing this. From the very beginning of Project DoM, the villains were the undead of the Elves, Dwarves and Humans that live in the book's world. These undead also had the ability to raise more of the dead for their armies. Now, recently, I've been reading the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb and today it occured to me that the Forged Ones are just like my undead - but these books have been in existance no less than four years before I even started Project DoM (even though I'd never heard of them before this past few months).
The point is this. I feel really crap and unoriginal, because no matter what I come up with, someone seems to have thought of it already. Does anyone else have this problem?
I don't think you should worry to much because there will properly have already used any idea tthat you would come up with. Like that idea that you said about those guys who faked their own death so they could join isn't to bad. I mean in men in black they just lost the identity and everything that was proof that they ever exsisted. I mean a story problem you may have with your idea could be that people discover that what had first appeard to be death was faked. There will always be something like what you come up with. It's the same with titles. If you name a title with a noun or a few nouns chances are that the titles been used. The title is only really different when you use names to do with the book. Names like people names or land/country names. You should only really worry about it if it's exactly the same.
-Grogy
I know what you mean, but I think its an almost unavoidable situation. There are so many authors out there, plus t.v programs, films and so on. There is bound to be someone that has had a similar idea at some point.
I've just finnished planing my next story, and I had to scrap loads of ideas because they were just like a book I've read. I'm sure even the plan I've come up with is not original.
I guess what you have to do is accept that all your ideas are not likey to be original, but that the way you present the plot will be different from the original.
yeah, your never going to do anything that isn't remotley like something already done, you just have to accept that sometheing similar has been done in somethings when you write books.
Batch, you've read what I've done so far with The Warriors of Goroden, oui? :huh:
It's Brian Jaques meet Xena, I swear.