What's the ettiquette? Same theme, close title

[hipsteress]

Absolute newbie here.

I have a series of stories in my head about "step-twins", unrelated high-school seniors suddenly thrust together in a blended family. I thought I was being original, then I searched "step twins" here and found out there are already stories using that concept.

Is it impolite if I still go ahead and write the stories? If I have "step twins" in the titles? Is there a way to respectfully acknowledge that I am using a concept that has already been addressed?

Or am I overthinking all of this?

 

[GoldenMaia]

Absolute newbie here.

I have a series of stories in my head about "step-twins", unrelated high-school seniors suddenly thrust together in a blended family. I thought I was being original, then I searched "step twins" here and found out there are already stories using that concept.

Is it impolite if I still go ahead and write the stories? If I have "step twins" in the titles? Is there a way to respectfully acknowledge that I am using a concept that has already been addressed?

Or am I overthinking all of this?

Go for it! Everything has been done before. Your idea will not be the exact same. I have a 'Teacher's Pet' story and it looks like it's #71 (!!!!) If I'm reading it correct. Don't let anyone stop you. Write away!

 

[GoldenCojones]

Go for it! Everything has been done before. Your idea will not be the exact same. I have a 'Teacher's Pet' story and it looks like it's #71 (!!!!) If I'm reading it correct. Don't let anyone stop you. Write away!

I agree, go for it. Even if the plot is similar your unique writing style will make it a completely different story as long as you are not shamelessly plagiarizing another story. Good luck on your story and if you need some random dude you've never met to read it over and look for obvious misspellings, shoot me a PM.

 

[lovecraft68]

If we couldn't write stories in a theme already written there would be very few stories here

Its fine to write a premise someone else has, you just do the best you can to 'make it yours'

But I think I'm missing something....how can step siblings be twins?

 

[legerdemer]

If we couldn't write stories in a theme already written there would be very few stories here

....

But I think I'm missing something....how can step siblings be twins?

I agre. They say there's only 6-7 basic plots and everything that's been written is a variation on one of them. I haven't counted myself...

And... LOL ! Only way I can think of is twins separated at birth and put up for adoption separately, whose adoptive parents then marry. A bit convoluted...

 

[hipsteress]

If we couldn't write stories in a theme already written there would be very few stories here

Its fine to write a premise someone else has, you just do the best you can to 'make it yours'

But I think I'm missing something....how can step siblings be twins?

True, they're not actual, biological twins, because they have two entirely different sets of biological parents, and were gestated in and born from different women. But ... his mom married her dad, and the 18+ boy and the 18+ girl turned out to have been born on the same date in the same year. Coincidence!

Also, they coincidentally look somewhat alike, and have similar mannerisms. People see them together and naturally assume they are brother and sister. It turns into a running joke among their friends.

(I expect to turn them into archetypes with no fixed history, and no requirement of consistency from one story to the next. Their parents won't be the same people from story to story, and they can have many different first-time stories. Maybe in one of them it will turn out that their parents were secretly married to each other once already, long before, and they really ARE twins, separated at a young age.)

Possibly I should actually write the stories, instead of telling what will be in them.

 

[lovecraft68]

True, they're not actual, biological twins, because they have two entirely different sets of biological parents, and were gestated in and born from different women. But ... his mom married her dad, and the 18+ boy and the 18+ girl turned out to have been born on the same date in the same year. Coincidence!

Also, they coincidentally look somewhat alike, and have similar mannerisms. People see them together and naturally assume they are brother and sister. It turns into a running joke among their friends.

(I expect to turn them into archetypes with no fixed history, and no requirement of consistency from one story to the next. Their parents won't be the same people from story to story, and they can have many different first-time stories. Maybe in one of them it will turn out that their parents were secretly married to each other once already, long before, and they really ARE twins, separated at a young age.)

Possibly I should actually write the stories, instead of telling what will be in them.

Ah, I see

They are fraternal steps twins, not identical!

Hey. have at it and have fun doing it.

 

[The_Ghost_Man]

True, they're not actual, biological twins, because they have two entirely different sets of biological parents, and were gestated in and born from different women. But ... his mom married her dad, and the 18+ boy and the 18+ girl turned out to have been born on the same date in the same year. Coincidence!

Also, they coincidentally look somewhat alike, and have similar mannerisms. People see them together and naturally assume they are brother and sister. It turns into a running joke among their friends.

(I expect to turn them into archetypes with no fixed history, and no requirement of consistency from one story to the next. Their parents won't be the same people from story to story, and they can have many different first-time stories. Maybe in one of them it will turn out that their parents were secretly married to each other once already, long before, and they really ARE twins, separated at a young age.)

Possibly I should actually write the stories, instead of telling what will be in them.

See, I like it already.

Seriously, you're over thinking. There are so many similarly themed stories here, and for me one will often lead on to another.

Also, what about the twins having the same father, but to two different women he had sex with on the same night. He could only marry one, but when she was out of the picture, he tracked down and married the other one. Even better if the two women were sisters.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Yep, overthinking it. Give two people the same writing prompt and you will end up with two very different stories.

 

[Hypoxia]

Just make sure you use different names than the other step-twins stories. Unless yours is homage or satire -- then you can exploit characterizations etc. Just don't plagiarize. Much. If ya gotta steal, try to steal from different sources so nobody notices.

You'll see plot similarities on vast scales here at LIT and also title similarities. I knew that I had to name a story That's My Girl but I hadn't done a title search. Turns out that mine is the fourth with that title. [shrug] But my story ain't like the others, so big deal.

Yes, there are only so many possible themes, and so many possible basic ways to structure stories, but most non-copied stories are still unique. I may be the first with an incest story where human siblings are transformed into banana slugs but there's a rich tradition of transformation stories. I just like to take existing themes and twist them. My step-twins story will be totally unlike yoiurs. And I won't even need tentacles. Probably.

 

[Over_Red]

Forget about others' stories and go for it. Originality isn't in ideas themselves; it's in communicating them with a fresh perspective.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Go for it and write it! Don't worry about the title either, there are quite a lot of stories on here with the same title. E.g., I know you will find this hard to believe but I think there are at least ten stories called 'Cunt'. When that happens the site moderators just load it up with a URL that has a number in it: literotica.com/cunt101 sort of thing.

(Welcome to the board. You can always get good answers to writing questions here. Occasionally there is a bit of weirdness - remember that it takes all sorts and don't feed the trolls. )

 

[Zeb_Carter]

It's not unusual for stories here at Literotica to have similar if not the same title. Take one of mine that you think would be unique - Walking the Dog - the actual name of the file on Lit is "walking-the-dog-8", so it would appear that there are 7 title here at Lit that are the same as mine.

I'm almost positive, even without reading any of them, that none are the same as mine.

So just write, give it a title that you think will get reads and votes and the hell with the other titles. Titles can't be copyrighted.

 

[NaokoSmith]

*Discreet whisper*
Acksherly, some writers on here are well known for writing the same story in slightly different formats and their fans can't get enough of them. They sometimes come on themselves and ask plaintively what they can do about being in rut ... I mean in a rut.

Readers often know what they like and most are not expecting much originality when they click on here with their hand on the joystick

 

[hipsteress]

Published

Thanks, all, for your advice. The story was published. https://www.literotica.com/s/step-twins-camgirl-ch-01