Frustrated and Desperate
Heres my dilema. I follow the general rule of read a lot, write a lot. I am always reading and writing. Great right? Wrong. My problem is I get so excied when I think "yes this is it, my new project...I am going to finish this one." So I plow into it going strong and when it comes time for a re-read, I realize I have just re-written the last book I read. I am unimaginitive and uncreative and have no idea how to break out of this horrible cycle. HELP!
Thanks!
Cady
It's ok to use the skeletons of other books. After all, most of the books out there have bases in other stories (generic hero guy fights dragons and saves a damsel; underdog sports team overcomes all odds; quirky genius solves a murder mystery; et cetera). Just try to throw in your own original tidbits and characters so that it morphs into its own thing.
It is always different in many ways, but the basic idea seems to be the same. For example I just read inkspell a book about a girl whose father can read books to life. Then I got a wonderful idea about a girl whose grandmother mysteriously dissapears and now she inherits a pen. This pen doesnt seem abnormal until she begins to write with it...Do you think this is too similar?
Not really, naw. Inkspell wasn't the first book to experiment with that idea. If you can pull it off, it's perfectly fine. (Or at least, that's what I think. It's not written in stone or anything, haha. But you get the idea.)
lol, ok well thanks for the advice. Do you ever have this problem? I just always feel like such a copycat.
Perhaps you're too excited? Give yourself time to really think things over. If her grandmother dies, and she inherits a pen....GREAT! Go the extra mile, take that concept, and add something totally different to it, that completely changes it around. Make it so no one will recognize it at all.
What if the pen doesn't write at all? What if it has invisible ink, and erases things? What if it is perminently invisibl ink? What if she uses it to stop terrible things from happening? What if, instead, she causes even bigger problems? What if...well the what ifs go on.
Haha, actually yes. One of my current characters was so similiar to the phantom of the opera that I had to try and give him a complete "character makeover". He's his own self now (I hope, haha). I think a lot of writers have this habit.Originally Posted by Cady
Woah! Emerson has a new avatar! (Random comment, sorry.)
Yeah, Merton wasn't on near long enough.
Ok thanks guys for your awesome inspiration. I think I am fine until I start to compare it to someone elses work and then it seems that I cant do anything different then what they did, and I have no room to move. Urg! Thanks!
Good luck! ^^
Hey no prob. Just remember, there are so many different things that can be done. What if the pen has a unique and singular Counteractant? Who would hold such a thing, and why? Is it located inside or around another pen?
What I did to get over this was just read a awhole buncha books at once, they blend into something awsome then.
Oh, If I could make sense of it all!
Ugh, I had that problem for a bit. I found that pacing things out - not writing right after a read and not flipping back and forth eg. read then write then read then write - helps.
Maybe write out the qualities out of the book that you liked to help separate things some.
Hey Cady! When I was doing my Film Studies A Level at college we discussed the theory that are in existence only seven basic plots for any story or film. I am so useless I cannot remember these! But if you bear this in mind it means that all stories are a copy of another to some degree. You just have to stamp on it your own unique way of writing
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