049: Does Your Book Idea Need to Be Original?
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Does your book idea need to be original?
Hi, friends. This week's episode is kind of diving into a topic that's come up on social media I've done a few tiktoks about this, I think and there's been some good discussion about this concept. And it's this idea that a lot of new writers have when they think of writing a book, or first start writing a book early on, where they think that they have to come up with this book, this idea that is completely 100% original, like a book like this has never been written before, the topics they want to explore have never been written about before. There's never ever been characters like this before, that they're doing something, they feel like they have to do something completely unique and revolutionary, and never seen before, in order for their book to be successful in order for them to, you know, bother writing their book.
And that's just not the case. That's just not true. I think that puts a lot of pressure on writers for a few reasons. I mean, first of all, it's impossible for you to know every single book that has been written in the genre that you are writing in or want to write in. You can do some kind of market research in the form of looking at other books that might be similar to yours, looking at books in your genre, look at what's popular. But you're never going to be able to read every single book that's out there or like be aware of every single book that's out there. So it's kind of an exercise in futility to think, well, I just have to make sure I have to make sure that there's no other book like this, that's out there. That's just not possible. And it's not a good use of your time to do that either. You know, you don't want to be spinning your wheels and going down this rabbit hole of trying to prove that there's no other book like yours out there. And it also puts a lot of pressure on you because you feel like well, I can't go in this blog direction, or I can't have the character do this, or I can't assign this personality trait to the author or whatever, because it's been done before. Again, that's just so much pressure to put on yourself. And I just don't think that's the right angle.
I don't think that's the right approach to take when you're thinking about coming up with an idea for your book. Yeah, my so my own kind of, actually, what made me create the content that I did around this is I was thinking about my querying process. And I was thinking about what made me decide to query my first agent that I had the one that I ended up signing with, when I was looking at her, you know, I was doing my research and the querying process, and I was looking at all these different agents who i thought might be good fits. And I was reading, you know, doing some research on them. And I had pulled up her listing on Curtis Brown's website and was reading about her. And she said, she wanted to see something old in a fresh way, something old in a new way. And I really thought about that. And I thought about my book, you know, there were so many themes and kind of ideas in my first book that were not unique. I wrote a story about three different generations of women and you know, family dynamics, and alcoholism and none of those things are unique. There are lots of of novels that deal with mother daughter relationships. There are lots of novels that deal with family secrets, there are lots of novels that deal with alcohol abuse or alcoholism. And so it wasn't like I was writing something completely novel and unique. But I did feel like my angle that I was writing about this stuff in what was a little bit more unique. And part of the reason that it was unique is because it's me writing it, right that's like, I'm bringing my own experiences, I have my own writing voice that's going to make the book unique no matter what I write about.
So anyways, that kind of stuck in my mind, like something old in a new way. And I really started thinking about that as just, you know, as I started working with more writers and hearing from people who wanted to write a book, but weren't sure about their idea. And I discovered that this is something that a lot of writers sort of panic about at the beginning. Or they worry that like, you know, oh, there's so many books that are written about this thing. Like what what makes mine special, like why would people pick up my book You know, and if you think about genres, there are a lot of things that come up again and again, tropes in certain genres. And if we think about like romance for example, how many romance novels are there with different tropes, like enemies to lovers, friends to lovers.
And real quick, let me just kind of clarify what a trope means, in case you've heard that word thrown around, you're not really sure exactly what that means. Basically, it means some kind of device or element or something that appears in a book in books over and over again. Again, like I just gave the example of enemies to lovers, enemies to lovers is something that comes up a lot this this idea of two main characters who start out as enemies or really dislike each other strongly. And then over the course of the book, they, you know, something happens, they're thrown together, they start to realize their feelings are changing for each other. And then by the end of the book, they end up together, that's kind of a classic trope. And it's something that comes up a lot in romance. So you could easily be a new romance author and say, like, Well, why bother writing and enemies lovers story because there's so many of them out there already. But the thing about tropes is that readers really like tropes. As a starting off as a jumping off point like using when writers use tropes as inspiration. Romance, readers, are familiar with enemies to lovers and they love it. I can speak for myself as a reader hear that that's, I love enemies to lovers. I love those kinds of stories. So you know, the fact that those concepts, the fact that that comes up again and again in romance shouldn't be something that prevents you from doing it. With tropes, it's a good idea to use those, those ideas that that loose idea as a jumping off point and inspiration for your book. But then to put, you know, obviously, your own unique spin on it your own voice, your own unique characters that you come up with, the situation is going to be slightly different. The obstacle that that prevents the two characters from getting together that they have to overcome is going to be different. So you're going to have all of these different elements in your story, even if the trope is similar to other books that are out there.
And I also think about this a lot in terms of trends in publishing, where different genres just seem to have a lot of like trends that come and go, a really great example that I know I've talked about on the podcast before is young adult fantasy for a while it was vampires, and there were so many vampire stories, and then it was like, dystopian, kind of apocalyptic novels. And then it was right now it's like Fae, a lot of Fae novels. And readers love those. There's a huge market for those kinds of books. So you could look at that and say, Well, I'm writing a novel that has some fae characters in it. So why bother because there's so many books out there that have this already. But remember, just the fact that it's you writing it means it's going to be unique, you're going to put your own spin on it, you're going to have your own experiences, your own writing, style and voice that's going to make your book different than other books.
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I talk sometimes about this idea of like a unique selling proposition or a unique value proposition which is a business term that basically means what it is What is it about you and your business that will make someone pick you over the competition? And you can kind of apply it to books as well. And I mentioned that only just as something to consider if it's helpful, I don't think you have to spend a ton of time like really figuring out what your USP is like, what's your unique thing, what's what's what's different about this book. If you've read some in your genre, which hopefully you have, you could probably articulate like, at least one reason how yours is slightly different. You know, maybe you have read a lot in your genre, and you've identified something that you really don't like about all those books. Or maybe you've identified a character or a type of character that you really want to see in a book, but you're just not seeing. So that's a great way to say like, oh, well, well, my book, I did it differently in my book. And so then it's really easy to identify what's different about yours. But even if you can't like the fact that you wrote it is enough, you're again, you're, you're, it's unique, because it's you.
So and just a an important kind of disclaimer here, when I'm saying when we're talking about the concept of the book being 100%, original and unique, and like never seen before in literature, of course, the book has to be unique in the sense that you're not copying other books, it's never a good idea to read a lot in your genre and kind of copy and paste from a lot of different books, and then just kind of make your book a compilation of of the formula or like what you're seeing in other books, and then just be like, well, this is going to sell because it's based off of all these other books in the genre. You know, you you want to have an original idea and a sense that you've come up with it. And it's not just copying from another story that you've read, that's, that's really important. You can certainly read to get inspiration, you can read to, again, kind of get a pulse on the market, what kinds of books are being published?
You know, and there are some writers out there who choose not? Well, a few, they go about this a few different ways. Either they don't read it all, while they're drafting. Or they don't read in their genre that they're writing in while they're writing their book, just so that they don't have outside influence. And they don't accidentally kind of copy something that they're reading, I think that's fine. Every writer is different that works for some people, it would not work for me to just not read while I'm drafting. You know, I, I think maybe I would, I'm more likely to not read books that are similar to mine when I'm drafting. Like, if I pick up happen to be at the library or a bookstore, and I pick up a book that has a lot of similar themes to my like, I might put it back and be like, Okay, let me just avoid that one, till I'm done writing my book. So, you know, that's certainly something you can play around with if you find yourself really easily influenced by other books that you're reading, but it's kind of a decision that every writer has to make.
So I hope that this episode gives you some permission to just write the book that you want to write, and to not worry that, you know, Oh, it's too similar to other books. This isn't something that's completely revolutionary. You know, it's okay. There's nothing wrong with writing about something that people have read before and doing it in a slightly different new way. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. And if you're listening to this, and you're like, Nope, I want to push the boundaries of fiction, I want to do something crazy. I do want to do something that's never before been seen. Go ahead. Go ahead. That's totally fine. You know, you don't need my permission to do that. But I'll go ahead and say if that's what you want to do, if that's important to you, if you want to do something really experimental and different, then sure, go for that. But, again, there's nothing wrong with with writing something that has been written about before. It's okay. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in.