What makes your story so original?

Okay, well I was thinking, as I often do . There are so many Tolkien and Rowling fantasy rip-offs out on the bookshelves nowadays, everyone wants the first to be second. Its really quite mind-boggling why anyone would want to do a nearly almost unoriginal book. But yet the bookshelves are flooded with stories that are so similar.

Its good to take advice from these well known and amazing authors, but I think a truly, good author is original and stands out, completely and utterly from the pack.

So my question is, since this is fiction discussion, what makes your story original? Is it your voice? Your characters? Your plot? Its a question I always ask myself, everytime I write a story. What is original about my story? And if I can't find something, then I force myself to think out of the box.

~Aero

I think its ur voice,ur characters and actually everything.Everyone has his or her unique way of plotting the story.They have their own style.

Well, to answer your question in regards to Gypsie Eyes:

#1. my main charecter is NOT 1) well-known, 2) generally liked/accepted, 3) social/acceptably talented, 4) anyone's pawn--at this point, anyway.

#2. Tannar. 'nuff said.

#3. the person "behind the scenes"/"pulling the ropes" (i.e. Avarn) is, genuinelly, a good guy and our friend. he's also and eighteen-year-old, blind magician. show me that in any other book.

#4. I know you haven't met Boom yet, but when you do I defy anyone to show me a charecter anything like him. If you can, you get a whole chocolate pie. Not that I'll change him, but you still get the pie.

#5. my twins are alike. I seem to notice that everyone makes their twins identical in appearance and vastly different in personallity and skills. Laroo and Menee are...well, pretty much the exact same person. give or take.

cool forum, aero, nice idea!

For a while I had a problem with my novel over this exact same question. For me, it sounded like just another piece of dystopian fiction, but then slowly I realized that it wasn't so. A lot of my inspiration came from stories like 1984 and V for Vendetta, but I think there are some key differences.

1. The totalitarian government I have set up is not a conventional one. Basically, the only person that knows exactly how much power is in the hands of the Chancellor, and how much power is denied of everyone else, is the Chancellor himself and the Secretary of Defense. The government works almost entirely from behind the scenes.

2. Unlike 1984 and a lot of other dystoptian works of fiction, the revolution necessary to rid the country of the totalitarian government actually takes place. Actually, two revolutions occur - one from above by the government itself to establish a higher state of power than it already has, and one from below by the people in the name of freedom.

3. The lines of good and evil are not so concrete. At some moments the good guys seem like bad people, and sometimes the bad guys do things that are undeniably good.

4. *Cue dramatic music* It is alternative history. I have altered the entire world, sending it down an alternative path from the one we actually took out of WWII. The Nazis didn't win, duh, but London was completely destroyed by airstrikes and invading troops. It gets better though - the government at the time decided not to rebuild London, but to build a better city somewhere else to make their capital.

Anyway, I think those are the main reasons I was able to convince myself that I'm doing something worthwhile. There may be other, smaller ones, but they all tie in mainly with the first reason I gave.

I think it's probably my plots that make my writing different--I don't particularly like plotting, but I don't generally write in the well-worn rut of fantasy/magic/whatever.

I also try to make my characters a bit different: almost none of them are well liked by their peers or those around them. It makes for a more interesting story.

Nice topic, aeroman!

I'm very much looking forward to reading this, Inertia...

With most of my stories, it'd probably have to be the characters. My plots are fairly straightforward- Hourglass is an edgier Princess Diaries and Green is a sarcastic 1984- but you won't find an Upton or an Andromeda anywhere else (I hope...Upton is a crippled aspiring military strategist who falls in love with his math tutor and Andromeda spent the first six years of her life alone watching government speeches on C-SPAN).

Hmmmp, this isnt a question I ask myself. I mean, they just are. It's kind of hard to explain, but I almost unconciously shy away from the stereotype. Most of what I will write, will basically have no good or evil. I hate the whole concept; I don't believe it and so my characters will be ... very unconventional I think. Especially in my story about the pedophile school teacher that houses a fragment of Satan in his soul. Although I'm not concrete on the pedophile achool teacher part--that wa smeant to be a seperate story, which I've kind of lumped in with another idea.

We'll see how it turns out...

Inertia: Is that your NRJ novel? It sounds interesting

Aero: This is really hard as I don't know whether anything I write is original or not. Oracle's Possession doesn't really remind me of anything I've read bceause I based a few things on my real life. I usually go for short stories with basic plots so I don't have to go into too much detail about backgrounds and why a character behaves the way they do (Emily from The Hanging, I'm talking about here).
One thing I can say is I like using names that aren't very common like Monessa - I think it suits her.

Characters. My characters. This should be everyone's answer, really -- no-one can really claim their plots are original, because they all follow a similar route. Characters, though, cna be similar, but little quirks can set them totally apart. And people remember their favourite characters better than plots.

However, I guess another thing that can mke my story original is one simple fact: I'm writing it. If anybody took the same notes and tried to write it, it would be totally different. I have my own voice and my own style (or at least I'd like to think so.)

I think (as far as The Chair of Wind & Darkness goes), my strength is in my characters and my style. If one could call consistent over-wordiness a style, lol. And though it's not as if no one has written about the depressed and cast aside officer (Shan Tefur) or the slightly over-enthusiastic, obnoxious, perpetually semi-drunken officer (Arrehei Livny) before, I think I do a halfway decent job in keeping their (and other's) actions true in a slightly different world and environment. Or so I'm told. ^_~ It might not be so.

Well...never really thought about it before but i think it's my setting and the constant conflict. Of course Rowling's is a modern day fantasy like mine but i'm not as narrow minded as a single country. besides with the whole world peace thing i've got goping on i want as much of the world involved in my books as possible. journies to far off lands

i think thats pretty original. When i start the second trilogy the transition from fantasy to sci-fi will create a great originality.

This sounds a lot like rambling....

What i think makes a story unique is not necessarily the story or the characters' personalities and that sort of thing. What makes a story unique is using the resources you have, and making it your own. If you put yourself into your writing: your personality, your life experiences, and your values, as wall as those of your friends and peers, that is what makes it truly unique. This is how people get away with doing so many hundreds of different retellings of fairy tales. Each person adds something of themself into it.

Its really quite mind-boggling why anyone would want to do a nearly almost unoriginal book.

Money. These copy cats sell well, because the original sold well. It's like the mini best seller list.

The Blood Is Thicker (or Thicker Than Water. I'm still fighting over a working title for my Nano Novel. Suggestions would be lovily!) is original because as far as I know the vampire cult (at least how I'm doing it: 1800th century-ish, really outlandish rules, other stuff) hasn't been done before and 2. I forget where i saw it but something about a vampire can come back as a human and again be turned into a vampire because they remember it, and they're called to it. I'm also using that.

As for all of my writing, I'd like to think my voice and style.

Definitely my characters, and maybe the combination of conflicts facing my protagonist. I've yet to read a book about a quirky college junior dealing with her lesbian roommate's S&M fetishes on a daily basis while trying to beat off a very good-natured stalker, avoid the professor she had an extremely dysfunctional (and extremely short-lived) relationship with before he was a professor, and keep her depressed, existential, and excessively overprotective older brother from quitting his meds (without which he would probably attempt suicide again).

It should make things interesting, to say the least.

I'm not quite sure.

I mean, I could say that FREAK is so original because of its characters, but that would be lying. People are comparing the characters constantly with others, and even I see the similarities between them. So it's not that.

I might be able to get away with claiming that it's the plot that's original, but that would also be a lie. The plot, though unconventional of the usual societal cries for justice, is hardly unoriginal, though it resembles more of a soap opera than anything.

I could possibly say it's the idea behind the story, but then again, it's been compared to other stories with freaks, including even X-Men. So that can't be it either. Even the main plot, a slave finally getting a taste of freedom, is so markedly unoriginal that it's almost pathetic.

The only defense is that, perhaps, the way I tell the story makes it unoriginal. And I'm not quite sure how I did this. But whatever I did, I must have injected something into the story, unique to myself, and thus created a unique work.

That's how I figure it anyway.