Been Done Before?...

What should a writer do when they find published books a bit too much like their WIP? (=work in progress)

And then on a kid-lit chat board they find others whose WIP sounds eerily similar?

A writer has three choices. Probably more, but this is what occurs to my still shocked pea-brain.

The first is to surmise that others have a portal into writer’s brain, and are borrowing (polite for stealing) freely from said brain.

The second is to conclude that one’s brain is too limited to call itself a writer’s brain, only capable of derivative thinking and subliminal channeling of others. Quit now, before you do more damage.

The third is to soldier on and tell the story only this writer can tell. Because similar in some ways is not = the same. Because all stories have been told, but not in all ways. Because, dagnabbit, only you can do what you do the way you do it.

I’d opt for reason #3 every time.

When I worked with antique textiles, collectors valued and paid a premium for examples that, while following the norm for their type, had something unique about them. The use of an uncommon dye or insertion of an unusual design element made the example fetch many times the price of the more typical.

{Which is the rare one? White ground Yomud Asmalyks are less common}

This is how to think of creating stories: they have many things in common. It is our job to think of the few twists and turns that haven’t been set to print before. Just enough not to betray the classics, but to open other entrances to their domains.