on originality in fanfic:

the-steve-bucky-ship:

flippyspoon:

iwritevictuuri:

pencilwalla:

i’ve seen a lot of fanfiction authors, including myself, worry about the redundancy of our work, either because we feel it’s been done before or someone more popular beat us to a certain plot point we thought no one else had thought of or just because writing is hard and other writers are scary.

1. fanfiction is rooted in canon, and everyone is working from the same canon you are. even if one person is writing a bakery au and the other is writing a serial killer space opera, the point of origin means there might still be elements in common. it’s okay. (this goes double for canon aus, because the closer to the canon your au is, the fewer elements there are to vary.)

2. in larger fandoms, there are so many fics! so many. the sheer number of authors means that sometimes people are going to have the same idea. you don’t read one fic and then never read any fic like it, right? just do your thing.

3. fanfic isn’t being written in a vacuum. surrounding the original canon is the matrix of fandom memes and headcanons and metas. the ones that become popular take on a life of their own. all of the other authors are exposed to the same content you are, so don’t worry if you both borrow the same things.

4. if you took two authors and gave them the same outline, with the same plot points, and told them to write, they’d still probably produce distinct works. no one can write the story in your head but you. keep writing!

ALL OF THIS

also like let’s be real, a lot of us want to read 50 versions of very similar stories lol.

This! I guarantee that it doesn’t matter that you think “popular author” has already done X trope perfectly, if I am a sucker for that trope I still want to read your fic. I want a bilion different variations of that trope. I can’t get enough of it.