Making your Story Unique #BYBin30

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

I mentioned an idea for a story that came to me in dream to someone and she pointed out that she had seen an episode on one of the shows she watched that had a similar plot. I looked it up, and she was correct. The plot was similar to the story that I had dreamed up.

It's actually quite rare to come up with a story-line that is truly unique. While you shouldn't purposely use someone else's story plot, it is nearly impossible to come up with a plot that hasn't already been done before. What makes the story unique isn't the plot itself but how you tell the story. Yes, you need to make the plot as unique to your story as you can. Add-in to the plot, give it different subplots, give it characters with personalities that you have imagined for them. Your story needs to show your ideas and use the ideas from your imagination, and those ideas will be unique to you.

Yes, someone might have already done a story, for instance, of a witch's spell that goes wrong that splits someone else into two identical people with two distinct personalities of good and bad. But what if the person split in two is a celebrity? And what if letting the "bad" personality loose on the world creates the risk of creating a scandal for that celebrity? And what if the witch isn't really a witch but a new-to-the-religion Wicca who found a very old book of spells of unknown origins and that spell book has a mind of its own? (Yes, this is an actual story plot I had in a dream one night.)

No matter what plots have been used before, your story will be unique to you and to your own imagination. If you feel the pull to write that story, then don't worry too much about what has been done before and write your story.