I had thought long and hard about the main character for my London mystery. Brilliant! A character that covers up his secret identity by acting like a blubbering idiot. Well, I was informed by a good friend that it had been done before in the classic The Scarlet Pimpernel. Great minds think alike I guess.
This brings up an interesting point. Should we, as writers, totally throw away a novel idea when we discover that it is similar to another books? I would say...yes and no. In my case, it was only a character. He can be remolded. Also, in my case, the character was almost identical to that of an extremely popular book, a classic. If your plot lines up with a classic that is very popular (or any really popular book) try to throw a twist in. A few things the other books doesn't have. You don't have to throw away all your work...just rework it a little.
If we worried to much about copying another book or movie, we wouldn't get anything written. This seems to be a huge problem for some people I have talked with. They have a unique fear of being a copy-cat. I say, Don't worry about it.
With all that to say, it's back to the old, familiar character drawing board. To bad, he was going to be funny. A little reworking though will make him stronger a character.
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