Reasons & Realities 13

Changes are Good

     The old adage that says that nothing is written in stone. I think it should be placed as the number one rule for all writer.

I know I’m guilty of being an idea or storyline pack rat and I’m both proud and ashamed of this fact, but I'm not alone. For those who have spent hours, days, weeks, months, and (yes) years on a project only to learn that what you were writing is already out there and now have to give it up, I know how you feel. And, please don’t use that old tired line of what is old will one day be new again. No one knows if that wheel will ever come around again, let alone when. I’ve learn this harsh rule when it comes to book titles.

     I had made a mistake and put the “Short Stories From the Heart” title out before I had published and someone beats me to it. I know what you are saying. If you had used the name and published it on the internet long before the other person had used it and published their book before you that you should fight it. I’ve learn that things happen for a reason and bad things happen to good people. You may win or think you have won, but in the end, all you have done was given yourself prof that you are incapable of blazing your own trail in the light, but lurk in the shadows as someone who can only trail behind others. As they say, if you’re not the lead dog, the scenery will never change. As for me, when things like this and learning that the story I’m writing isn’t as I had hoped or too closely resembling someone else work (None Plagiarism), I just save what I can if any and go off in a new direction. Some of you might say your definition of change and bad luck are very similar and I would admit you’re right. However, I’ve always looked at my glass as half full and never half empty. For me, change is good because it causes you to narrow your focus, change your prospective, and reinvent the wheel. Let me explain what I mean.

Narrow Your Focus
     One of the reasons for similarities is due to generalities. If you paint the story of the world you are creating with a wide brush, you are practically guaranteed to overlap with something that already exists. Take for instance, boy meets girl. You can’t get more general than that. Well you can, but let’s just stick with this. By narrowing your focus to incorporate physical and verbal individuality, the brush narrows and the description or similarities lessen. Let just say;

      He had always had a problem with his height. Standing five feet three does very little in the way of standing out from the crowd. Actually, standing in a crowd practically insures being seen at all has become an even bigger problem. Adding the fact that your hair looks as if it’s on fire on a cloudy day and the freckles that had always bothered you almost insures even if you are noticed, it won’t be for long. Of course that is until someone notices you bump into a girl in a green dress and yells out Jack, watch out for that beanstalk. She’s the center of the girls basketball team and stand six feet two. She just happens to be wearing high heels, always looking down because she is self-conscious of her height, and smiling because you are the first boy to notice her. What makes this first meeting so special is because you go to and all boy school, she goes to an all-girls school, and this is the first Sadie Hawkins day dance in both school's history and the first song being played is slow. 

     This is still a boy meets girl story, but now that the focus is narrow, it is unique and so much more. Even something as changing your prospective can alter a story in such a way that it becomes something totally different.

Change Your Prospective
     You might already have an idea of saving your work that you’ve discovered is similar by changing the overall prospective. You might say; “But even if you do this, the story is still the same.” Actually, no it isn’t. Take the story of boy meets girl. This meeting is written by the boy’s prospective. Would the story be the same if it was written by the girls prospective, a third party prospective, a child reading an old love letter written by his mother or father describing the first time they had met and how they had fallen in love at first sight. You can even go as far as using a narrative voice of some future time describing events of the past.  

     “Good morning class. Today we are going to discuss the mating ritual of 3500 years ago. There was a gathering that was once called Sadie Hawkins. In place of our current system of the DNA Compatible Matrix, young men would wait to be recognized by young ladies to begin the ritual dance of mating. As you can see by this rendering, difference in height of the young man and a young woman was not a factor, nor was other attributes like hair or skin type. The young man pictured here is approximately 162 centimeters with bright red hair and the young girl in the green dress is clearly over 189 centimeters tall.” 

     Is this the same story? Yes, but with a different prospective. But, what if even after you’ve narrowed your focus and have changed your prospective and the similarities are still there? At this point you may need to reinvent the wheel.

Reinvent the Wheel
     In order to reinvent the wheel you must give up something substantial in order to make this work. What you are actually doing is making a drastic change to your story that will completely alter nearly all aspects of your work. It is still a wheel. It is still a circle that has a point that returns after a complete revolution. It is something that started from you and ends with you. Let’s say you take your story and cut it in two. You use the opening to the half-way point and from there to the end it’s all new and completely unlike what was once there. You can also flip this that the first half is new but the ending remains the same. Either way, one half of the wheel is old and one half is new. It is different, but there will be too much of the follow the leader at the beginning or at the end. Let’s say you cut it in three and only change the middle or the beginning and the end. Your chance of following an established trail alters more, but you want it to be just a bit more unique. Cut it in four or more and go old, new, old, and new (and more). You can also change the way some of your character's appearance, behavior, how they speak, and even their genders. The main thing you are trying to do is save as much of the old work to lessen the amount of new work you have to write to fill in the gaps so that the change is good. SD

Illustration; The Accidental Couple (That Fool) 2009

Illustration; Yours, Mine & Ours 2005

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