History SoYouWantTo / BeOriginal

The third paradox can be summed up in one of George Santayana's most famous sayings: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". If you don't see how people before you made stories, it's very likely that you will unwittingly repeat the same ideas. And even worse, you might think that ''you'' were the first to come up with those ideas.[[note]]If you came up with them independently, then they arguably belong to you, but there's no way to prove that you thought of them yourself and didn't just take them from another writer.[[/note]] If you see how past stories were made, you will still want to put your own spin on it. Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible, so even if you rip off another work's concept, you can bend to fit the purposes of your story; the originality in this case is not the trope itself, but how you played with it. For instance, an UnwantedHarem is not very original, even if it ''does'' contain some non-human characters. A twist on this particular genre would be making the main character bisexual, enabling both male and female love interests. A MagicalGirlfriend story is also rather unoriginal -- after all, there are only so many times you can use ghosts, aliens, angels, etc, before it seems redundant and uninspired. In this case, originality stems from making the girlfriend a different type of non-human, a troll for example, or a creature made out of fire. Or perhaps you could take the plot of a {{Hentai}} anime and [[BleachedUnderpants remove the porn]], creating a story that's much different from the original.

Some agents recommend that you read works published in your chosen genre in the last five years. That way, you will know better what is still fresh and what has been done to death and is not longer used.

Multi-Narrative Dissonance is a spin-off term for "Ludonarrative Dissonance," which was crafted to explain this kind of thing in video games: specifically in the narrative provided by the gameplay and the narrative of the story; what TV Tropes calls GameplayAndStorySegregation. However, while video games can certainly do the most vivid job of this kind of dissonance (primarily because the player ''chooses'' to engage with the game -- if you don't want to kill the {{Mook}}s, you could just turn the machine off), it is by no means limited to that medium, and for that reason we prefer this term over one which specifically refers to them ("Ludo" = "Ludus" = PretentiousLatinMotto for "Games").

An undeniable corollary to the aforementioned paradox is the fact that rules and limitations can actually help in the creative process.[[note]]This fact goes beyond storytelling and is at least OlderThanSteam; music, for the most part, did not start developing from basic Gregorian Chanting until Music/JohannSebastianBach's lifetime in the [[BaroqueMusic late Baroque period]], when common practice tonality ([[SesquipedalianLoquaciousness a.k.a.]] the modern major & minor musical keys) and well-known composition structures like the sonata, concerto, and [[ClassicalMusic later on]], the symphony, were quantified and established.[[/note]] For example, ExecutiveMeddling and those pesky MoralGuardians often put limits on what themes and topics that TV shows are allowed to depict, but writers try to find loopholes and disguise hidden meanings in seemingly innocuous concepts. Say you want to put {{an Aesop}} about peer pressure in a children's television show; specifically, you want to explain why DrugsAreBad. The network won't allow any explicit depiction of substance abuse on a show for kids, but you shouldn't let that stop you; just make up a plot device for that episode that [[ICantBelieveItsNotHeroin has similar effects to many misused substances]]. Try to focus yourself and your ideas as much as you can. For example, giving a hero a fatal weakness can create a variety of new potential conflicts and plots. On the other hand, too many limitations might also discourage you from creating new stories.

Another problem is personality. In general, most characters can be boiled down to a general trope: "BullyHunter." "BlitheSpirit." "LoveYouAndEverybody." "MartialPacifist." The problem is that, for some characters, this is overly reductive: Aang, the HeroProtagonist of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', is ''all of these tropes at once'', and boiling him down to just one of them is to ignore significant and important facets of his character. Having said that, what's worse is when the description ''isn't'' overly reductive. Sometimes, "LoveYouAndEverybody" ''really is'' the entirety of the character. And that can get really boring, really fast.

So what's the answer? Have multiple conflicts that ''take different amounts of time to resolve''. Got a tech genius who's bad with the ladies? Have him constantly snapping off {{technobabble}} solutions to things, but simultaneously stuck on WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove. His best friend can be someone who ReallyGetsAround ''and'' a WalkingTechbane who needs to learn how to use a computer. And of course you have a third character who is a great musician but DrivesLikeCrazy and is about to lose their license. Each of them has things they're good at, but also things they're bad at. This not only makes them {{Rounded Character}}s, this not only allows you to reduce the story's overall tension at various times by presenting them with stuff they're good at -- it also makes the story more like RealLife, where people -- guess what -- have things they're good at but also things they're bad at.

While Wiki/TVTropes typically describes stories as having a single, linear plot, multiple authors have spoken out about the fact that their best stories (or at least the ones that they're most proud of) were born of a fusion between two disparate ideas.

!One of the most important things to learn for being original is to learn about three paradoxes:

Paradox 1: It Is Impossible To Be New Anymore

One of the most important things to learn for being original is to learn about three paradoxes:

!Paradox 1: It Is Impossible To Be New Anymore

Multi-Narrative Dissonance is when these two things -- Plot and Tone -- deliberately work at odds. For instance, you could have a video game that presents you with {{Mook}}s and tells you to KillEmAll, but then asks whether your willingness to do so makes you a CompleteMonster (''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'', ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty''). You could have a Music/EltonJohn song with jaunty, upbeat piano, but lyrics about being DrivenToSuicide ("[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZW3OsHpjiY I Think I'm Going To Kill Myself]]"). You could have a novel about the IdleRich who have achieved UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream, but then show how a SocialClimber kills himself trying to get at it... and that TheBeautifulElite who have achieved it are morally bankrupt (''Literature/TheGreatGatsby''). You could have, in short, a story that says ''two different things at once'': what happens to the characters, and whether their feelings on the subject should be the same as yours.