I want you to do me a favor. It’s a simple enough one, I think, but I have a purpose behind it. What is it, you may ask? I want you to look at the books you own, whether in paperback or ebook, and think about the different tropes you have. How many are contemporary? Kink? Paranormal? My guess is, there are quite a few. As you’re thinking about those books, ask yourself how many of those are your favorites. Which ones do you read time and again to the point you have nearly every line memorized as you skip ahead to your favorite parts? Now I want you to do something else. While you’re thinking about those books, the ones that damn near touched your soul and refused to let go, the ones whose characters seemed so real to you that you think of them as practically a best friend, book boyfriend, or even family…and I want you to imagine they were never written.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I am asking you to think such an absurd thing, but I promise I have a reason behind it. This is a topic that’s come up to more than a few times in conversationsI’ve had. An author will be hit with an amazing story idea and then realize someone else had written something along the same storyline. Hell, I’ve even experienced it a time or two. The concern I wouldn’t do the book justice if someone else had already written it was strong, and then I’d scrap the idea and write something else.

Or a character would reveal a name to me and rather than use it, I’d rack my brain trying to find a different one because a book I’d just read happened to have a character with that very same name. Then I’d spend hours trying to rename my character only to find nothing that would fit because that wasn’t his name to begin with.

But then I chatted with a friend, and they pointed out something to me that should’ve been such an easy solution to my fears, but it took them telling me for me to realize it. And what they told me was this: two authors can have the exact same plot and they can be written completely different. And how true is that? My book with a dragon lord named Steve will be completely different from someone else’s dragon lord named Steve. It’d belike if other authors decided not to give mpreg a try since one author decided to write about it, there’d be a lot less of those books out there. Same with MMM or kink, or anything else we all love to read and write about.

So, my point of this post is this: write your story, or plot bunny, or whatever it is you call it. Use the name your character tells you to use. Don’t worry about someone else doing your plot better than you, because it’s your plot, and only you can write it the way it needs to be told. Because if you don’t, then how can it become someone’s favorite book?