I certainly understand why we'd ask the question. Unsure of our talents, we want to test the water. We think the idea might be a good one, but we're not convinced. So we throw out the idea here the same way we might dip our toes into the swimming pool in early May--too make sure we're not in for a real shocker if we decide to jump in.

I think we need to be more confident than that. First, there's a vast difference between an idea and the story itself. Who'd want to read a story of a child of prophecy the evil one wants to destory? How cliche is that? But it's the basic idea behind stories such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Alvin Maker, Moses, the Gospels, the Antichrist (if you want to reverse the concept), and countless others.

Here's a belief I have that has served me well.

Any cliche idea in the hands of a good writer can be made into a wonderful, original story. Perhaps even a masterpiece that will endure for generations.

Conversely, the most original idea in the hands of a bad writer will end up being the most pedestrian piece of drivel you can imagine.

Why?

Something I have found particularly interesting over the last few months is the monthly re-write challenge. (I'm not intending this as a shameless plug, just an easily accessible example). Everyone participating the challenge uses the same plot and sometimes even the exact same characters, but none of the stories is actly the same and all them have their own unique twists.

I said it in another thread and I'll say it again: just because the plot is cliche, doesn't mean the story can't be fresh.

Really, it is all about character. If your reader can find a likable character to follow through the story, it doesn't matter how dumb the plot is.

If RobynHood won't, I'll shamelessly plug the Rewrite Challenge.

But I guess I can. My name's on it. But it's not mine. It belongs to everyone here. It is the spawn of a dozen or more people who were interested in something like this.

The First Challenge gave birth to a slew of amazing stories all based on The Three Billy Goats Gruff. And only one, if I recall, had actual goats it in. Few had any overt mention of the Gruff name or of trolls.

I took a class once in college (actually a religion class, of all things) in which the teacher said that most adventure movies follow the same basic theme--the hero gets lost, goes through a bunch of challenges, finds their way home with the realization (the moment of epiphany)that they've learned a valuable lesson. The classic WOO (Wizard of Oz), as in "There's no place like home! *tap,tap,tap.*" I mean, really. How many times has that same story been told. And do you care? Do you still buy movie tickets? Do you still get misty eyed at the end when that character you love makes it home? Like Survivor's been saying a lot lately, the same old story can be redone and redone and redone. The thing that makes us not care that the story is redone is the characters--the "truth about humanity" as Balthasar said. If we connect with them, we'll accept almost anything.

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited November 04, 2004).]

No matter what I write, no matter how hard I try to insert my unique flavor and perspective, people tell me that mys tuff reminds them of something else...often quite loosely. I've even had people go so far in critiques as to say that there's no way this will get published because it's been done too many times before. As so far I've not gotten any fiction published, I must assume there's somet ruth to what they say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...find a new twist, a new angle, but it doesn't matter. To some people, the mere reminder is enough. If a story doesn't pack an earth-shattering ka-boom of breaking new ground it's worthless. If it reminds a person of another story they heard somewhere, no matter how slightly, their experience with that tale spoils this one for them...they compare them. Did I do better or worse? Did I do exactly the same thing only not as good? The more the stories come together in their minds, the less likely they are to see those unique twists.

Also, if you're going to write a story that is like another story, or a certain type of story, then you must be well-read on that story or that type of story, so you don't repeat what's already been done. And so that people can see that what you are doing is taking these ideas to the next level or putting a fresh twist on them. To say that you're going to write a story like Orwell's 1984 sounds like you're not being terribly original. To say that you want to write a story concerned with life and choices and the human condition in a futuristic police state doesn't sound like any story in particular, because there are lots of those. People will inevitably compare your story to those stories, so it would be good to be familiar with them.

This is the advice given to me by a mentor several decades ago:

Write about people, places and things you know. Write stories that are interesting to YOU. If you are interested, (maybe even fascinated), with the story, it will show when read.

Not all of us can write the same kind of stories. Even though your story may be similar to everyone else's, each of us will tell it differently.

Don't try to sound like someone else, sound like yourself, that's what people like to hear. Write it like you speak it, so we can hear the rhythm of your voice when we read.

Do all of that, and when you get it right, you can write about dirt on the floor and people will stand in line to read it.

Back to Final Approach, it's an unabashed parody of every "Anime" in existance. That's what makes it so great (the "fight" between Shizuka and Haru in the 3rd Ep. is particularly brilliant). But like any really great parody, it is also original.

Be willing to let the reader know that you read 1984 or The Lord of the Rings or Forever War or whatever, and yet you're doing it your own way. The only time it is bad to get caught imitating something else is when you've pretended that you're being completely original.

That's why we always have these discussions where we stress the need for writers to give up on finding something totally new by way of plot. Trying to be completely different from everything that has come before will only get you in trouble. Either because the reason it has never been done before is because it is a really stupid plot, or because it has been done extensively before but you just didn't know, or both (I call this sh--writing, after the recurring sh--painting movements that result occasionally from artists attempting to find something totally new).

I'm currently reading a story about a young boy (11-12?) who's parents were killed in an accident. He is living with his Uncle, who he discovers is a practicing wizard. I am up to the point where he is beginning to get mysterious letters in the night.

Sound familiar? Or at least close? It was written in 1975 by John Bellairs and is called "The Figure in the Shadows". From what I've read so far, it bears at least a few similarities to a rather famous series.

Anyway, I thought I read somewhere, maybe on this site, that readers like the familiar. That's why genre writing is popular because readers know what to expect and that brings them some kind of comfort.

I wholeheartedly believe that there are no new plots. That they've all been done so when people say this story sounds like that story I think what they are really picking up on is that the plotlines are similar.

There still are common plot elements, though, that will be--must be--there. For example, in Greg Bear's novel Blood Music, a hive-intelligence bacterial colony is injected into the body of a biologist as the only way he can think of to save it when he is fired from the lab and his project destroyed. The hive intelligence grows within him, becoming self-aware and able to communicate with its host. It eventually grows beyond him, however, and subsumes the entire globe in an amazing hive-mind superorganism. Sounds quite original in many ways, but there are so many plot and theme elements common to sf: invasion/take over of the world, scientific hubris, triumph of bureaucracy and capitalism over pure science, the lone scientist fighting the bureaucracy, etc.

Note that some of these are plot elements and some (most, actually) are thematic elements. I think people (non-writers) get them confused, sometimes. When a person says a story is just like such-and-such, often what they really mean is that it deals with the same themes, which isn't the same as plot at all. Even if you pointed out that the events of your story didn't in any way resemble the events of the story they're talking about, they wouldn't even care. "They're both about cloning," they would say, or, "They're both about people with precognition."

I remember one thing OSC said in boot camp that I took with me and really enjoyed. One of our classmates (I don't remember who and it doesn't matter) wrote a story set in a future world that frankly could have been set today or in the old west or whenver he wanted to set it. Card pointed this out and said, essentially, that when it came to setting it in a sf world...why not?

The beauty of being a writer is there are no rules. There are guidelines, suggestions, things that tend to work better than others, but no rules. YOu can write about whatever you want. You play God in your little universe of a story.

I would bet that all--or nearly all--great sf follows in this pattern. I bet the majority of great sf stories aren't changeable into other types of stories. Note that I didn't say sf, I said great sf.

If you write what you love and someone sees fit to publish it and people buy it, that's wonderful. I won't stand in your way. As I said to Minister on another post tonight: If you need to write it, then write it!

Well as writers we should all know that it takes more than a plot to make a story work. You need characters, setting and most of all a touch of creative magic. The things you weave around your plot, make your story different.

Consider Ender's Game for example: the same story _could_ be told without any SF elements. It would be a little odd, because it would show something happening in the present-day world which clearly wouldn't happen, because people don't really think that way today, but it could work.

Jules, Ender's Game is only now becoming possible (sub other humans for aliens) with present-day simulator and military tech. You're not playing fair! When Card wrote it and when it was first published, it certainly wasn't possible at that time to change the plot of the story to something else. Sorry, but Ender's Game quite squarely fits into the framework I described. You could use other old sf stories and recast them as contemporary fiction because we've surpassed the science they could only imagine. But that's not in the spirit of what we're talking about, here. And if I remember correctly (man it's been a long time), the rest of the Ender series (which is the whole story) would be impossible to separate from its sf component.

Also:

quote:

---

This one couldn't really be taken out of an SF setting without changing the plot substantially, but still the SF elements of it are not what is driving the plot -- that is a deeply political conflict between two groups of people,

---

Seems like you've undermined your own point. Just how substantial does a plot change have to be before you've mangled the original story beyond recognition? Plus, a political conflict between two peoples is NOT a plot element, it's a thematic element. Sorry, but I'm afraid I just can't concede that point, either.

One thing we can all agree on is that if we feel passionate enough about telling a story--any story--then it must written, and damn all convention. A story will always have its audience.

Imagine Luke as a poor Chinese peasant living with his Uncle. He gets a secret message asking him for help. Along the way he meets a Samurai who teaches him the way of the Ninja. When he goes back to his Uncle's house, he discovers the evil Emperor has killed his family. Luke vows revenge on the evil Emperor and together with a motely assortment of vagabonds sets off to the capital to destroy the Empire, etc. etc.

Change the setting, change the weapons and the story still works. In fact the plot has been done to death.

Actually I thought of doing it myself. I considered expanding a milieu from one novel I was working on and using it to re-tell a Jesse James story set on another planet in the future. So far I haven't done it, but some day...

As far as hardcore vs softcore sci-fi, I like both and both have their merits. Is one particularly better than the other? I don't know, it all comes down to personal taste.

Personally, I love Space Opera and (what I would consider) Science Fantasy. While I like some hardcore sci-fi, I'm not wild about super hard science in my fiction. If I want hard science, I'll read a text book (and yes, there are times I do just that ). As long as the science is believable; as long as my disbelief is not snapped; as long as I can enjoy the story; I don't really care if the science element is necessary or optional to the plot.

What do I win?