Discovering similarities between your plot and another book/movie

It would have to depend. Often there are similar projects out there, just because a field is going in a particular direction (the two movies about Truman Capote that came out in the past couple of years, for instance, were conceived of completely independently, as were Armageddon and Deep Impact). You could just not worry about it.

Or you could scrap it, as I did the first-person diary-form (with interspersed e-mails and grocery lists and "While You Were Out" slips) novel about a young woman's romantic travails, crushes, and general wackiness that I spent much of 1995 and the first months of 1996 working on.

Until I went to England and bought the new book that everyone in England was talking about...Bridget Jones's Diary. Sigh.

Strongbear said:

What happens if, after you have been writing your book for a while, you discover that the plot is similar to another book or a movie?

Do you go about changing and replotting yours? Or do you simply continue on the basis that ideas cannot be copyrighted and that while the concepts may be the same as the other medium, the distinct elements and events in your story will be different? After all, there aren't that many original plots that aren't in some way a reimagining/remake of what has gone before.

How can you avoid the accusation of plagiarism too?

Thoughts?

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This happened to me as I began the second draft of my Nanowrimo novel (which was considerably different from the first draft.) My husband came home from watching a DVD with his dad and said "Hey, the movie's plot seemed a lot like that novel you're working on." My response = aaaaaaaack! I grilled him on it for days, and have made sure to change the coinciding plot points. I still have to watch the movie though, just to make sure.

Fortunately, my main characters and setting were already quite different from the movie.

So yes, I replotted, but I do agree that ideas can't be copyrighted. I just didn't want mine too similar to something that had already been done.

As IceCreamEmpress said, the answer will depend. If you have written a book about paleolithic times, there may well be room for both your novel and Clan of the Cave Bear. However, if you have written a book about paleolithic times in which a Cro-Magnon girl is adopted into a Neanderthal tribe and bucks against their traditions while coming up with innovations such as domesticating animals, there may be a serious problem.

Assess how strong the similarities are and how strongly you can emphasize/concentrate on the differences. At that point you'll know if you have a problem or not.

I get all my basic plots from movies, so I already know what I need to change to be different enough

Right now I'm working with a very classic theme and premise, which has been used in three movies and one extremely famous book that I know of already (I can name a dozen other books and movies with the same theme and a different premise as well). I'm confident that my version is different enough from everything that's been done before. It's a 'timeless' theme and I feel there will always be room for more works on the subject. Things get a little trickier when the similar work is something that was a unique first in its plot and premise, though. There's certainly a good reason why plots and ideas can't be copyrighted.

I had a screenplay idea once upon a time, about a man who cheats death by avoiding an auto accident he should have died in. And then the people in his life start meeting with strange, grisly accidents as Death tries to even the score.

About a year later, Final Destination came out. Urk.

There are only so many plots in the world; it's the details you add and your voice that makes your book unique.

When your work starts getting similar to other stories, films, do your best at twisting it into an original level which will, you hope, never be used by other people.

Here's what I do, but I'm kinda eccentric and I'm just crazy.
I go for extremes and epics.
Most people don't bother on think about big stories besides on those that have already been done.
I really try to come up with stuff that I haven't seen anywhere. I try to come up with stuff that is just so odd and extreme that people wouldn't think about it.
that way you're almost guaranteed to keep a steady corse on the issue of 'other people getting similar ideas.
And It's also a great way to stand out.
as soon as I notice that this or that in my story has already been done, or at least has been done a nauseous amount of times, I go for different ways to do the same thing.

Just go for peculiar stuff.
The skeleton is the same, even in my stories, the flesh and the fur and the colours and the movement is just what makes it different from everything else. I love doing that.

But don't think that all is original. Art is basically a process of piecing together things that already exist, in such a way though, that it creates something completely new.
Just give people something new.

I think that when it starts getting too similar, to the point of worrying you of the possibility of plagiarism crossing the minds of people, you should re think a few things in your story.

In Peterson Estate, I do have a chapter where sound is being sucked out of the estate into another world of a people of ears lol. A publisher read the synopsis and told me that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had an episode where the town lost all sound and the people had to speak by writing things down and use sign language.

I have never seen that episode but already know its different lol. Mine is magical based as in witches and stuff and it only takes place inside the MCs home and in this other world which ears live in. Emily was able to convince these ears to let the sounds go before it did reach the town. She also learned that you can't please people all the time. Give them one thing, they want something else. Give them that and they change their minds lol. I'm keeping this chapter because it was an important one for the story.

I just know I didn't take someone's idea lol, we just have them. Then again, a lot of people do think alike sometimes lol.

Amber

You see this sort of thing all the time. When I Am Legend came out, I thought to myself... I enjoyed this movie much more when it was called 28 Days Later. If you've seen those two movies you know that the main story ideas are very similar. People put a new spin on lots of things. If you notice that your work is extremely similar and that you're offering nothing new, be concerned... but if you see very real differences, go with it. That's just my take on it all.

Hmmm, I honestly don't see that many similiarities between 28 Days and I Am Legend. They have the same core idea, lone humans in city filled with vampires/zombies, but beyond that...

Which I guess is what everyone in this thread has been saying, the seed may look the same, but the plants may look very different indeed.

I think it would depend on the degree of similarity. If your book has distinctive elements that are also in the book / film, as opposed to just a similar premise, character or themes then I would say have a look at revising it to make it less similar.

Just a couple of personal examples - the fantasy story I'm writing right now could be said to be similar in premise to some parts of the Harry Potter series, in that involves a 'dark lord' figure rising up through the ranks of society, gathering followers and using magic to try and overthrow authority. I'm not concerned that anyone would say 'rip off' though as the way I'm handling that story is totally different. I don't have any kids leading the fight for good, the world it's set in is entirely fantasy, the POV character is actually one of the bad guys, technically etc.

However, years ago I researched a historical novel I wanted to write on the historical Macbeth of Scotland. I spent months collecting information, building up characters, checking facts and getting it all ready to start writing, and a couple of pages into it, I took a break to go to shopping in Perth, and here is Nigel Tranter's newly released book 'Macbeth' on the shelves of Waterstones. Exactly the same book I wanted to write. If I ever take up that idea now I would have to hope enough time has now passed between the Tranter one's publication so that I wouldn't be jumping on his coat tails, and I would have to make sure mine said something different, even if it was just a unique writing style or different POV perhaps.

Just a comment on time-line, not necessarily cause-effect. I read I Am Legend in the 1950s, so the idea has been around a while. I'm wondering about the writers of 28 Days Later being first, but of course, movies based on the book are not always recognizable.

We had this conversation last night.

Boyfriend: You know, there's a movie about a talking hamster from space already.
Me: Really? Is it trying to destroy the earth?
Boyfriend: No. It's trying to fix its spaceship and go home.
Me: Oh, that's okay then.

We have a lot of shared culture and the seeds that germinate ideas in us do so in other people as well. There have been multiple instances of people simultaneously inventing the same thing or discovering the same scientific principle independently. I can very much see the influence of the kinds of things I read and watch in the ideas I come up with. I imagine that people who come up with ideas similar to mine share my taste.

Like Takvah said: "If you notice that your work is extremely similar and that you're offering nothing new, be concerned... " But don't generalize too much. There are plenty of stories about comets/astroids/meteors hitting Earth, for instance.

Takvah said:

When I Am Legend came out, I thought to myself... I enjoyed this movie much more when it was called 28 Days Later.

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That's right, the filmmakers copied 28 Days Later rather than, say, the book I Am Legend (published in 1954) or either of the previous movie versions of the book (The Last Man on Earth, 1964, or Omega Man, 1971).

I just read a novel that had a situation and 1st POV protagonist that was very similar to mine. It's a high-profile novel that was nominated for a major award.

However, needless to say, I wrote my book before I read this one. My characters have different backgrounds and traits. In the end, it's a different story. I plan to persevere with my work and submit it to agents and publishers. There might just be room for two such novels on bookstore shelves. I sure hope so.

I know that I Am Legend is a book from the 50s, I didn't want to get into the minutia. Needless to say the book warped the vampire/zombie lore that preceded it. See where the logic is going?

As for not seeing similarities between 28 Days Later and I Am Legend... the biggest similarity is that humanity died off because of a virus that some were immune to (another unoriginal idea).

Takvah said:

As for not seeing similarities between 28 Days Later and I Am Legend... the biggest similarity is that humanity died off because of a virus that some were immune to (another unoriginal idea).

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I'm pretty sure that was an original idea when Matheson wrote I Am Legend, actually (although his was a bacterial plague, not a viral plague).

There's a fine line between imitation and plagerism.

Independance Day has a similar theme to War of the Worlds, Day of the Triffids, etc but there's enough differences to make each entertaining.

Give an old idea a new twist and its yours!

mollyluna said:

So, if your betas, who've read the entire manuscript, think it's similar to something else, then you have a quandary (did I spell that right? lol...). If not, don't worry. In the end, it's the finished manuscript, not the idea, that is more worrisome. Look at all the Harry Potter wannabes getting published left and right. The kids' section at the bookstore is full of them. The idea of a magic school is hot, but noone is copying Harry Potter exactly or they wouldn't get published.

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And the idea of a magic school also wasn't new by the time Harry Potter came out. I grew up reading Jill Murphy's Worst Witch series years before Harry Potter was even a twinkle in JK's eye. They both have more or less the same idea, and are very similar in certain ways (the posh, blond antagonist kid, for starters) but both went off in totally different directions.

I've had that as well though where people have compared my work to things that I would never have thought of and still don't see the similarity, while at the same time, where I have been influenced by something specific, people haven't picked up on it at all, even when I ask directly 'does this remind you of...?'