Not an original thought in your head?
Don't worry; just write it
Earlier this week, I was part of a conversation that comes up pretty often with people who are just beginning to think about putting words on the page. The aspiring writer in question was feeling discouraged by his ideas. He rattled off four or five different ones that he’d shared with friends, who had pointed out that all of them, “sounded like X book/movie.”
He was frustrated. “I just can’t come up with an original idea that hasn’t been done before.”
No, you can’t. Neither can I. Neither can anyone else.
The truth is there are a finite number of stories in the world that varies depending on which theory you subscribe to. But the reality is, if you’ve thought of it, someone else has, too — probably well before you did.
Originality is not in the idea. It’s in the way you execute the idea.
Let’s look at my book, “Dreams of Gold and Fire.” (affiliate link) You have a kid growing up in simple surroundings who longs for something more out of life and runs away to try to find that. It’s an old story. It’s been told thousands of times in just about every genre you can imagine. The same with boy meets dragon or other magical creature and forms a friendship. You can probably rattle off at least five or six books or movies with those plots without even thinking about it. But each of them has something that makes them unique because they were all written by different people with different perspectives and imaginations.
Pick any current book that you like, whether it be from an indie author or one of the biggest names in the business, and if you look at it, you’ll find that the story at its heart has been done over and over. How many books are there about magical schools? Chosen ones who don’t know who they are hidden away in some backwater? Magical or supernatural detectives? Dark powers threatening the world and a group of unlikely heroes who have to come together and stop them? Yet, the best writers of those stories still manage to make their take on it feel fresh.
Another person in the conversation mentioned that they’d come across a book similar to the one that they were writing, so they abandoned their story in disgust. Don’t do that either. In the past year alone, I’ve stumbled across two recently published books that were similar to books that I just finished writing and am shopping or getting ready to shop. My initial reaction in both cases was disappointment and a feeling that I should scrap my version of the story. But when you realize that there are a ton of books out there like those, too, you begin to understand that it’s not about the idea, it’s about the execution. Stories can be similar, but no one else can tell your story.
It brought to mind a thread about Jonathan French’s “The Grey Bastards,” (affiliate link) a book that I read in its indie days and quite enjoyed. One reader was complaining that she didn’t like it because it was just “Sons of Anarchy” with orcs (the nods to the TV show were intentional, by the way). I mentioned that I loved the book but had never watched “Sons of Anarchy” so I couldn’t make the comparison, to which someone else responded, “SoA is just Hamlet on motorcycles.” So, you see how it works.
A famous T.S. Eliot quote is often paraphrased as something along the lines of “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” What he actually said was, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” That holds true for fiction writers, as well. Take what you like and make it yours.
Kind of funny story, in junior high, before I figured out who I was as a writer, I wrote a lot of sequels to movies that were popular at the time. I had a nice-sized chunk of a “Nightmare on Elm Street” sequel written where the heroes realized that they were in their dreams and could do whatever they wanted to fight Freddy. I was convinced in my youthful exuberance and having no idea how things really worked that I was going to send it to Wes Craven, and he was going to love it, buy it, and turn it into a movie. Then, of course, came the first trailer for “Dream Warriors,” which crushed me. After seeing the movie, I thought that my version of the idea was better, but I guess the world will never know. Or will it? Could I alter that to some other sort of monster attacking teens in their dreams and still tell the story? Of course, I could. It happens all the time, often referred to as “scrubbing the serial numbers.” I won’t do that because that notebook is long lost, and it was probably terrible anyway. But I could. And it could work.
Getting back to the original conversation, though. If you wait until you have an idea that’s completely original and never been done before, you’ll never write anything. If, by some miracle, you managed to find that idea, it would probably be extremely weird and too far out there for most readers to enjoy.
Write what you get excited about writing, even if that annoying friend points out that your idea is similar to something else. Because the something else they’re pointing out is also similar to another book, which is similar to another book, and on and on. Will someone out there give you a one-star review and complain you’re “ripping off X?” Probably. It’s the internet, after all. So what? You know it’s not true and so will most people who read the book. Just write your story.