I have been nursing (and nurturing) a really great idea for a while now…an idea I’ve fallen head over goddamn heels in love with.
But it’s also an idea that nobody is going to let me do for quite some time…unless I do it as a novel (note to self: see if there’s a way to do this as a novel) and I’ve just realized that one of the base elements, a big part of the basic concept (which I have always slightly worried was a bit too close for MY comfort to Fables, is also being mined HERE (Grimm) and HERE (Once Upon A Time).
Bah!
Grimm actually looks good, probably because David Greenwalt – and other Buffy and Angel peeps are involved. I think my idea is quite different than Grimm…but I think it’s also too “the same” for anyone to give it a go…certainly any time in the near future. Once Upon A Time looks not so good (but only based on the two previews I saw) and seems very far away from my idea. But even so it still treads in the familiar “fairy tales/fiction-y” ground that I think is going to be over-mined before I can get my idea out there.
SO…GODFUCKINGDAMNITTOTHAT.
I’m so sick of losing great ideas by being just two steps (or a billion) behind.
I was going to have a little mock funeral for my idea, so I could attempt to mourn it and move on…but now I think I’ll pillage it and see if I can turn it into a series of novels…
Funeral temporary postponed…until further notice…
In the meantime, here’s a sketch from my possibly dead, possibly resurrected idea! C’mon life, give a girl (me!) a series of awesome breaks…PLEASE.
Tessa Battle and her axe 'The Black Dove'
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Gah, I absolutely HATE when this happens… and it seems to happen a lot.
Keep it on the back burner, you never know what ideas might come into your head that might make it different. A series of novels sounds good to me! Good luck Kelly! 
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when you think about it, there are a very big lot of stories turning around the same idea. The best exemple is the huge amount of vampire stories and tv shows and comics these days.
The real thing making the diference is how you tell the story. A good writer can make you forget anything.
I would personnally could accept damnation to work on a really well written story regardless of the theme.I do not anything about your work beside what you write on your blog, but I find it very clever and entertaining. I am sure you could come with an original way of turning things.
Good luck !
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Yeah, this is a tragic fact of writing. Shit like this happens a LOT! I’ve found it to be pretty common, both for myself and creative friends of mine who are all working on stuff to hopefully see the light of day sometime.
Notably, a friend was working on a fairly realistic and accurate portrayal of the story of the 300 out of an actual comic art studio when boom! Frank Miller’s 300 hit and suddenly all the work he’d done and pages he’d drawn were suddenly worthless.
But time’ll pass. Stuff will come and go. Eventually it’ll be fair game again.
With that said, a series of novels sounds like a lot of fun too. 😀
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@Tara: Yeah, it’s the worst feeling. So sad.
@Stephanie H: Thanks. I think that after about 24 hours thinking about it, there’s definitely a way to make my story work as a series of novels, so as soon as I lock down my last project and get it out the door to my agent I’m going to take a swing at it and see what happens. Thanks again for commenting – I’m *blush* a huge fan, so it’s especially awesome to hear from you.
@Brendan T: Yeah, it really does happen a lot…it happens to people all the time – and it’s happened to me before, and I’m sure this won’t be the last time. The 300 story is a total bummer…and that’s exactly what I’m talking about…I’m sure your friend’s take was significantly different, but when something comes along and saturates the market like that, it’s hard to keep some ideas, especially those that are very specific and high-concept (like 300), viable.
I do think, as I said to Stephanie above, that my idea can work if I re-work it into series of novels. Because writing a novel will give me the control to flesh out the entire world and characters fully enough that the differences in execution will be vast and obvious and it can be easily seen as its own unique thing…whereas pitching it to some executive as an idea for a tv show (with maybe a teleplay or two in hand and some outline material) I feel like it’s a quick “Nope, we’ve seen that before and RECENTLY, what else you got?”
This will take longer, but if the idea really does have legs and I do justice to it, then I can do the novel(s) and someone will want to adapt it and I can eventually get it into the format I originally envisioned it in (i.e. television).
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Think of it like this: All those comics you mentioned stole their ideas form fairy tales. They just expanded or modified the original tales. Without the originals, they’d have nothing. Also keep in mind that storytellers have continuously modified the original tales for centuries, so this is nothing new.
There aren’t that many different stories, really. What makes a story great is how it’s told. Look at all the move remakes, and think about how so many of the remakes suck compared to the originals. The problem: the director and/or screenwriter didn’t know how to retell the story properly. Also there are rare instances in which the remake is better than the original. Two examples pop into mind: The Thing and Dawn Of The Dead.
Long story short: Don’t give up on your idea because someone else is already doing something similar to it. Your story might be the best. Only one way to find out
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Pingback from Shiny New Projects! « on August 11, 2011 at 8:03 am
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Fables made me think of Faerie Tale, by Raymond E Feist.
‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’
As the emo philosopher-king Solomon wrote (four thousand years ago).Do it anyway. Do it your way.
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Pingback from NaNoWriMo Redux… « on November 1, 2011 at 2:20 am
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