Oh no, the main characters that were in love found a reason they can’t be together and have to overcome it?
Seriously though. I vote just keep writing. It will end up way different than whatever other story
I think you should read more. I don't think this should be a surprise but you'll find out a lot of books are actually really similar to each other, especially those in the romance genre. It's also not a bad thing either btw.
Once more coming out of lurk mode to say this:
In r/AO3, we have a saying.
You can't have too many cakes.
In other words, there's always going to be someone else telling the kind of story you want to tell, just like there's always going to be a baker making a chocolate cake when you also are making a chocolate cake.
But maybe the other baker is making a Black Forest cake, and your chocolate cake is more of the Texas sheet cake variety. Same cake, two different interpretations. Two different sets of details.
100% certain there are other books out there about a young woman defying a prophecy because she doesn't like her predetermined destiny. But I'm still writing that story my way.
So you write your story your way. If they made a red velvet cake, you make a blue velvet cake, or a purple one, or whatever.
Still the same chocolate cake with a ton of food coloring. But each is a different twist.
Go bake your cake!
It comes from a webcomic, where a guy is putting a cake he made on a table next to another one. His looks kind of crappy next to the really fancy other cake. He's thinking 'my cake looks so much worse than that one.' In the second panel, another person has come along and is looking at the crappy cake and the fancy cake, and they're thinking 'oh boy! Two cakes!'
Yes!
I couldn't find the comic or the post on the AO3 sub that had it or else I would have posted it here.
I like using fanfic to experiment with tropes before using them in my original stuff. Thankfully, my chosen fandom has a ton of source material and really adheres to the idea of "No one true way" that's espoused in the books.
But being able to experiment in a fairly wholesome fandom before using it in my novel that I'm working on helps me gauge what works well with audiences and what doesn't, as well as helping my writing mature, which means that I think this is gonna be my best novel yet.
No, it's about Archive of our Own, the world's largest fanfiction archive, which is commonly abbreviated as AO3.
And wouldn't Age of Empires III be abbreviated AoE3?
Hello,
I originally read it as AOE3 and when I clicked on the subreddit I was initially confused. After that, I returned to this thread where I then decided to type that extremely hilarious joke (my previous comment in this thread) and send it as a a comment reply. I hope my extraordinary sense of humor has brightened your day.
Thank you,
DIARRHEA_CUSTARD_PIE
there’s nothing new under the sun. If you are just know finding out about that book, chances are there are a variety of differences. Don’t give up now because of someone else, not when you’ve already gotten this far.
It doesn’t matter if the premise is similar. We could take. 25 writers from this thread and give them the same premise…and we’d end up with 25 stories. Every writer’s perspective and style is unique, therefore every story they create will be distinct from one another, even if it’s similar.
Never feel discouraged about someone having a similar premise to you. ESPECIALLY if you’re writing romance (one of the most popularly published genres in the world)
Finish the book!!!! Do it. Everything has already been made. If you haven’t read the book it’s supposedly like, they will be a huge gulf of a difference. Similar premise is not plagiarism or copying it is just a similar premise.
Read the book you found. Same thing happened to me and it turned out that while the premise and some elements were similar, the stories were of course very different. And then read more books because you’ll find that hardly any (especially romance) are original. There’s a reason every romance writer on here keeps asking what tropes they should include to get readers.
This is a very important lesson to learn as a writer. Everything has been done.
You shouldn't be trying to make something the most unique, you should be trying to make it the best.
Story draws from human experience and, if done well, connects deeply to those experiences therefore we're going to see the same things happen often. The story you're describing has been done and will be done again. That being said, nothing is ever the exact same. If you write this, it won't be the same as the one you found. Just write.
When Harry Potter came out the premise of magical schools was already a cliche. The plot of it is also a cliche. On paper Harry Potter should drowned in a sea of similar stories but it became one of the best selling books of all time.
Stories that are completely unique and something new generally do poor in sales as they are so experimental not a lot of people look for that experience in a book so the rate of failure in those is much much higher than books that “have been overdone”.
Keep on writing and release some preview chapters for us to read :)
Funniest thing about Harry Potter, to readers of the genre it was clichéd, but for some reason it had mainstream appeal and seemed wholly original to people who had never touched fantasy. So it exploded in the mainstream because of that
I personally don’t think it got mainstream appeal because it was considered innovative. At least I never got that feeling from it when I read it as a kid.
Innovation can give you a good edge but pure innovation is generally really hard to sell until it gets at least some familiarity.
To me she executed a familiar idea perfectly. Its just a really well written book with great characters and setting.
I think that its a great example for any idea even seemingly bad on paper if done really well can still be amazing.
That's fair enough but you're talking about from your perspective. I'm talking about going back through all the news reports and people's perspectives at the time, they all treated it like she had created something entirely new and unique, and even retrospectives frame the books success in that manner. But in reality the specific sub-genre was well-trodden.
I don't rate Rowling as an especially good author, there's other books that are better written, with better characters and better world building. However she did give the genre a conversational accessibility that meant people who would previously have turned their nose up at fantasy (and I witnessed it, people in my class who sniffed at me reading His Dark Materials or Redwall or Lord of the Rings etc) were all of a sudden showing off their copies of Harry Potter. There was a real fad thing about it at the time but the movies came out and it cemented it for the rest of the decade and more
As with anything historic there's loads of different factors that add up to something in a gestalt way but Harry Potter was a turning point in mainstream approach to fantasy. I suppose also the Lord of the Rings movies also helped
Listen man, there’s maybe a grand total of 2 or 3 different fantasy novels out there and hundreds to thousands of different retextures for those 2-3. Everything good has already been done dozens of times. Nothing is original anymore, and on the off chance it is genuinely original (it won’t be) there’s a really good chance it’s a terrible idea that won’t be fun to write OR read anyway
Just look at Fourth Wing….you know what a basic as all hell idea a dragon rider academy is? How overused and abused really anything “dragon” is? Yarros has still been in the top end of the bestselling lists for god knows how long now, even with that as her premise lol. It’s *all* in how you personally do it
Finish it! Even if it's totally derivative and you don't like it later, it means you finished a draft of a novel! There's a ton to learn. Consider it practice on how to write a good novel.
As others have pointed out, there is no truly original story. If anyone claims the same, they just don't know the source they are getting inspired from. The thing that differentiates it is your own twist, your own take. If you're concerned with it coming off as a blatant rip-off, introduce a new twist or two to the story
Maybe she decides impulsively to return to earth, perhaps after some argument, and now she's stuck. The princess finally realizes her value, or maybe decides she can't live without her or something, and now the onus is on the princess to rescue her love. Maybe the girl was quite disoriented with living in this medieval fantasy esque kingdom, and keep missing her modern comforts, and feels like an outcast. But now, she doesn't want the modern amenities or her old lifestyle, now she realizes how much she loves that kingdom and desperately tries to go back.
You can play a lot with characterization and plot points and arcs with a premise like this. Depending on how you take it, it will be different from the book already available, and if you do it well enough, it might even be considered better than the one you came across.
Good luck.
So what.....who cares
You could alaays use it as a reference piece because it is like your story you can see what choices their character made and you can say well no I don't think that would happen.
I love what if and twisted stories
Just write it! I recently swapped manuscripts with a writer friend because our query letters were so similar, we just had to find out if we basically wrote the same book without knowing lol. As soon as I started reading, I couldn’t help but laugh—the two manuscripts are COMPLETELY different even if the premise is the same. Worldbuilding, setting, voice, level of grittiness, main character traits, etc. You always have something to add to the table.
I mean how many folklore/fable retellings are currently published? Dozens, and they’re all different.
Everyone else has said fantastic advice to keep writing, but I just want to add in that this is your first draft, and you can change things (add scenes, characters, change motivations, etc etc) during the editing process
Theres a whole slew of books, games and movies that are based on or completely similar to other books, games and movies. If this issue didn't stop them, why should it stop you. Just write your story.
That’s not a big deal. I wouldn’t even change anything. Unless it’s ACOTAR or the Cruel Prince (ie massive books in the Romantasy genre) I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
If it IS a huge book in the genre think about what aspects make your book different than their and highlight them. You don’t want to try and change things in a blind panic elsewhere you risk destroying the internal consistency and soul of the book.
But if one book has a tomboyish headstrong princess and the other has a nerdy headstrong princess play up the nerd angle, yeah?
I think you should focus on writing what you enjoy, not what you think others will like. Because where does it stop? Even if you somehow wrote a book of ideas nobody had ever done before and wrote it flawlessly, you'd end up feeling unfulfilled if it wasn't the story *you* wanted or if people didn't engage enough with it.
Write the stories you want to tell, the way you want to tell them, in the style that's the most fun for you. It'll also mean that come the time you publish it or share it with others, you'll probably attract the sort of fans that truly understand and identify with your work, too!
Maybe take this as a lesson. As everyone else is saying, nothing under the sun is wholly new. Now that you know something simmilar exists, this might be an opportunity to examine what parts of this story you find most compelling and then use that insight in your writing.
If you don't want to continue writing, that's fine, but you shouldn't feel discouraged as a writer when comparing your writing to another person's--your story has just as much right and reason to be told.
1. The story may already exist, but you can still bring your own unique take and style to it.
2. Honestly, having another popular work that's similar to yours will make marketing it to people a lot easier. I've watched and read plenty of things on the basis of it being kinda similar to stuff I was already a fan of. It's a huge boon once you get over the anxiety of being called a rip off.
In my experience, actually reading the works that sound like they’re a lot like mine usually sets me at ease. First of all, they’re probably not as similar as you’re worried they are, on a reading experience level. Second, readers tend to have a type so if they’re responding well to this book, yours could be in their interest house too. The only real caution I’d put up is that you probably shouldn’t query that author’s agent with this book. But there’s a gajillion other agents out there & you might even be able to use the book you found as a comp.
You literally get to market it as "for fans of X and Y". Enemies to lovers is not exactly an obscure trope. If copying (accidental or otherwise) was a blocker in romance... Well. It's not lol.
Every story has already been told but not the way you tell it, and somebody is waiting for your version.
Keep writing.
When this happened to me, it took me 6 years to go back to the story. Now that it's done, it's nothing like the other book at all.
Until you write it, you have no idea what yours is going to be - stories tend to take on a life of their own. Take a break if you need to (not 6 years though) but push on. Keep writing.
Every story that's ever been written has already been written, this is a fact you cannot escape from. What makes a good novel is telling the story well.
Finish it! After all, everything’s been done before. But that doesn’t mean anything similar can’t exist. It’s YOUR book, YOUR characters and YOUR storytelling. The fact that there’s an idea like yours out there is not gonna change that.
Keep writing it.
Most stories have a similar premise to some other story, that doesn't mean your take isn't worth telling.
Even with the same premise, your story will inevitably do something differently.
Every book out there has other (multiple other) books that are very similar to it. Guarantee it. Don't let this stop you from finishing your version of this cool tale and these fantastic tropes. Readers will enjoy your take on them. When I finish one amazing dragon fantasy, it's not like I say, whelp, I'm done. Checked the box for dragons. No more dragons for me. I eagerly look for my next dragon book.
If I (or any other writer) stopped writing just because I found a story with a similar premise to mine, I would never get past page 1. Heck, I'd probably quit before I even get to the outline. There's not a story you can think of that hasn't already been done (and what I'm saying here is certainly nothing [new](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A10&version=DRA)). Instead of worrying that your story has "already been done" or is "unoriginal", look deeper into these doppelganger stories to see how other writers approached the same idea. The beauty of writing is that you can give a hundred writers the exact same prompt, and you will get so many totally different takes on it. I could give the outline of my current novel to someone else, and they would write it different to how I have thus far.
The point is that you should take inspiration from other writers (or at least investigate how they did it) rather than being dejected because somebody had a similar idea. I know this is cliche, but comparison is the thief of joy. I've learned that it's far more enjoyable to just write and not pay attention to how "original" it is.
There are no more unique stories anymore, just unique ways of telling them. If you want to tell your story than do it, if everyone stopped writing because they found something similar to their story we would have like 100 books from 500 years ago and nothing new since. Hell, ancient Greece had an author who wrote about spaceships and aliens.
It’s already written? Well last time I checked, not by you.
Everything has already been written but this sounds sure as h*ll good and I’m sure, even if the plots are similar, every writer writes their characters, their style, their story, their delivery, and their scenes differently.
Write it because not everyone wants to read their version. Trust me, some will but others will want to read yours instead.
Who cares that there is a book with a similar premise? It is not written by you. Even if they told the same exact story it would still be different. There is a loooot of books out there that are just the same thing over and over and over, and we don't care. People who like the idea of a selection program in a magical realm won't be like "oh, this idea has been done already", they will be like "oh damn, another story like the one I liked! gimme!"
Have you heard the term "isekai"? In manga and anime, it's when someone is taken to another world. It's huge right now. In a number of those stories, the person is to be a defender of the kingdom. People finish one isekai, and look for the next. They pass around recommendations for their favorite ones. People ask for specifics like, they want a green light male lead, or a trashy male lead. Wholesome family. Since your protagonist is female, you actually have an otome isekai. There's a very active subreddit for that. That's mostly Korean visual novels, but they bring up light novels as well.
I read your post as saying that finding out your idea has been done is de motivating. But I'm letting you know that in the right places, there's a slavering market for your book.
This is not necessarily a good marker but bc she’s blowing up rn, Sarah J Maas’ books are all very close retellings of a whole jumble of folklore and 70s/80s high fantasy. Just do it.
I bet people who loved that book will love yours too! Write for the joy of it, enjoy your characters and the journey. There's only so many tropes, and I know that once I find a type of book I enjoy, I'll want to read more of them. Definitely not a reason to scrap it, you've already come so far. Plus, it's a huge achievement to have 300 pages. Don't let this be the thing that kills your passion.
Have you read the other book?
If you haven't, you may want to. Even if they share the same premise, you might be surprised just how different your stories are in execution.
If you have, see about making a list of differences between them.
Different character personalities, word choices, focal points—there are a lot of small details that can distinguish stories, and a lot of small details add up.
It will be different. I can almost guarantee that it will be different. There are maybe thousands of isekais on platforms now. Funny enough, I don’t see many that ends with the hero going back to their own world. How she defends the kingdom will be different too.
Try reading it and you might find that there’s an itch deep inside you that just says, “That’s not how my story is supposed to go…” or, “That’s not how I imagined these circumstances…” or “I did better than that…” It can help you feel motivated to finish the story.
…Write it your way and then review and revise it to find ways to alter it t be more your own story. There’s always something you can do with a narrative…
Honestly? Read the book. Others have already pointed out that romance especially is rife with repeated storylines and readers still eat that stuff up, because its the little differences that actually make the story unique, not the broad overview. If you're comparing your story broadly you will *always* find stories similar to it. If you keep looking, you will probably find that the story you already found isn't even the 10th fantasy story using that plot line.
Writing and publishing is an ongoing conversation between authors, constantly taking inspiration from and building upon the stories of other authors. By reading this book that you think is similar to your own, you'll be able to see just how similar it is or isn't, you'll be able to see things you might do differently in your story, or *want* to do differently because you don't like how they're handled in that book. You might even see things that you didn't even consider.
If you just want to write for fun, then why worry about whether your story is similar or not? If you want to actually do something with your story once you've finished, then it would behoove you to be a little more well read in the genre you're writing for. Join the conversation.
That's great news!
When you finish your story, you can point at the other story and say "If you liked , you'll enjoy ". People like familiar stories, and romance is one of those 'comfort read' genres that particularly benefits from that.
Think of it like this.
You could give the same premiss and characters to ten different writers, and you'd get ten extremely different books still. There's no new stories to tell, but the way YOU tell it has never been done before.
To paraphrase Dory, "Just keep writing, just keep writing."
Even if someone else has already written THE story (and that's almost always the case), they haven't written YOUR story. Unless it's a plot-by-plot, beat-by-beat, paragraph-by-paragraph mirror (and that's called plagiarism, don't do it!!), you'll tell THE story differently because it's YOUR story this time.
If I dropped a WIP every time I ran into this, well, I still wouldn't have anything but short stories finished and there'd be a LOT more in my dross / discard folders!
Don't you worry - Every story practically exists already. Like 90% of fantasy uses the [hero's journey](https://new.reddit.com/r/WriterResources/comments/1bggqqy/the_heros_journey_is_a_timeless_and_tested_plot/) and TONS of thrillers use [Dean Koontz's story structure](https://new.reddit.com/r/WriterResources/comments/1bspmxj/mastering_tension_and_pacing_dean_koontzs_simple/). It's just the same thing. Different wrapping. It's all in the execution, so keep going!
Remember that ALL stories are based on other stories whether it was meant or not.. so don't worry ! Don't give up ! Continue writing it and I'm sure it's gotta be turn out fine
South Park already touched on this with "Simpsons did it!"
It's all been done before, all we're doing is remixing everything. Finish the book, you're writing for you not some mouthbreathing Internet troll with nothing better to do than make themself feel better by bringing down others.
I forget how the saying goes, but it’s something like “if you have a great idea for something, a thousand other people have the same idea, a hundred are already working on it and ten have already completed it.”
I’m sure I butchered it, but the point is that originality is dead. I got in trouble during a creative writing class in high school because it “sounded suspiciously similar to the Breakfast Club.” (I hadn’t watched it at the time).
What’s important is to write with your own voice, put your spin on it, make it yours. Something inside you drove you to create it, and it’d be an injustice to yourself not to see it through
I recommend re-reading the first two chapters, and then the last two, it will get you back on track to where you should be...
(Or maybe it makes you realize that you've strayed from your main idea and are now heading down a completely unknown path...)
But most of the time it works.
Firstly, you're 300 pages in and NOW you don't want to continue?
Secondly, that's a pretty generic premise already so you were almost guaranteed to find a story that was exactly or very like yours.
Third, like others have already said, there's not really any original ideas anymore. I've always found it's the people that make stories unique. If you've got engaging people treading a well-worn formula it can elevate it from boring to interesting.
Fourth, you write for fun so what's the problem? Just write and enjoy it
I think you should continue to write your story, I mean it is YOUR story after all, even if it might be similar to other stories out there. Write it for YOU.
If you feel like the other story went in a too similar of a direction of what you had envisioned for your own plot, and you feel like you might no longer want to go down that same path anymore because they might feel too similar for your own comfort, maybe you could see if you can steer the plot in another direction; like, if the Goodreads-FL decided to stay with Kingdom 1's Prince and continue to fight Kingdom 2, your FL could instead take the route of switching sides to Kingdom 2, or try to be a bond that brings the two Kingdoms together, or maybe she'll just say "F it! I'll run off to Kingdom 3! 🤷♀️".
Just because two things start from the same place, doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up in the same place. If you can't let go of the thought that they look similar to each other, you could also look at it as if the two stories take place in alternate dimensions/time lines where the two women has made different choices and experienced more or less different things, which has lead them to their own separate (happy?) endings.
I have an example of two manga stories that are over all very similar, but have gone down different paths; both are about a female knight that transmigrates to Japan's countryside from some medieval Europe-like fantasy world, and ends up helping out with the farmwork on the ML's farm. Even though they are similar at first glance, the two plots have gone down different routes, different things has happened to the two leads, and very different side characters has shown up around them.
It would still be totally okay to continue either way you want to go at it, at the end of the day it'll be two separate stories. Your story is still YOUR story, no one else's. If you decide to drop it, that would be fine too, it is your choice in the end, but I would find it very sad.
BTW, when you have finished your book (yes, I said "WHEN", not "IF" ;) ), I would love to read it!
Good luck! ♡
If you're just writing for fun it doesn't matter.
If you finish it and want to sell it, it's probably a good idea to read the other book and look for places where you can specifically differentiate your story just to avoid plagiarism accusations though they are probably different enough as it is.
Write your story. A dozen writers can be given the same prompt and come up with two dozen different stories. The uniqueness of the story will be in how you tell it.
Tell a story 100 times and you'll entertain 100 different people. Keep writing, nothing is new anymore. What matters sometimes is that we have a great new story. Replace the lightsabers of star wars with wands and you pretty much have Harry Potter. This is your story written your way. Make sure it gets told
I mean, at this point every story has already been told. Just tell it the way *you* want to tell it and it will be different enough
Even the first story ever written was probably fanfiction of someone else's campfire story.
Look, if this was a good reason to not write a romance novel, we'd be missing a lot of romance novels.
Oh no, the main characters that were in love found a reason they can’t be together and have to overcome it? Seriously though. I vote just keep writing. It will end up way different than whatever other story
Romance is the genre most obviously infested with derivative stories, does the OP even romance?
The existence of genres would suggest that people like reading the same story over and over again.
I think you should read more. I don't think this should be a surprise but you'll find out a lot of books are actually really similar to each other, especially those in the romance genre. It's also not a bad thing either btw.
Once more coming out of lurk mode to say this: In r/AO3, we have a saying. You can't have too many cakes. In other words, there's always going to be someone else telling the kind of story you want to tell, just like there's always going to be a baker making a chocolate cake when you also are making a chocolate cake. But maybe the other baker is making a Black Forest cake, and your chocolate cake is more of the Texas sheet cake variety. Same cake, two different interpretations. Two different sets of details. 100% certain there are other books out there about a young woman defying a prophecy because she doesn't like her predetermined destiny. But I'm still writing that story my way. So you write your story your way. If they made a red velvet cake, you make a blue velvet cake, or a purple one, or whatever. Still the same chocolate cake with a ton of food coloring. But each is a different twist. Go bake your cake!
This is a really good analogy!
It comes from a webcomic, where a guy is putting a cake he made on a table next to another one. His looks kind of crappy next to the really fancy other cake. He's thinking 'my cake looks so much worse than that one.' In the second panel, another person has come along and is looking at the crappy cake and the fancy cake, and they're thinking 'oh boy! Two cakes!'
Yes! I couldn't find the comic or the post on the AO3 sub that had it or else I would have posted it here. I like using fanfic to experiment with tropes before using them in my original stuff. Thankfully, my chosen fandom has a ton of source material and really adheres to the idea of "No one true way" that's espoused in the books. But being able to experiment in a fairly wholesome fandom before using it in my novel that I'm working on helps me gauge what works well with audiences and what doesn't, as well as helping my writing mature, which means that I think this is gonna be my best novel yet.
That's great! What's your novel about?
The breaking of generational curses, fate vs free will, and the acknowledgement that life is messy and good and evil are not black and white.
That sub is not at all about Age of Empires III
No, it's about Archive of our Own, the world's largest fanfiction archive, which is commonly abbreviated as AO3. And wouldn't Age of Empires III be abbreviated AoE3?
Hello, I originally read it as AOE3 and when I clicked on the subreddit I was initially confused. After that, I returned to this thread where I then decided to type that extremely hilarious joke (my previous comment in this thread) and send it as a a comment reply. I hope my extraordinary sense of humor has brightened your day. Thank you, DIARRHEA_CUSTARD_PIE
It might make you feel better to know I ALSO read it as "Age of Empires" at first! Upon slightly further reading though I realized it was NOT!
there’s nothing new under the sun. If you are just know finding out about that book, chances are there are a variety of differences. Don’t give up now because of someone else, not when you’ve already gotten this far.
If you write for fun, why stop? Just keep going.
It doesn’t matter if the premise is similar. We could take. 25 writers from this thread and give them the same premise…and we’d end up with 25 stories. Every writer’s perspective and style is unique, therefore every story they create will be distinct from one another, even if it’s similar. Never feel discouraged about someone having a similar premise to you. ESPECIALLY if you’re writing romance (one of the most popularly published genres in the world)
Finish the book!!!! Do it. Everything has already been made. If you haven’t read the book it’s supposedly like, they will be a huge gulf of a difference. Similar premise is not plagiarism or copying it is just a similar premise.
Read the book you found. Same thing happened to me and it turned out that while the premise and some elements were similar, the stories were of course very different. And then read more books because you’ll find that hardly any (especially romance) are original. There’s a reason every romance writer on here keeps asking what tropes they should include to get readers.
This is a very important lesson to learn as a writer. Everything has been done. You shouldn't be trying to make something the most unique, you should be trying to make it the best. Story draws from human experience and, if done well, connects deeply to those experiences therefore we're going to see the same things happen often. The story you're describing has been done and will be done again. That being said, nothing is ever the exact same. If you write this, it won't be the same as the one you found. Just write.
Well, you better throw all your writing out because you’re gonna be real shocked when you realise every idea has been done
When Harry Potter came out the premise of magical schools was already a cliche. The plot of it is also a cliche. On paper Harry Potter should drowned in a sea of similar stories but it became one of the best selling books of all time. Stories that are completely unique and something new generally do poor in sales as they are so experimental not a lot of people look for that experience in a book so the rate of failure in those is much much higher than books that “have been overdone”. Keep on writing and release some preview chapters for us to read :)
Funniest thing about Harry Potter, to readers of the genre it was clichéd, but for some reason it had mainstream appeal and seemed wholly original to people who had never touched fantasy. So it exploded in the mainstream because of that
I personally don’t think it got mainstream appeal because it was considered innovative. At least I never got that feeling from it when I read it as a kid. Innovation can give you a good edge but pure innovation is generally really hard to sell until it gets at least some familiarity. To me she executed a familiar idea perfectly. Its just a really well written book with great characters and setting. I think that its a great example for any idea even seemingly bad on paper if done really well can still be amazing.
That's fair enough but you're talking about from your perspective. I'm talking about going back through all the news reports and people's perspectives at the time, they all treated it like she had created something entirely new and unique, and even retrospectives frame the books success in that manner. But in reality the specific sub-genre was well-trodden. I don't rate Rowling as an especially good author, there's other books that are better written, with better characters and better world building. However she did give the genre a conversational accessibility that meant people who would previously have turned their nose up at fantasy (and I witnessed it, people in my class who sniffed at me reading His Dark Materials or Redwall or Lord of the Rings etc) were all of a sudden showing off their copies of Harry Potter. There was a real fad thing about it at the time but the movies came out and it cemented it for the rest of the decade and more As with anything historic there's loads of different factors that add up to something in a gestalt way but Harry Potter was a turning point in mainstream approach to fantasy. I suppose also the Lord of the Rings movies also helped
Listen man, there’s maybe a grand total of 2 or 3 different fantasy novels out there and hundreds to thousands of different retextures for those 2-3. Everything good has already been done dozens of times. Nothing is original anymore, and on the off chance it is genuinely original (it won’t be) there’s a really good chance it’s a terrible idea that won’t be fun to write OR read anyway Just look at Fourth Wing….you know what a basic as all hell idea a dragon rider academy is? How overused and abused really anything “dragon” is? Yarros has still been in the top end of the bestselling lists for god knows how long now, even with that as her premise lol. It’s *all* in how you personally do it
Finish it! Even if it's totally derivative and you don't like it later, it means you finished a draft of a novel! There's a ton to learn. Consider it practice on how to write a good novel.
As others have pointed out, there is no truly original story. If anyone claims the same, they just don't know the source they are getting inspired from. The thing that differentiates it is your own twist, your own take. If you're concerned with it coming off as a blatant rip-off, introduce a new twist or two to the story Maybe she decides impulsively to return to earth, perhaps after some argument, and now she's stuck. The princess finally realizes her value, or maybe decides she can't live without her or something, and now the onus is on the princess to rescue her love. Maybe the girl was quite disoriented with living in this medieval fantasy esque kingdom, and keep missing her modern comforts, and feels like an outcast. But now, she doesn't want the modern amenities or her old lifestyle, now she realizes how much she loves that kingdom and desperately tries to go back. You can play a lot with characterization and plot points and arcs with a premise like this. Depending on how you take it, it will be different from the book already available, and if you do it well enough, it might even be considered better than the one you came across. Good luck.
So what.....who cares You could alaays use it as a reference piece because it is like your story you can see what choices their character made and you can say well no I don't think that would happen. I love what if and twisted stories
Just write it! I recently swapped manuscripts with a writer friend because our query letters were so similar, we just had to find out if we basically wrote the same book without knowing lol. As soon as I started reading, I couldn’t help but laugh—the two manuscripts are COMPLETELY different even if the premise is the same. Worldbuilding, setting, voice, level of grittiness, main character traits, etc. You always have something to add to the table. I mean how many folklore/fable retellings are currently published? Dozens, and they’re all different.
Everyone else has said fantastic advice to keep writing, but I just want to add in that this is your first draft, and you can change things (add scenes, characters, change motivations, etc etc) during the editing process
Theres a whole slew of books, games and movies that are based on or completely similar to other books, games and movies. If this issue didn't stop them, why should it stop you. Just write your story.
That’s not a big deal. I wouldn’t even change anything. Unless it’s ACOTAR or the Cruel Prince (ie massive books in the Romantasy genre) I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If it IS a huge book in the genre think about what aspects make your book different than their and highlight them. You don’t want to try and change things in a blind panic elsewhere you risk destroying the internal consistency and soul of the book. But if one book has a tomboyish headstrong princess and the other has a nerdy headstrong princess play up the nerd angle, yeah?
I think you should focus on writing what you enjoy, not what you think others will like. Because where does it stop? Even if you somehow wrote a book of ideas nobody had ever done before and wrote it flawlessly, you'd end up feeling unfulfilled if it wasn't the story *you* wanted or if people didn't engage enough with it. Write the stories you want to tell, the way you want to tell them, in the style that's the most fun for you. It'll also mean that come the time you publish it or share it with others, you'll probably attract the sort of fans that truly understand and identify with your work, too!
Maybe take this as a lesson. As everyone else is saying, nothing under the sun is wholly new. Now that you know something simmilar exists, this might be an opportunity to examine what parts of this story you find most compelling and then use that insight in your writing. If you don't want to continue writing, that's fine, but you shouldn't feel discouraged as a writer when comparing your writing to another person's--your story has just as much right and reason to be told.
Oh this remembers me when I came up with a magic system that was basically Runelords
Plenty of stories have the same premise. It's about the execution.
1. The story may already exist, but you can still bring your own unique take and style to it. 2. Honestly, having another popular work that's similar to yours will make marketing it to people a lot easier. I've watched and read plenty of things on the basis of it being kinda similar to stuff I was already a fan of. It's a huge boon once you get over the anxiety of being called a rip off.
In my experience, actually reading the works that sound like they’re a lot like mine usually sets me at ease. First of all, they’re probably not as similar as you’re worried they are, on a reading experience level. Second, readers tend to have a type so if they’re responding well to this book, yours could be in their interest house too. The only real caution I’d put up is that you probably shouldn’t query that author’s agent with this book. But there’s a gajillion other agents out there & you might even be able to use the book you found as a comp.
You literally get to market it as "for fans of X and Y". Enemies to lovers is not exactly an obscure trope. If copying (accidental or otherwise) was a blocker in romance... Well. It's not lol.
Every story has already been told but not the way you tell it, and somebody is waiting for your version. Keep writing. When this happened to me, it took me 6 years to go back to the story. Now that it's done, it's nothing like the other book at all. Until you write it, you have no idea what yours is going to be - stories tend to take on a life of their own. Take a break if you need to (not 6 years though) but push on. Keep writing.
Every story that's ever been written has already been written, this is a fact you cannot escape from. What makes a good novel is telling the story well.
Originality is not in concepts, it's in execution.
Finish it! After all, everything’s been done before. But that doesn’t mean anything similar can’t exist. It’s YOUR book, YOUR characters and YOUR storytelling. The fact that there’s an idea like yours out there is not gonna change that.
Keep writing it. Most stories have a similar premise to some other story, that doesn't mean your take isn't worth telling. Even with the same premise, your story will inevitably do something differently.
don't read the other book, you'll only become more aware and insecure about your own writing and plot
Every book out there has other (multiple other) books that are very similar to it. Guarantee it. Don't let this stop you from finishing your version of this cool tale and these fantastic tropes. Readers will enjoy your take on them. When I finish one amazing dragon fantasy, it's not like I say, whelp, I'm done. Checked the box for dragons. No more dragons for me. I eagerly look for my next dragon book.
If I (or any other writer) stopped writing just because I found a story with a similar premise to mine, I would never get past page 1. Heck, I'd probably quit before I even get to the outline. There's not a story you can think of that hasn't already been done (and what I'm saying here is certainly nothing [new](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A10&version=DRA)). Instead of worrying that your story has "already been done" or is "unoriginal", look deeper into these doppelganger stories to see how other writers approached the same idea. The beauty of writing is that you can give a hundred writers the exact same prompt, and you will get so many totally different takes on it. I could give the outline of my current novel to someone else, and they would write it different to how I have thus far. The point is that you should take inspiration from other writers (or at least investigate how they did it) rather than being dejected because somebody had a similar idea. I know this is cliche, but comparison is the thief of joy. I've learned that it's far more enjoyable to just write and not pay attention to how "original" it is.
There are no more unique stories anymore, just unique ways of telling them. If you want to tell your story than do it, if everyone stopped writing because they found something similar to their story we would have like 100 books from 500 years ago and nothing new since. Hell, ancient Greece had an author who wrote about spaceships and aliens.
It’s already written? Well last time I checked, not by you. Everything has already been written but this sounds sure as h*ll good and I’m sure, even if the plots are similar, every writer writes their characters, their style, their story, their delivery, and their scenes differently. Write it because not everyone wants to read their version. Trust me, some will but others will want to read yours instead.
Who cares that there is a book with a similar premise? It is not written by you. Even if they told the same exact story it would still be different. There is a loooot of books out there that are just the same thing over and over and over, and we don't care. People who like the idea of a selection program in a magical realm won't be like "oh, this idea has been done already", they will be like "oh damn, another story like the one I liked! gimme!"
Have you heard the term "isekai"? In manga and anime, it's when someone is taken to another world. It's huge right now. In a number of those stories, the person is to be a defender of the kingdom. People finish one isekai, and look for the next. They pass around recommendations for their favorite ones. People ask for specifics like, they want a green light male lead, or a trashy male lead. Wholesome family. Since your protagonist is female, you actually have an otome isekai. There's a very active subreddit for that. That's mostly Korean visual novels, but they bring up light novels as well. I read your post as saying that finding out your idea has been done is de motivating. But I'm letting you know that in the right places, there's a slavering market for your book.
Write it anyways, there's a reason tropes exists. Sometimes people like to read the same things, just in different tunes
This is not necessarily a good marker but bc she’s blowing up rn, Sarah J Maas’ books are all very close retellings of a whole jumble of folklore and 70s/80s high fantasy. Just do it.
I bet people who loved that book will love yours too! Write for the joy of it, enjoy your characters and the journey. There's only so many tropes, and I know that once I find a type of book I enjoy, I'll want to read more of them. Definitely not a reason to scrap it, you've already come so far. Plus, it's a huge achievement to have 300 pages. Don't let this be the thing that kills your passion.
Have you read the other book? If you haven't, you may want to. Even if they share the same premise, you might be surprised just how different your stories are in execution. If you have, see about making a list of differences between them. Different character personalities, word choices, focal points—there are a lot of small details that can distinguish stories, and a lot of small details add up.
It will be different. I can almost guarantee that it will be different. There are maybe thousands of isekais on platforms now. Funny enough, I don’t see many that ends with the hero going back to their own world. How she defends the kingdom will be different too. Try reading it and you might find that there’s an itch deep inside you that just says, “That’s not how my story is supposed to go…” or, “That’s not how I imagined these circumstances…” or “I did better than that…” It can help you feel motivated to finish the story.
There are no new ideas and I would personally really love to read your story.
…Write it your way and then review and revise it to find ways to alter it t be more your own story. There’s always something you can do with a narrative…
My guy. Its 2024. Everything that can be written or told has been told and written. Just continue with your story and don't look back.
Honestly? Read the book. Others have already pointed out that romance especially is rife with repeated storylines and readers still eat that stuff up, because its the little differences that actually make the story unique, not the broad overview. If you're comparing your story broadly you will *always* find stories similar to it. If you keep looking, you will probably find that the story you already found isn't even the 10th fantasy story using that plot line. Writing and publishing is an ongoing conversation between authors, constantly taking inspiration from and building upon the stories of other authors. By reading this book that you think is similar to your own, you'll be able to see just how similar it is or isn't, you'll be able to see things you might do differently in your story, or *want* to do differently because you don't like how they're handled in that book. You might even see things that you didn't even consider. If you just want to write for fun, then why worry about whether your story is similar or not? If you want to actually do something with your story once you've finished, then it would behoove you to be a little more well read in the genre you're writing for. Join the conversation.
That's great news! When you finish your story, you can point at the other story and say "If you liked, you'll enjoy ". People like familiar stories, and romance is one of those 'comfort read' genres that particularly benefits from that.
Think of it like this. You could give the same premiss and characters to ten different writers, and you'd get ten extremely different books still. There's no new stories to tell, but the way YOU tell it has never been done before.
To paraphrase Dory, "Just keep writing, just keep writing." Even if someone else has already written THE story (and that's almost always the case), they haven't written YOUR story. Unless it's a plot-by-plot, beat-by-beat, paragraph-by-paragraph mirror (and that's called plagiarism, don't do it!!), you'll tell THE story differently because it's YOUR story this time. If I dropped a WIP every time I ran into this, well, I still wouldn't have anything but short stories finished and there'd be a LOT more in my dross / discard folders!
That book sounds amazing! I think you should write it because I would definitely read it!
Don't you worry - Every story practically exists already. Like 90% of fantasy uses the [hero's journey](https://new.reddit.com/r/WriterResources/comments/1bggqqy/the_heros_journey_is_a_timeless_and_tested_plot/) and TONS of thrillers use [Dean Koontz's story structure](https://new.reddit.com/r/WriterResources/comments/1bspmxj/mastering_tension_and_pacing_dean_koontzs_simple/). It's just the same thing. Different wrapping. It's all in the execution, so keep going!
Remember that ALL stories are based on other stories whether it was meant or not.. so don't worry ! Don't give up ! Continue writing it and I'm sure it's gotta be turn out fine
South Park already touched on this with "Simpsons did it!" It's all been done before, all we're doing is remixing everything. Finish the book, you're writing for you not some mouthbreathing Internet troll with nothing better to do than make themself feel better by bringing down others.
I forget how the saying goes, but it’s something like “if you have a great idea for something, a thousand other people have the same idea, a hundred are already working on it and ten have already completed it.” I’m sure I butchered it, but the point is that originality is dead. I got in trouble during a creative writing class in high school because it “sounded suspiciously similar to the Breakfast Club.” (I hadn’t watched it at the time). What’s important is to write with your own voice, put your spin on it, make it yours. Something inside you drove you to create it, and it’d be an injustice to yourself not to see it through
Yeah... You have just created the narrative of a normal isekai manhwa. I'm sorry.
I recommend re-reading the first two chapters, and then the last two, it will get you back on track to where you should be... (Or maybe it makes you realize that you've strayed from your main idea and are now heading down a completely unknown path...) But most of the time it works.
Literally sounds like the plot of half the anime’s out there. Write it anyway. It will be the only one done by you and in your style.
Firstly, you're 300 pages in and NOW you don't want to continue? Secondly, that's a pretty generic premise already so you were almost guaranteed to find a story that was exactly or very like yours. Third, like others have already said, there's not really any original ideas anymore. I've always found it's the people that make stories unique. If you've got engaging people treading a well-worn formula it can elevate it from boring to interesting. Fourth, you write for fun so what's the problem? Just write and enjoy it
Make sure it has a happy ending
I think you should continue to write your story, I mean it is YOUR story after all, even if it might be similar to other stories out there. Write it for YOU. If you feel like the other story went in a too similar of a direction of what you had envisioned for your own plot, and you feel like you might no longer want to go down that same path anymore because they might feel too similar for your own comfort, maybe you could see if you can steer the plot in another direction; like, if the Goodreads-FL decided to stay with Kingdom 1's Prince and continue to fight Kingdom 2, your FL could instead take the route of switching sides to Kingdom 2, or try to be a bond that brings the two Kingdoms together, or maybe she'll just say "F it! I'll run off to Kingdom 3! 🤷♀️". Just because two things start from the same place, doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up in the same place. If you can't let go of the thought that they look similar to each other, you could also look at it as if the two stories take place in alternate dimensions/time lines where the two women has made different choices and experienced more or less different things, which has lead them to their own separate (happy?) endings. I have an example of two manga stories that are over all very similar, but have gone down different paths; both are about a female knight that transmigrates to Japan's countryside from some medieval Europe-like fantasy world, and ends up helping out with the farmwork on the ML's farm. Even though they are similar at first glance, the two plots have gone down different routes, different things has happened to the two leads, and very different side characters has shown up around them. It would still be totally okay to continue either way you want to go at it, at the end of the day it'll be two separate stories. Your story is still YOUR story, no one else's. If you decide to drop it, that would be fine too, it is your choice in the end, but I would find it very sad. BTW, when you have finished your book (yes, I said "WHEN", not "IF" ;) ), I would love to read it! Good luck! ♡
If you're just writing for fun it doesn't matter. If you finish it and want to sell it, it's probably a good idea to read the other book and look for places where you can specifically differentiate your story just to avoid plagiarism accusations though they are probably different enough as it is.
Write your story. A dozen writers can be given the same prompt and come up with two dozen different stories. The uniqueness of the story will be in how you tell it.
Tell a story 100 times and you'll entertain 100 different people. Keep writing, nothing is new anymore. What matters sometimes is that we have a great new story. Replace the lightsabers of star wars with wands and you pretty much have Harry Potter. This is your story written your way. Make sure it gets told