Mike Mckay's picture
Mike Mckay is reading God's Ashtray November 13, 2011 - 2:36pm

Good evening everyone,

About 20 minutes ago I finally started reading a new book, We Live Inside You - Jeremy Robert Johnson, and its awesome already. Heres is a random fact, I recently started to write a short story about a teen mastering his skill as a thief it is nothing special just a little excercise to improve my first person narration. The problem with me is that I just read a story in, We Live Inside You, called, "Persistence Hunting" which is about a 21 year old male kleptomaniac getting off on his adrenaline by stealing stuff. That story basically summed up my story less than 20 pages and infinitely better than mine. One of my pet peeves is I cannot stand reading something similar to what im working on atm and giving me influence that will bleed to my story. Originality is my goal as a writer and I know we all get a little influence here and there but I do my best to stray from it when I write at all times.

Heres my question finally,

Since the story im writing atm is pure excercise, and similar to another story, AND will not as much as ever see/feel the day of light. Shall I continue to write it or drop it and shuffle on to a new thing?

Nick Wilczynski's picture
Nick Wilczynski from Greensboro, NC is reading A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin November 13, 2011 - 2:57pm

Do it. Don't get worked up about trying to do it "better" and do not conciously compare the two. Take "Persistence Hunting" and file it away in your mind for reference, what specific tools work well, and if you want to experiment using some of those tools in a different way than they are done there.

But do not think about it as a model or as a similar story, it is a story written by someone else. Everything has already been said, you aren't going to find truly original content. What needs to be original is the approach. While perhaps you might admire the style and structure of this other story, it faces the idea of stealing things from one direction, and the core concepts that compose stealing are given priority in consideration and description according to that perspective. There are other ways to look at stealing, as long as your character has marked differences from their character he will look at the ideas differently, different things will be important to him, and he will describe things differently.

Renfield's picture
Renfield from Hell is reading 20th Century Ghosts November 13, 2011 - 4:20pm

Yeah, write it as an excercise. And if it turns out really good, who cares if it's vaguely similar? Nobody will probably notice anyway.

Whenever I have a story that I feel is too similar or I see too many stories on the same thematic idea, I just throw it out and hope I remember it down the line when I won't care as much. I had a really good take on an abortion story recently, but I just thought the subject is like a go-to thing for writers when they want to bilk sympathy, so I stopped.

aliensoul77's picture
aliensoul77 from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall. November 14, 2011 - 7:20am

The worst thing is sometimes you have to psychoanalyze all your story ideas like a dream. You know how dreams can be a hodge podge of various things like fragments of memory, a TV show, a movie you saw once and a convo you had with a friend the other day. Our imaginations can be like that because we get inspired by other peoples stuff so you just have to think, am I subconsciously ripping off anything? As for what you are describing, its a basic concept idea for a story and if its an exercise it doesn't matter but if you are writing to show or hope to publish just be honest in your voice. You could tell a classroom full of kids to write a story about butterflies and if you read them all aloud after, some of the stories may match a little but the majority wont because its your voice. Don't always worry about the concept as much as the way you tell it.

aliensoul77's picture
aliensoul77 from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall. November 14, 2011 - 7:23am

The worst thing is sometimes you have to psychoanalyze all your story ideas like a dream. You know how dreams can be a hodge podge of various things like fragments of memory, a TV show, a movie you saw once and a convo you had with a friend the other day. Our imaginations can be like that because we get inspired by other peoples stuff so you just have to think, am I subconsciously ripping off anything? As for what you are describing, its a basic concept idea for a story and if its an exercise it doesn't matter but if you are writing to show or hope to publish just be honest in your voice. You could tell a classroom full of kids to write a story about butterflies and if you read them all aloud after, some of the stories may match a little but the majority wont because its your voice. Don't always worry about the concept as much as the way you tell it.