Tweak it, Turn it, Repackage and Resell

Whatever you've written, it's been done before.

I know it's cynical, but it's a part of the process. At some point, you have to accept that someone, somewhere, at some point in history, has already written this basic story.

And that's good.

I used to get so frustrated with my story ideas because I always knew what my influences were. A story I read here, a TV show or movie, a poem. Someone's random statement. I knew that my ideas were in no way original. Until recently, that was a huge irritation for me. That and forgetting stupid common words and having to dredge the thesaurus until they reemerged.

Here's the deal. We like familiar things. We like stories that follow familiar patterns because it reinforces a sense of community. Other people have had similar experiences and have survived and turned out relatively ok. Or, they follow understood paths to predetermined ends, and we just like watching the progress unfold.

What we really like, though, is when we get knocked sideways in the midst of the familiar. The plot twist. The reinterpretation. The change of perspective.

Like Hamlet from the perspective of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. Red Riding Hood told as a mystery. Fairy tales where the princess has to rescue the inept prince. Well-worn paths, reimagined. Stories that play off what we already know and take for granted. Twisted tropes. Fractured Fairy Tales.

The other night, I read a story by Lovecraft ("The Outsider," in case you're curious) that got my little hamster wheels creaking. Lovecraft's stories are out there. People are ghastly or see ghastly things or get swept up into demonic events that reduce them to quivering masses (or sometimes free them). We don't have experiences like that. But we do have experiences that parallel them in more mundane ways. Instead of climbing out from under the canopy of an eternally dark forest, we climb out from under depression. Or grief. Instead of being so physically abhorrent that people run scared from us, we have emotional and psychological scars and gashes that drive people away. Outwardly normal, inwardly putrid. Like Dorian Grey.

A story began to glimmer through all this introspection. Not a Lovecraftian gothic horror, but a more mundane tale of discovering how your circumstances can disfigure you socially and emotionally.

Lovecraft uses the word "nepenthe" in "The Outsider," which automatically makes me think of "Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" from Poe's "The Raven."

What if Lenore didn't die? What if Lenore was "lost" in another way? And what kind of "nepenthe" would she take to forget her lost self? What would that do to those around her?

What if...I take the basic plot of "The Outsiders" to explore poor Lost Lenore? Hmm...

Lots of ideas, lots of influences. But the story is mine. It's not glittering new, but it's different. And that's the important part. It's mine.