I got a rather frantic email yesterday from a friend who was a bit panicked over the the possibility that one the names of her characters was very similar to the name of a different character in someone else’s work. She asked me what she should do about it, and what I did to ensure my writing was original. Did I Google names? Plots? Characters? I decided to think about it for a bit and reply to her here. The truth of the matter is that it really *has* all been done before. Even not counting that Hollywood seems determined to do nothing but remake movies based off of previously existing movies, the same could probably be said of many of the books and stories out there. Part of this can be explained via the market. If you’re out to make money, than it makes sense that you would produce… Read more