What you do, when you find similarities in your work with anothers?

I accidentally created an expy of Shiro, even without watching the series.

I wanted is to subvert the Rei Ayanami Expy, so I wrote an albino character, who soon revealed to being outgoing. Originally I wrote her as Cuckoo Cloud Lander, and a Genki Girl.

I soon realized that this exact kind of character won't work in my future OEL manga/graphic novel. But I found other elements, that would. So I rewrote her. Now she's a somewhat still outgoing girl with a cruel past, who has some secrets. Also she slowly goes [[Yandere insane]] as the story goes on. I also added some original elements, like deconstructing her yandereness.

I simply have to list all the ways that my character is not the same as this other character that I'm looking at. If your character is sufficiently fleshed-out, this part is easy.

I usually don't.

I usually compare them to mine more closely, see if it can give me some sort of inspiration or new ideas, and then I try to subvert/avert some things in order to distance my work from the other.

It just hit me a few months ago that my protagonist is VERY similar to another character. They have similar personalities and similar looks. Their fathers even have the same profession. And all this came as a total shock to me, as I had no intention to copy off another writer. And I wasn't even aware of it going this far! But I can only comfort myself with this: Many things are still different. I hope that she's not a carbon copy of this other character. But wow, did she turn into an unintentional expy!

edited 27th Apr '14 3:15:56 PM by Furienna

Don't worry about it. There's that much literature out there that just about everything's been done before. As long as your character "works" and doesn't fall into cliche territory, I can't see how it would be a problem to any readers.

I think the most important thing is what you want the character to be, as in, keeping that character yours and not changing because you suddenly find a character in an existing work who bears some similarities. Trying to deviate from one specific (or more) character just to have a different one, in my opinion, isn't that different from writing a copy of it anyway, not to mention that eventually you probably run into another one from another work who is similar to the attempted deviation anyway. As was said, there are so many works of fiction out there, you're bound to run into some aspects that are already used anyway. Of course, things change if you're writing a deconstruction to begin with...

Thank you for your replies!

The good thing is that the stories aren't the same, even if the protagonists are similar to each other.

I had a similar problem once upon a time, but it wasn't one of a protagonist being unwittingly very similar to another one you weren't aware of, it was one of the premise and characteristic being eerily similar to another thing.

Just to clarify and bring in some context, most of the plots of my deariest stories began as games in my infancy. Along with my brother we developped plots and characerization, we even had an Universal Cast Adaptor of our own. Then Pokemon happened...

As with everything else we started a 'series' imitating it, we cast our stable of characters as a Generation Xerox in a world were these strange animals suddenly showed up, but we went further. Why not -instead of them fighting for the lulz- make them save the world? and why not get the pet owners to take part into the action too? Like dragon ball but with mons!! oh and the animals can access super modes instead of evolving, and they are temporal, so they can become like ultra big and menacing and the go back to being small and cute after the fact. (this all happened between 1997 and 1999) kind of liked it all and told myself "One day I'm going to tell this story, it has potential. All of the pets are competely original so why not?". Then at the turn of the millenia Digimon happened. The resemblance was uncanny to say the least...

I noticed one plotline in my work resembles Twilight only with genders flipped: he is average guy and she is mystical, cold harted, reality defying but OOOH so pwettifful Fair Folk. So I'm naturally exploiting similaraties for all their worth. It's one of thosse cases when Dating Catwoman goes to hell.

Before I Kindle-d it, whenever I described the premise of a short novel I wrote to anyone, both on and offline, they immediately compared it to a novel series I haven't read and have no desire to read. They always did this as a "compliment" based upon a very bare-bare bones basic description of my story, and it was for an aspect of my story that is *pretty frickin' common in world mythology.*

My response was to generally try to ignore them, knowing they hadn't actually *read* my work and seemed to be latching onto "the last cool thing they read" rather than knowledgeable about how common a certain theme is in fantasy. However, I'd also get a little miffed because of that.

I know enough *about* the series people referenced having read about it on TV Tropes, Wiki, having got descriptions from people, and, nope... thematically, my book and that series of books couldn't be any *more* different, particularly because my book is very PRO-spirituality and faith while the thing people like to compare my premise to is notoroius for being, at least in part, an anti-faith screed (the principle reason why I refuse to read it). The basic plots and characters (of my book) and what I've read/troped of the famous work also couldn't be any more different. Apparently, mention "guardian bond-animals" to people and all they can think about is... something that doesn't fit what my version of the age-old myth/fantasy theme is at all.

People never seem to guess that the base inspiration for my book actually came from guardian fairies of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time... and of course, if I try to mention "The Ghatti's Tale" to them, nobody knows what that is. It's always the latest, popular thing.

...I'll admit, your description of your work has me intrigued. You mention having "Kindle-d" it—do you have a link for it? (Erm... ideally a non-Kindle link, since I don't have an e-reader... ^^; )

In all fairness to those that you describe, in at least some cases it reads as though the comparisons are not entirely without merit ("has similarities but leans in the opposite direction on a central point" is—to me, at least—an interesting comparison); at the least comparisons along the lines of "oh, that reminds me of..." seem reasonable.

However, if they're saying "oh, that sounds just like" then I can indeed see your point, I believe. :/

I'll confess that I don't think that I've played any of the Zelda games, nor heard of the other work that you reference (although I intend to go and look it up presently ^_^).

For myself, I've noticed works coming out that have borne similarities to my own (usually unreleased ^^; ) works; my response has, I think, depended somewhat on how I've felt at the time about the work of mine in question (if I'm feeling pessimistic about it I might be tempted to give it up) and how closely they compare. For the most part I think that I've tended to be able to find enough differences to once again think that the work of mine was no less worth releasing than before.

(...Not that deciding so has always helped much—I have a somewhat bad track record with regards to releasing my work... ^^;; )

edited 4th May '14 4:15:39 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

Alright, since it's been requested:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HMGYHTK

(I was feeling shy because I shared an experimental comic on here only to get slammed royally with... constructive criticism... but of the type that means I need to overhaul...) As for the novel? I've edited it and had it edited for me many times already and am kind of sick of dealing with it. If I do a Second Edition, it will be a while.

Anyway, my novel's basic plot as posted on the site:

[i]In a future world a young girl named Mira lives in the town of Rust, which makes its living from scavenging the remains of the past. Discontent to remain there without having at least one great adventure in her life, she summons a Guardian from the Heavens to protect her on a journey to her nation's capital city. Guardians are spiritual companions that only come to those summon them with earnest hearts and can only be seen by those that believe in them.

Mira is given Lazarus, a huge horned lion with dragon's wings. She and her new companion travel with her best friend, a boy named Noel, and his common wildcat Guardian. Along their way, they meet people who do not see what they see and learn that they could lose sight of even what they know in a world in which perception is everything. [/i]

So, my Guardians... they are kind of like guardian angels. They're the kind of thing that's been in mythology and fantasy since forever. However, whenever I try to explain that aspect to someone (less comprehensively than above)... you guessed it, I get "Have you read Phillp Pullman?"

No, I have not. Not in entirety, anyway, just a few passages of "His Dark Materials" posted online, and it's been enough to keep me from reading his works out of highly personal squicks. A friend of mine shared a passage about the Afterlife and Cessation of Existence that she thought was beautifully written to entice me into the books, but it just squicked me out. At this point in my life, I have no certainty in faith, I don't know if Heaven is a "real" thing, but I don't like being told that I *must* believe that a soul dissolving into nothing is the "most beautiful thing that can happen to it." In my eyes, Death has beauty as an equalizer, but individually, it is tragic. Fine with me if you believe otherwise, but that passage was one that showed me "this isn't for me, no matter how wonderfully written."

(I actually get squicked over any instance where it's not left to wonder and souls are *expressly* dissolved. I'm a big fan of Kid Icarus: Uprising and when the plot started talking about "fading" or being "eaten" as the fate of some souls in that universe, I just went "ACK!" But, at least there, the good guys and gods treat it as tragic)!

Eh, personal squick-rants aside...

Anyway, the plot of my book is as above. It's fairly simplistic. My characters' adventure is just them going to see a city, getting caught up in situations that cause them to question their faith and to deal with moral dilemmas, all with their Guardians. It's actually sort of contemplative... not completely quiet. A serial killer figures into the plot at one point.

Whereas, everything I've read concerning HDM is that it's an epic high fantasy with dimensional goings-on and characters have to save the world by killing God.

The two match in neither plots or scope. I assure anyone who's tempted to go "Ooh!" and point at me that my Guardians are *not* people's souls and actually kind of stand in as objects of faith in a world that lacks a concept of "God" in the manner that we have. (Though they aren't worshiped, either). You have to believe in them to see them. Bad things can actually happen to them if their person stops believing. The protagonist's Guardian basically says that he's Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane .

It's like people forgot about all the bond-dragons and guardian fairies and bond...cats... and telepathic steeds and good old guardian angels and other things that no specific author owns when I tried to share my plot...

It's annoyed me a lot. Also made me worry that I did unintentional rip-off somehow,but I don't think I did.

It sounds interesting. ^_^

I'm not sure that it's quite my style, but I'm glad that I asked, at the least.

(I'm tempted to feel a little sorry for Noel: some people get bonded with dragons, or fairies, or dragon-winged horned lions, and he gets... an ordinary wildcat. Don't misunderstand me, I'm very fond of cats; the other options just sound cooler still. :P)

Given that more-detailed description it really doesn't invoke Philip Pullman, to my mind. Your bond creatures do remind me of something, I think, but I'm not quite managing to find it.