Not so original ideas

[Mane]

Ever had one of those story concepts or ideas that you were really proud of coming up with and thought they'd be really great and original for a story only to end up seeing that someone else already did it. I keep seeing it.
Example: I once created a race for a fantasy series that I've been wanting to do for years and then I discover ASOIAF's Dothraki and realize, they're basically the same, only Martin did it first.
Being accused of stealing ideas has always been one of my fears, so I tend to go for those concepts that are not original but extremely overused so as to not be told I took that from that or this.

Has this ever happened to you? Did it make you change your story?

[J.Lovelace]

It happens to me all the time to be honest...
But I rarely drop the idea if someone happens to have the same thing. I just think "great minds think alike" and continue with it.

The funniest case was probably when I created two characters in a military police, and a half year later Pacific Rim came out, and their main characters looked just almost exactly like mine X'D

[ShrewdManeuver]

yeah it happens, but what you do is you dive into the idea even deep and change details about it until it's no longer comparable, You change it from horses to Boars or Bison or whatever, this is comic medium you can change their clothing. The Dothraki, Rohan, the Mongols, you have the opportunity to make an even better version.

[shazzbaa]

Man, I think this has happened to most creators! My personal favourite is when I had this story idea I was very excited about, about a digital world where corrupted characters are called "glitches" and basically shunned and treated like terrifying vampires, and then exactly two days after fleshing out this concept I saw Wreck-It Ralph in theatres and spent half the movie just screaming internally. xD

I didn't change it, though, and a week later I was laughing about it. I considered changing things, like whether it would be better to use a different word for the glitches, and finally shrugged because even if I develop this story as fast as I possibly can, Wreck-It Ralph will be years out of date by the time I'm ready to share it.

There were things I thought about tweaking when I saw how similarly they'd been done in .hack//sign, another story about a digital world, though, since that one is a bit more of an enduring example of the genre. Not major thematic things -- I'm keeping those -- but little things that I thought might be distractingly similar details.
For me stuff like this isn't so much an issue of "will someone think I stole it" / "did someone else do this first," but more a consideration of "will the similarity be distracting for the people reading my story." I've always felt strongly about this --

There’s a few other similarities too. So…. yeah, okay! I started telling people “it’s kinda like .hack//sign, where they’re all in a MMORPG, except…” and embraced the similarity – if you liked what .hack did, maybe you’d be interested to see what this story does. I think it’s okay for stories to kind of come from the same place, the same concept, and then branch out to touch different themes.

-- creating something that's really similar to something that already exists is okay to do!

[zetina]

-- creating something that's really similar to something that already exists is okay to do!

on that note, i recall advice for elevator pitches to be like "simpsons meets medieval warfare" or smth basically using known things to describe your concept. works great cuz you get people to imagine A LOT in a short sentence. gets their imaginations going.

BUTYEA. i get kind of upset about seeing similar concepts. but i don't think there's a need to give up. let the idea sit, explore the similar thing and ask yourself "do i have anything unique to add". it's pretty much how those overdone things are born - a bunch of people start chiming in to add to the "discussion". that one "original" idea is destined to become a cliché too one day like this B')

[dglisson]

Forget about the ideas--as long as the story is coming from you, then no one can tell it like you do. Go deeper and figure out what it is that excites you about that story and focus on the elements that seem most unique to you, but that doesn't mean you have to dump the other elements to make them "less similar". Even the most hackneyed concepts can use a fresh take!

Even the Dothraki (a society of nomadic warriors living in a desert land riding horses and having braids) are far from original, similar concepts can be found with the Aiel in Robert Jordan, or any number of other fantasy authors. So I say don't get discouraged, only you can tell a unique story in your way and you'll focus on things George R. R. Martin never dreamed.

[TristanJensen]

Yeah, I've bailed on a few stories because of that, but then later I found out by taking the parts I really liked from each I was able to make an actually original story with it (I mean, I haven't seen anything like it yet ^^)

[Sanz]

Just remember almost nothing is original anymore. pretty much everything has been done at least once in one shape or another and if it's totally original sometimes ends up making no sense, or trying too hard and presented as lame. the way I look at it is that if you have an idea that has been done. change it up a bit to stand out. it's not the idea itself. it's how you present it !!

[saerel]

... And then Jordan managed to create his Aiels in a way that made more than a few people wonder if he'd inspired himself from Herbert's Fremen... In the end, it's not the what is told, it's the how it's told, that matters.

[nobebocafe]

Original is not about doing something "fresh" or "new". It's about do something with enough personality to be recognized as "yours"

[mckarenart]

To be honest... Once I began to draw a comic about a distopic world where all the people were watched by "inquisitors" (like Big Brother in 1984), and the main character broke some rules so the inquisitors try to DELETE FROM THEDATA-BASE, I mean, ALL HIM, and so a group of "rebels" save him and teach that the inquisitors created a visrtual world that OK GUYS, THIS IS MATRIX * _ *,

[Shanny8]

I had the same experience with Ray Thunder. I 1st came up with the concept in 2002, then shelved things for a while after I got a case of burnout. I started remastering my print series The Clique about 3 years ago, and only decided to do Ray Thunder as a webcomic in late 2014...all of sudden, I see some guy post something on Facebook about making a story about a guy/kid who was supposed to be the son of Thor- I'm sitting there with my mouth dropjawed, like, "THAT was MY idea!"

I started to just can Ray Thunder and see about one of my other ideas, but after reading another article where a writer had experienced the same thing, I decided to go ahead and keep Ray Thunder as the 2nd series. So far, I have not heard anything else about this other "son of Thor" comic.

[Ringarune]

For my story, I came up with it thinking parts were original, but overtime I realized they had already been done. For my story, a lot of the beginning parts draw similarities to Skip Beat, however, I felt changing anything I had already planned would reduce the quality of my story and I wouldn't be happy if I changed anything to make it completely original. I just go with what I think works best, even if it's not that original.

[awesomenwin]

Yes... but my comic ideas keep appearing in television programs.

John Wick stole an idea I had years before it came out about a guy who lost his girlfriend in a car accident. The last thing he had to remember her was their dog and while his home got robbed someone killed his dog and he seeks vengeance, hunts them down only to find that the guy who killed his dog was the boyfriend of the other person who died in the car accident. But the whole seeking vengeance because of the dead dog was mine, dammit! I did run the idea in some online roleplaying in a story once and I assume someone stole it from me. Hahahaha! 😅

I was also working on a superhero series and the main antagonist, called Murdoch, who is a pusher (see if you can pick up why a pusher would be called Murdoch) has an epic scene to show his chagrin for human society and is in a bar. He gets in an argument to which someone says "F YOU!" and he says "F me? No. F each other!" and they do so right there in the bar as he exits giving zero F's. I'm still gonna use that in my comic if I ever decide if I'll be a good enough artist to pull it off or maybe pay someone if I ever have that kind of money to do it.

But my ideas are/were original... it just so happened someone else had something similar.

[zed]

This has definitely happened to me. I came up with a somewhat unique fantasy story with a really cool setting that I was very proud of, and then a few months later this anime called Rokka no Yuusha came out. It's honestly a pretty cool anime, but it was so similar to my idea (like really REALLY similar) that I was afraid of being accused of ripping of that anime, so I decided to change like, 2/5 of the story. Now I'm working on how I can tell my story in a unique way (because I'm way too proud of that idea to scrap it hahaha)

[Mane]

It's absolutely frustrating, especially when it's about an idea you had for like 10 years and you keep putting it off because you feel you aren't ready yet , or you want to keep tweaking it until you think you have perfected it and then BAM, you come across a movie, a book, a comic that is either entirely similar to your whole story concept or has that one ingredient that is similar to what would have made you story unique. I always keep thinking "if only I had started working on my story sooner".

[SirHellsir]

my first story was inspired by the card game magic, so I thought of a character that meets several masters and they teach him the different natural elements, and his destiny was to learn them all to defeat a dark dragon. That same year came out avatar, the last airbender.
That actually made me polish my story in a different better direction

[jiho]

I honestly believe nothing is truly original.

TLOTR was based on European mythologies, Star wars was based on Japanese movies/flash gordon/etc...

Every thought/idea ever created WAS based on certain types of experiences.

Don't worry too much if you find your ideas to be "not original".
It is "how" you wrap those ideas that makes it truly yours.

[demthorshie]

That's a common theme for me when it comes to comics. I've had to come to terms with the fact that very little "original content" is actually originally. I don't think it's really about creating something that's original, but possibly adding an original twist or touch to a concept that already exists.