"Oh! You mean like ____?"

It's a common phenomenon.

Think of it like cloud pictures. The human brain is wired to categorize new information by familiar touchstones. No, that cloud isn't "shaped like a train," any more than Ursa major/minor look like bears, but your brain is trying to make order from chaos so it can comprehend the input. When you describe a book, or a movie, or even a dream to someone, they'll try and pull out something familiar to show they're listening and that they understand.

Superpowers and outcasts = X-men to comic / movie fans.
Space western = Firefly or even Star Wars.
Etc, etc, etc.

This isn't a bad thing. It can make it easier to describe or market your novel once it's done.

To some extent, this type of resemblance can actually be useful to you from a marketing/acquisitions point of view. Not every agent demands this, but a few agents out there, when querying, actually like it when you present comparative or "comp" titles. This means that if you've written something that is in a similar vein to some already familiar work, there's a strong chance that fans of that work will like what you've written too.

So, just as an example, if you've got a vampire story that's a realistic depiction of a vampire invasion as read through multiple documents, testimonies and transcripts of various survivors of this crisis from different periods in the vampire invasion timeline, then you can say in your query, "Fans of World War Z will appreciate the multiple narrative threads and documentary approach of my vampire invasion novel," or something to that effect. It just shows to an agent that likes this sort of thing that you already know what kind of audience is out there for what you do. But like I said, not all agents want or need this.

Yes. This happens to me ALL THE TIME. It drives me mad. I was describing my apocalyptic series to someone, and they said "Sounds just like the video game Fallout." I'm not a gamer and had never even heard of Fallout! I looked it up, and the similarities are vague. When you're telling someone the basics of your story, they don't see the heart of it.

I view it as a good thing. It means you've come up with a concept that has already proven to be commercial, and I think when the general population loves a concept, they'll continue to love seeing it in new forms. Even if trends come and go, there is generally a solid base of people who love any given popular thing. So there will always be people who adore vampires, zombies, X-men style people with special abilities, wizards, etc. They want to see these stories acted out with fresh new characters and in new contexts.

Another thing to remember is your story will be your own. It would be impossible to create the same story as someone else even if you began with the exact same prompt and subject matter. There are also lots of similar stories out there that all do well. So it's not like there isn't room for similar stuff.

Years ago, I got some good advice on here, which was to just focus on what makes your story different. So, just a made-up example, but say, instead of telling people your story is about X-men style mutants, say it's a story about mutants who can manipulate electricity in various ways (or whatever it is). Just like zombies or vampires, people already have a basic background on what mutants are. They need you to tell them how your mutants are special.

Flambeau said:

So I was telling my friend about my novel the other day, and she said, "Oh! You mean like X-Men?" I had a "huh?" moment. In all honesty, I have never seen any of the X-Men movies or read any of the X-Men comic books. So, in a bit of a panic, I looked it up online and I was troubled to find that there WERE a lot of similarities between my story and X-Men.

On the surface, at least.

The more I researched it, the more different my story seemed. In fact, there are more differences than similarities when it comes down to the important stuff. But on a shallow level, on a "let me sum up the plot in a couple sentences" level, when I tell people about it, I fear it sounds too much like X-Men.

I think instead of changing my whole plot or any significant parts of it, I need to change how I pitch/explain it instead. Like, "Yeah, kind of like X-Men except ______, ______, _____."

Any experiences with having a work that superficially sounds a lot like an already famous one?

Click to expand...

It happens all the time, because 1: there are no truly original ideas, especially when painting with broad strokes, but that doesn't actually mean anything, especially not anything negative. It's just that there are so many works of creativity out there, that superficially matching one is inevitable. It's the details that matter.

2: People will often compare it to the closest resemblance they know of to verify if they're following your train of thought. So, 'yes, but-' is a very valid response.

'So it's like Star Wars?'
'Yes, but, with a much harder sci-fi edge, so the mystic aspects are all directly technology driven by an order of augmented warrior monks, and instead of the whole galaxy being easily accessed via FTL, it's focused on a much smaller segment of a spiral arm with limited FTL travel.'

And even if I directly inspired people in that thread with that sentence, and they go off to write their own space drama, the resulting works will probably be very very different to the point you wouldn't even realize they came from the same inspiration.

And, remember, Star Wars was basically a watered-down, dumbed-down version of the space opera of four decades earlier. Nothing wrong with recycling themes and ideas, as long as you do it well.

I have a scene where two aliens discuss important stuff in a bar.

"Oh, that's like Star Wars!"

Can't get away from it. Humans associate.

I don't think it can be avoided.

On the other hand, people sometimes see things very differently than others. I was once accused of plagiarizing bits of Steven King's The Dark Tower. That was news to me, I'd never read the Dark Tower books, and my stories take place in 5th century Britain.

Yep, very very common.

I wrote a novel about four people traveling across Africa. Shortly afterward, I learned about Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari, a memoir where he follows essentially the same route my characters take. About the same time, I learned about Dave Eggers' And You Shall Know Our Velocity, a novel where people similar to my characters jaunt around the world. Right now, I'm reading Paranoia by Joseph Finder, a corporate spy thriller that in parts resembles a novel I had published through a small epubber. Paranoia came out about six years before mine, and I can't help but compare what I did better to what he did better and to what we both did that worked or didn't work.

The takeaway for me is that we are all to one degree or another products of our times and places. People in my demographic, such as Dave Eggers, or who have experiences in similar parts of the world, such as Paul Theroux, or who write on similar topics, such as Joseph Finder, are going to write similar stories. What sets mine apart is the perspective and creativity I bring to the subject, as well as how well (or poorly) I pull it off. The three books I mentioned, although with similarities, went in totally different directions than mine, and they are entirely different stories with different things to say.

That kind of thing really annoys me, because the difference between different stories is author intent. Unless you meant to do exactly what the writers of X Men did, then it's not necessarily similar at all. Then there's when people take superficial things and go way too far -- like my emotional superhero story is apparently similar to Steven Universe because they both involve gemstones in some capacity.

Blergh. And then there's the thing where you think of something in your head, and then see that someone else had the idea first, and made a movie out of it.