Has this ever happened to you?

[Tobin S.]

About seven years ago I had a good, original idea for a book and I started to write it. It was really going good, too. The story came to me easier than anything I'd ever attempted to write. After a couple of days I was 7000 words into it. Then I was watching TV one night and I saw a new show with almost the exact same plot.

I still have those 7000 words, but haven't added to them since.

[Scuba]

1. More proof that watching TV is bad for you. n/t

[onlyadream]

2. The twighlight series

But mine was with aliens, lol. I never read the books because that's not what I like, but my friend dragged me to the first movie and it was so similar to my novel. I was not happy.

My friend, who read my book and the twighlight series claims the two are different, tho... But I still get upset when I think about it.

[Chan790]

3. More than once.

Actually the first time was in college with a video game. I had this idea for an open-area game where one played an assassin. I'd gone so far as to plot out a synopsis and do some design detail with my roommate Alex who worked for a small studio. Six months later, EIDOS released Hitman: Codename 47. Three months after that, we graduated and Alex went to work for EIDOS.

I've suspected but could neither prove nor care that Alex sold them my idea as his own. Oh well, their plotline and design was better than what I had in mind, their execution far exceeded what I'd have put out.

[SheilaT]

4. Not that, but whenever I write a story

or think about a novel, after a while whatever I'm writing or thinking about seems so obvious to me, that I'm sure it's already been published somewhere.

[valerief]

5. Too bad it was going good instead of well. Things may have turned out differently. Just teasing.

That's always gonna happen. There are just so many stories to tell. How you tell it and who tells it makes all the difference.

[theAntiRand]

6. I wrote "The Thing" when I was 15

Even had a cast of exactly twelve, and all men too. Only difference, besides the fact that my version was terribly written, was that it took place on an isolated island in the Pacific instead of an Antarctic base. Needless to say, my ego took an enormous hit when I happened across The Thing one night on TV.

I still have a child-like imagination and want desperately to create something worth reading, but that experience was so traumatizing to my young ego that I have trouble taking any idea I have seriously today, and struggle to stay motivated enough to even start on something new.

[WriteWrong]

7. Musician. It's happened many times.

What's really annoying is when I do nothing with an idea but record it and keep it at home, and twenty or more years later, someone else does the same thing.

I've also seen enough musicians get busted for unconscious plagiarism that I can't help but wonder if you didn't see a preview of the show and forgot about it before you wrote your book.

[Fearless]

8. Yes it has.

Thankfully, in my case I hadn't started writing it yet. I would have died!

[mainer]

9. Very common. It's something "in the ether"

A good friend of mine works in Hollywood evaluating scripts, and she said that in the course of a single week, she received scripts from two different parts of the country in which a woman's dead husband comes back as a dog and tries to woo her back.

I've also heard from editors who say they get almost identical stories within a few weeks of each other, and the writers don't know each other.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. The exact opposite happened to me.

As I was watching t.v. and writing a draft the things I saw on the t.v. I thought I could do better.

Look for the twist. If you liked the story, go back and look for the twist.

Also, sometimes when you're writing the details as the action would happen, the story goes in a completely different direction than the one you started out with.