: What if my story seems too similar to a particular movie? I'm writing a story about fictional beings who have the power of the four elements. Only very few, very rare people posses the power

Vote Up Vote Down

If you're story exceeds genre, becomes more than the sum of its parts, then it is original, regardless of how similar it may be.

When I'm reading a story, I'm not comparing it to all the stories I've ever read: I'm reading your story.

The "plot" that you say is similar is barely relevant. There will be thousands of stories written similar to it before 2100. Just focus on making your story the best it can be.

If you do justice to your world, and aren't just pinching convenient plot points from similar media and hobbling them amateurely together, then I think you'll be pleased with the result and others will be too.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

Whether or not people will accuse you of stealing ideas from Avatar depends largely on what you do with those ideas. So long as you implement the ideas differently, you'll be okay.

An example:

My character is from another planet (his home planet blew up). He crash landed on Earth when he was a baby, and was subsequently raised
on Earth. Although he's an alien, he looks completely human and no
one looks twice at him; until he uses his super strength and speed and
starts flying around. Fortunately, he uses his powers for good.

Am I talking about Superman, or Goku? They have the exact same character premise, but two different stories. Their stories are sufficiently different enough that neither one is seen as a copycat of the other.

Besides, Avatar is hardly unique. In the anime Naruto, most ninjas can only use one or two elemental forces; it is rare for a ninja to able to use all of them. Again, same premise, two different stories.

I wouldn't worry about it.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I'll approach this from a different angle than the two great answers already here. Let's assume that yes, your story is too similar to an existing, fairly well-known property. How do you fix that?

1) Address the root cause. Figure out the story you're trying to tell, and how your similar aspects tell that story. Do you like the idea of balancing pairs of forces? The idea that nature exists in sets of four? Playing with the four ancient elements? Figure out what part appeals to you — get down to the nub of the thing. Could you instead use the Four Humours? The four winds? Name your power aspects after the four suits in a deck of cards? (and not everyone uses the same deck. French and American decks are hearts/diamonds/clubs/spades, Italian and Spanish decks are cups/coins/cudgels/swords, Swiss-German decks are roses/bells/acorns/shields.) Invent your own suits from an in-universe deck and have the characters use the suits as nicknames for the powers? Use Tarot cards with major and minor houses?

2) Rework the problem symptoms. If your problem is that you have four Powers, and one person has All Four Powers, well, why? What's the story you're trying to tell about this person? Does it have to be one person with all four powers? Could you have a gang of four or a Five-Person Band (WARNING: TV TROPES LINK) working in tandem? Could the powers be in artifacts and the character has to collect a series of MacGuffins instead of having innate abilities?

This can obviously be altered to fit whatever your specific issues are. My point is, if your reader radar is redlining into Fanfic, and you don't want to write fanfic, you need to find the heart of your story first and then work outward from that. If your story is so closely bound up with the original property that you can't separate it, then go ahead and write the fanfic, or the pastiche. The writing will be practice and you can tell some other story once this one is out of your system.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I feel that yes, there is a very close resemblance to Avatar: The Last Airbender. However, I could also name several books in which the idea of elemental magic is used. All of them are different, so if you can make yours different, it will be fine. Perhaps you could change:

The setting.
The ideas/story goal.
The 'nation' thing.

Among other things from the film.

To be honest, so many people use elemental magic that there's no way the creators of Avatar could possibly find the time to sue them (even if they could). It's fine. People won't think you stole the idea because the 'four elements' thing is one from very ancient civilizations.

(0)