"Ryan Mathews" <mathews1@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

    How many have people out ther come up this wonderful and unique
story or plot point, and later found out that, while for you it's new,
elsewhere it's been done to death?

Sadly, the only way to avoid this is to write in universes that are 
not "over-trafficked".  I've never written a RANMA fiction for this 
reason.  I had an idea for one, but I felt there couldn't possibly be 
any RANMA ideas I could think of that hadn't been written by 
*someone*, and I was right.

Well... that's not the ONLY way to avoid it, though it certainly works
and I wouldn't fault anyone for doing it that way.

Another way is to pay enough attention to what's out there that you more
or less know what's being done. I find that doing a lot of C&C helps in
this regard. Many times I've read people's stories and thought, "I
would've done this differently," because of some difference in artistic
vision or character conception or whatever with the author. Thus is a
new idea born -- or at least a new spin on an old idea, which is just as
good.

Personally, I'm not about to run out of Ranma ideas anytime soon -- in
fact, I've got a backlog of 'em -- whereas I have zero ideas right now
for Urusei Yatsura fics (for example). So, to each their own. We all
have to write the stories that we feel deep down ought to be told -- and
to choose whatever anime/manga series or other venue works for it.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics