Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Do you ever have one, start writing and then stop look back and wonder if you've read this before. Have you copied someone else's idea or have you just been thinking about it and planning for so long it seems too familiar as you write it?

Not so much with plot, but I encounter this with characters and certain actions. During the first stories I wrote I'd start one, quit, start a new one and repeat so many times that certain character types and actions or situations seem cliche to me, even if they really aren't. I try not to go to any of those old ideas now. I'll think of how I want something to be, rethink it a few times and pick what I think is most outside the box.

A point can be made every narrative in some way borrows from what's come before. In my estimation, in one sense, there's only one plot. Protagonist encounters a complication, protagonist makes efforts to address the complication, protagonist reaches an accommodation with the final outcome of the complication.

The challenge since time immemorial is taking a novel outlook from unique perspectives on everyday complications (plot), settings, ideas, characters, and events. A general triumvirate of reader expectations and cultural coding conventions include not unduly jeapordizing willing suspension of disbelief, portraying proxy reality settings different from everyday routine primary settings, and involving readers in inclusive participation mystiques. Those are three principal meaning spaces of narratives.

Willing suspension of disbelief merely asks for credible complications (plot), settings, ideas, characters, and events. Impossible or improbable yet credible circumstances are the life's blood of fantastical genres. Readers' willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of participation mystique based on wish fulfillment and escapist entertainment favors fantastical genres.

Exotic proxy realities take readers away from their everyday humdrum existence into new and exciting existences. Even normal settings like everyday backyards become exotic from unique perspectives. Topically, a dreary workplace becomes a dystopian setting ripe for exotic proxy reality complications (plot) and settings and ideas and characters and events.

Participation mystiques draw readers into a narrative by their desires to vicariously participate in larger doings than their ordinary, everyday doings. Participation mystique is incited by building emotional resonance with a central character's main complication, high magnitude complications that are difficult to address, but making progress in the face of adversity nonetheless.

Emotional resonance can come from simple curiosity, the What happens next? fundamental suspense question, or more specifically, from sharing ideally opposing emotional clusters like pity and fear, awe and wonder, sorrow and hope, etc.

A basic listing of emotions from Wikipedia: Emotion; **
Affection
Anger
Annoyance
Angst
Apathy
Anxiety
Awe
Contempt
Curiosity
Depression
Desire
Despair
Disappointment
Disgust
Ecstasy
Empathy
Envy
Embarrassment
Euphoria
Fear
Frustration
Gratitude
Grief
Guilt
Happiness
Hatred
Hope
Horror
Hostility
Hysteria
Interest
Jealousy
Joy
Loathing
Love
Lust
Misery
Pity
Pride
Rage
Regret
Remorse
Sadness
Shame
Shyness
Sorrow
Suffering
Surprise
Wonder
Worry

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion

nope.. as a writer i have been reading a lot of stories already from which i have figured out my own way of writing stories.. nice but through experience you will learn

Do you ever have one, start writing and then stop look back and wonder if you've read this before.

I can't sayd this about my work as for us, writers, our work is always original. It's our baby, our little treasure afterall. Our personal opinion doesn't matter anything in this case. :) Personally I can say what I heard... I wanted to achieve something new, to create my WIP to original and based on many feedbacks it seems I've achieved this. But that doesn't mean it's going to be original to everyone. It's a matter of taste, nothing more. Personally I've tried to create every part to original in my story. As I don't like copycat stories or cliches, I also try to avoid to be one or to make my WIP to one.

Plus I agree with polymath in most points, with the exception of this one...

Protagonist encounters a complication, protagonist makes efforts to address the complication, protagonist reaches an accommodation with the final outcome of the complication.

Partially true. This is the basics or as some may call them, cliches. If you divide this to more points, you can make a difference in this too. You may also change these points to something else as there is no rule you must achieve this at all. It can be done and it can cause some really-really interesting results and an unpredictible storyline.

It's kind of an in-between for me. I don't tend to reuse things like plotlines or encompassing ideas that emerged in earlier attempts. But oftentimes, if I need a certain character with certain traits, I'll actually go back to earlier unfinished works and nab entire characters. Admittedly, this doesn't always work out, since sometimes said characters are tailored to a specific storyline. But in a way, that's made me a better writer--I've realized that it should, if anything, be the other way around, and my characters have become more dynamic because of it. And therefore more eligible for future kidnappings. :)