: Re: Is it so bad to end up with a "done before" plot? I'm not delusional about the nature of the science fiction novel I'm (very) slowly working on. A brief run down might be as follows: Set

@Jamie945

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There are no new plots. You can't be original. You wouldn't want to be. True originality, if it existed, would be nearly unbearable.

The thing is to take an old story that's been told a million times, and tell it again. But tell it so brilliantly that it seems like an entirely new story that no one has ever heard before.

In your case, don't just make your story sort of like 2001. Actually retell 2001, but so imaginatively that it's unrecognizable.

People say about a book or movie, Oh it was crap because it was just a ripoff of this or that. That is such a weak and lazy criticism and it amounts to nothing. Of course it's a ripoff. What isn't?

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