This has been a very frustrating topic for me for a very
long time. It’s the moment when you realize your awesome idea has already been
done. Yes it’s true there are very few original ideas and a lot of the world’s
stories are just versions of classic tales in one way or another but that’s not
what I’m talking about. I’m talking about seeing your exact idea stripped from
your brain and shown before you in a movie trailer or a back of the book blurb.
A few years ago a friend of mine and I were challenging each
other with writing assignments to try to get the sparks flying again. We had an
idea for an assignment that we were going to hold on to for a while; write a
modern spin of a classic fairy tale or Disney tale. We hadn’t officially given
each other the assignment but one day I had a firecracker of an idea and I started
plotting in my head.
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| I just love this fox. |
A prep school kid named Rob is a social outcast and realizes
he’s not the only one. In effort to help his friends whose parents are scraping
to pay for school he hacks into the school’s financial database to lower their
tuition fees and raises the rich/popular kids’ costs.
It’s Robin Hood with a modern twist right?! I was so excited
when this idea came to me and I couldn’t wait to start writing it. I wasn’t in
a rush. I started figuring out my names and characters. Who would be my Maid
Marion, Friar Tuck, etc. I had a little notebook going with some of my kernels
and then one day I turned on the TV.
I believe it was on the Hallmark Channel that day, a movie
called Robin of Locksley. Here’s the synopsis :
After his parents win
the lottery Robin McAllister is sent to the prestigious Locksley Hall. There he
experiences how the sons of the school's benefactors, John Prince and his
associates Warner and Gibson, are treated like royalty. Robin can't join
archery club, he gets in trouble when he stands up for himself, and his parents
are completely preoccupied with their new horse ranch. But it isn't until one
of the school's scholarship students, Tommy, is in a terrible accident that Rob
begins to take action against Prince, Warner, Gibson, and their sons. With a
little help from his two new friends, Will Scarlett and John Little, and the
ranch hand's daughter Marion, he electronically takes money from their company
accounts to put towards Tommy's medical bills. However, as the operations
become more costly and as a bubbling agent named Nottingham begins to close in on
him, Robin questions his own motives. (Written by Max Vaughn via IMDB).
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ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! How was this movie (made in 1996
starring Devon Sawa. It’s not even new!) even on TV at the exact time I’d been
pondering writing this story? How is it so similar?! I racked my brain trying
to think of whether or not I had somehow watched this movie during my childhood
and then managed to block it out so it could be my own original thought. I hadn’t.
Suddenly I was faced with a question. Do I write my version
or do I give it up? My version might’ve been a little edgier than this
wholesome after-school special but really how different could it be? The other
thing on my mind was how could I possible write the story now that my brain had
absorbed the plot of this movie?
Sadly I gave it up. I never wrote my Robin Hood take and
probably never will. I still get mad when I think about it but it’s a
phenomenon that may never go away. Maybe the universe shares a collective
unconscious and the ideas are floating out there for any one of us to grab and
claim as our own.
Maybe the idea seemed great because I actually had heard it
somewhere before. Either way it was a hard pill to swallow. A lesson learned
about when to give up on an idea no matter how bad you want it.
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