Here I am diving into my new trilogy KRK with over 100 pages written and one of the plot devices I’m using has appeared in George RR Martin’s new book. Gaaah!
I don’t want people saying, ah, she borrowed from GRRM, because I didn’t. It was already written.
There are hundreds of books out there with dragons. Novik’s Tremeraire books reimagined them. If Novik had been worried about writing something with dragons, she would never have produced her series, which would be a shame.
A few years ago, one of my ROR writing group friends asked me to read his WIP and give feedback, which I did. Then he emailed me, distraught because he’d discovered a book with a very similar central premise. His book was published and has been highly successful, because it was his story. So I’m going to take this as the way I should go.
I may be writing about a similar ploy to something in George’s Book and, let’s face it the book is over a thousand pages long, it would be hard not to have something similar happen somewhere. So I’m just going to go ahead and write my trilogy, my way because I’m not George and my story will have its own flavour.
Have you been writing something, only to discover a similar plot device in an already published book? If so, what did you do?
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Those pesky similarities …”
The book I currently have available on the net for free (www.scottjrobinson.com) apparently has a couple of things in common with a published book (something by Katherine Kerr, I think). Someone told me about these similarities so I have studiously avoided finding out anything else about the book and generally ignored it to death. I think that’s the best thing to do. Don’t worry about it and carry on– there will be enough differences between any two (naturally occurring) books that it won’t matter.
Exactly. I think if you worry too much about doing something similar to something that is already out there, you’ll cripple yourself.
Proof – as if any was needed – that what Dave said yesterday about all writing being derivative is absolutely accurate.
Hi Rowena,
I don’t usually worry about similar plot devices, because the rest of the book being different is generally enough to carry it. What hurts is being well into a book and discovering something published with the same plot and theme. With that, you’ve pretty much got to put your piece aside for a while: long enough that your book isn’t going to look like a direct rip-off.
The flip side of the bite is when synchronicity hits and several very similar books are all published within a few months of each other – and all completely independently. Yours might not be accused of being a rip-off, but it stands a good chance of being buried in the sudden explosion of books about X (kind of like the flurry of dark urban fantasy with vampires that hit the shelves all at once a few years back. Okay, rather a lot of years back.)
Kate, I’ve noticed that syncronicity withfilms. A while agot here were two films released about magicians in the 1890s.
I hate writing synopsis because when you boil it down to the bare facts, any fantasy story will sound similar to what is already out there.
And I’m sure if you put your work aside for a while, then come back to it, you’ll see all these layers you can add that will make it so much stronger. Never hurts to let a story sit for a bit.
It’s all been done before. Anytime I give a brief synopsis of a story someone is bound to say “Oh you mean like [put an author here]did in [book you’ve never read]?”
But when I’ve looked, the details are so wildly divergent it’s really not very similar at all.
Absolutely, Pam. The details are what make a story quirky, or give it pathos. If I worried too much about what other people were doing, I’d freeze up.
Hi Rowena,
I read an interview with Frank Herbert years ago, in which he discusses the making of Dune, the movie. He says that they nearly didn’t make it because of the points of similarity with Star Wars, which had come out a few years earlier.
I think he said there were 17 points of similarity. I can kind of see it. Both movies feature desert worlds, young men who gain powers, space battles etc…but in my mind there are few true similarities. Possibly because David Lynch and George Lucas are such different people that, while on paper the stories may sound similar, by the time they made it to celluloid, they were utterly different.
Absolutely, Chris.
And if you read Ceorge Lucas’s original film treatment for the first Star Wars movie you’ll see a mention of something that sounds a lot like Dune’s spice.
Now you come to mention it, I do rmember Han Solo saying something about smuggling spice.
It’s never happened to me, although I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. It’s how you use the idea, not the idea itself.
There have been many instances of seemingly unique plots being generated almost in parallel.
Chris, there are instances of scientist coming up with the same break through around the same time, working independantly. It’s serendipitous.
It’s like there is something in the air.