forum How do you avoid copying?

Started September 15, 2020 by Corvus

tune

I'm currently writing a story that falls into the "YA vampire romance" category. I'm really excited to write it because one of my favorite book series is in the same genre! But I'm really worried I'm going to be accidentally influenced by the books, without even meaning to. How do you all make sure you don't accidentally do something too similar to another source? I know it's impossible to be completely original, but I don't want anyone to think I'm just making a rip-off version of a book from the 90s. Do any of you have any tips to avoid being too similar without realizing it?

I'm not super familiar with YA vampire romances, so I don't know if this will be helpful or not but even though that concept has been done quite a bit, there's still a lot of ways you can make it your own. It's kind of inevitable that there might be some similarities between your story and others in its genre, but I think as long as you're not blatantly plagiarizing you should be ok. People might still think that you're ripping off another book, but that's kind of more on them.