ARG! (my shiny idea just got tarnished)

I wrote a memoir that is suprisingly close to A Bronx Tale. In fact, the girl is from East New York Brooklyn (my hometown) I considered dumping it when I saw the movie.

Meh, I wrote it anyway

On the plus side, there's no book attached to the project. Maybe it will actually increase interest in Red Riding Hood.

These things do happen in bunches

Red Riding Hood + werewolves = The 10th Kingdom

Not the same tone as the link in the original post, I'm certain, but the concept has occurred before.

Cyia, consider the timing. By the time your story ends up on the market, you might be able to cash in on interest generated by this movie.

TheIT said:

Red Riding Hood + werewolves = The 10th Kingdom

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Mmmmm. Scott Cohen. Wolf. Perfect.

I started reading the script* which Leonardo thinks he wrote and it's a good straight up horror story with historical feminism and teen romance. I'm a little sad some idiot producers thought the pixie dust approach would work here, but I guess it's to be expected.
As said before, brace yourself for a flood of werewolf stories (I'm seeing three on the tracking board I subscribe to, which monitors scripts sold in Hollywood).

*ETA yes it's the same per imdB: The Girl With The Red Riding Hood by David L. Johnson. Which makes it what, a mystical horror version of the Millenium Trilogy? j/k

Years ago, a friend and I came up with the concept of a science fiction story set on a living spaceship that had been turned into a prison. Then Farscape came out.

So much for THAT idea.

Mind you, Farscape and the story (Valparaiso) had a lot of differences. The ships in Valparaiso were symbiotic; they died without a crew, and once you'd been bonded to one, you couldn't leave. But humanity didn't bond well with them so their crews tended to die after a year or so aboard. As a result, mankind used condemned prisoners to crew the ships and mine the asteroids and gas giants for minerals needed on resource-starved earth. (Given that earth was ruled by a rather repressive totalitarian regime, the prisoners were in large part political.) The ships weren't sentient, really... no moreso than a simple animal, so the government basically attached control units to them and zapped them to make them go where they wanted; the crew was just there for the symbiosis, to keep the ship alive.

In effect, it was a very pragmatic form of execution. Put the inconvenient political prisoners on the ships to keep the ships alive, let the symbiosis kill them off. Execution and public service all in one!

Then, of course, one crew survived long enough to discover the process that was killing the other crews was, in fact, the ships attaining sentience. And thus the Valparaiso (the ship) wasn't under the control of the government anymore; she, and her crew, had their own ideas. BEGIN REBELLION!

Still, despite the differences, the key concept was 'prisoners on an enslaved, living starship manage to free themselves and end up opposing the repressive regime that put them there!' -- which does boil down pretty much to what Farscape was.

Le sigh. So I do sympathize!

I would suggest just going with what you are writing. An idea is an idea and recyclable.

Kathleen42 said:

Mmmmm. Scott Cohen. Wolf. Perfect.

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Oh, yeah. Guess who helped inspire my MC?

AlexPiper said:

Mind you, Farscape and the story (Valparaiso) had a lot of differences. The ships in Valparaiso were symbiotic; they died without a crew, and once you'd been bonded to one, you couldn't leave. But humanity didn't bond well with them so their crews tended to die after a year or so aboard. As a result, mankind used condemned prisoners to crew the ships and mine the asteroids and gas giants for minerals needed on resource-starved earth. (Given that earth was ruled by a rather repressive totalitarian regime, the prisoners were in large part political.) The ships weren't sentient, really... no moreso than a simple animal, so the government basically attached control units to them and zapped them to make them go where they wanted; the crew was just there for the symbiosis, to keep the ship alive.

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Oh man, your story sounds like it had quite a few similarities to Megan Lindholm's Alien Earth, in which symbiotic living spaceships are piloted by aliens trapped inside of them. The ships were, likewise, about as sentient as animals, and were starved and tortured into obedience.

It also bears a bit of a similarity to the kid's show Space Cases, about a living spaceship bonded to a group of teenagers who form its crew. Both of these predated Farscape.

Point being, everything's been done before. I'd venture that this is particularly true if you're doing a fairy tale retelling--I mean, your very premise has been literally done before, increasing the likelihood for derivative works. What counts is what you do with the story!

I have an unpublished short story that is, on a macro level, exactly like Percy Jackson and the Lightning Catcher. And I wrote it about three years before those books were even a gleam in a publisher's eyes.

Cyia said:

One of my WIP is a Gothic take on Red Riding Hood, and what do I see today?
THIS:

http://blog.movies.yahoo.com/blog/161-leonardo-dicaprio-gives-red-riding-hood-the-twilight-treatment

Mine has no werewolves, but the fact that this movie is described as a Gothic Red Riding Hood still annoys me!

<--- dissolves into incoherent ranting rage.

<---- cries a little

<---- feels like doing this

(Yes, I am aware that there's nothing preventing me from finishing my story, but I feel like whinging a bit.)

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Have you ever seen a Brit Flick called The Company of Wolves, based on a short story by Angela Carter?

A Gothic take on Red Riding Hood isn't anything new. The story was pretty damn Gothic to start with.

gothicangel said:

Have you ever seen a Brit Flick called The Company of Wolves, based on a short story by Angela Carter?

A Gothic take on Red Riding Hood isn't anything new. The story was pretty damn Gothic to start with.

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Gods dammit you stole my answer!

Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle. *nods sagely*

SusanL said:

I would suggest just going with what you are writing. An idea is an idea and recyclable.

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I agree with Susan. Write your story.

I read a while ago, someone wrote:

'Every story has been told. It's about YOUR fresh take on it.'

I try to keep that in mind.

You have an idea? You love your idea?

Go write your idea, because it's not the same idea they had.

It's Cyia's idea, and written by Cyia it will be.

Yeah, I was sitting at home, laid up with a broken leg, in the middle of writing the second book in my series about a library that holds all kinds of famous ancient artifacts, and a girl who ends up keeping the library safe, who get the title of Librarian.

And then guess who shows up on my TV? Noah Wylie and his "Librarian".

My artifacts are from ancient gods, and the first one was full of Greek mythology - yeah, I see you over there, Percy Jackson.

Meh. Kept on writing. Working on getting the third book out, writing first draft of the fourth.

Percy is finished and Noah has stopped making those movies. I get a lot of the overflow from Percy fans, and Amazon puts my books on the "Those who bought this also bought", and "Frequently Bought Together" WITH Rick Riordan's books. Once Percy was done, Amazon now pairs my two series books with THE RED PYRAMID.

I could do worse.

Keep writing.

Cyia said:

Oh, I have no intention of not finishing the book. The timing just burns me. Sort of like how Twilight reduced every vampire book to "oh, you write vampires because of Twilight" status.

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I go through this every time a new werewolf book comes out.

Well done, all. I was so thrilled to be writing my first TV pilot when I realized Ugly Betty had pretty much said what I was trying to say (the season where she moves to NYC). Same thing with Cowboys And Aliens. So I'm going to sit on those projects some more until I hatch a heart-rendingly unique and catchy twist on them. That's how you gotta approach that situation, because it happens all the time.

PS Finished "The Girl With The Red Riding Hood". Loved the Witchfinder General, more than Red actually (Gary Oldman will play him ) The final twist rocked, and the romance will appeal to sappy romantics out there.

I can definitely sympathize. Once, I even had to give up a scene I was planning to write because I discovered a story that was already a bit similar and had a scene very close to what I was currently writing.

But when it comes to overall ideas like this, it can be disheartening, but at least you can still write them and make them your own. When a story I want to write bears some similarities to what's been done before, I usually make a point to distinguish my story in some way, but I don't give up on it.

The nice thing about stories based on fairy tales and other myths is that there are often already a lot of versions, and you're writing something based on something that's been done before, anyway. So your story isn't totally "original" (though the details might be), but it's no less original than this movie. You and DiCaprio both got inspiration from the same source.

mario_c said:

I started reading the script* which Leonardo thinks he wrote

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When did he say that?

My plans to write the tale of a female assassin out for revenge on her former boss after he tries to have her killed were quashed when Kill Bill hit theaters. One of these days, I’m going to say “to hell with it” and write that novel.