Fellow writers: This ever happen to you?

[EricTheFred]

I had a weird experience yesterday. I was at Fry's buying some parts for a computer system (school's starting up soon, and one of our desktops fried over the summer. Can't have the boys using 'I'm waiting for the computer' as an excuse not to start on homework.)

So I walk to the register and a pretty Vietnamese girl greets me as I pile the bits and pieces on the counter for her to ring up. I hope she didn't think I was staring at her chest, because at that moment, I was reading on her name tag the name 'Thuy Nguyen', the same name as the one of the young pilots in my short story series 'Tales of the ESDF'.

I can understand having a character named 'Mary Jones' and not thinking it strange to meet a real one. But 'Thuy Nguyen'? What were the odds I meet someone with a name like that?

The fact that she couldn't have been more than a couple years older than the character didn't help either.

Well, I will definitely have a face attached to that character from now on, anyway.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Well, I've had something kind of similar. A story I wrote in the 12th grade has been published by someone else and is coming to theaters this fall. *chuckles* I wrote a young adult sci-fi story for a class project about a town that exists underground because of some sort of environmental catastrophe. The society exists there for so long they even forget about the surface world and then all the machines start breaking down. Obviously being aimed at kids the idea was that some plucky boys and girls would find the way out. Jeanne Du Prau has a series of books called the Books of Ember that are basically the entire story I'd written but so so SO much better (I'm kind of a hack, I'll admit).

Goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun.

[ShiroiHikari]

This hasn't happened to me yet.

Etoh, it sucks when that happens. In high school, I started working on a story about a boy android, and then I saw some previews for a movie called AI: Artificial Intelligence. :| I eventually abandoned the project.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Du Prau handled the material way better than I ever could have. I liked reading the story, because it was really just fun. I highly suggest the first book. It's called City of Ember.

[EricTheFred]

Well, I've had something kind of similar. A story I wrote in the 12th grade has been published by someone else and is coming to theaters this fall. *chuckles* I wrote a young adult sci-fi story for a class project about a town that exists underground because of some sort of environmental catastrophe. The society exists there for so long they even forget about the surface world and then all the machines start breaking down. Obviously being aimed at kids the idea was that some plucky boys and girls would find the way out. Jeanne Du Prau has a series of books called the Books of Ember that are basically the entire story I'd written but so so SO much better (I'm kind of a hack, I'll admit).

Goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun.

This is true. Your idea had echoes of both 'Orphans of the Sky' (Heinlein) and 'Dark Universe' (Galouye), both classics.

But as we YA authors all know, plucky kids save the day all the time. That part's just art imitating life.

In High School, I had a great story outlined, about a group of humans fleeing a destroyed Earth in a fleet under the wing of the last remaining battle group of Earth's defenses. Less than a year later, I saw the first 'Battlestar Galactica' ads.

I've guessed since then that somewhere along the way, I must have encountered some early announcement of the series, because the name of the flagship was the Battle Star. There is no way (except psychic powers I've never demonstrated since) that I came up with a coincidence that complete. The only difference was the direction the fleet was headed!

[Etoh*the*Greato]

fur totally.

[mechana2015]

I occasionally see people and spaz out because they look rather close to what I envisioned characters to look like from my stories. The names I use are pretty uncommon though, so usually they don't share the names.

[ChristianKitsune]

Haha... I can remember when I was about...14, I had come up with a really cute comic idea about a guy that is given this dragon egg...and it hatches into this little baby dragon thing...

It was a Dragon Race story... >_< And not even 6 months later, Dragon Booster comes out. UGH. I was so sad.

Also, I was writing a story about a girl who is able to interact with a group of angels... and then I discovered Lisa Hutchinson's awesome story, Shelter of Wings...and I just couldn't compete with that XD.

[LadyRushia]

I purposefully try to pick/make up names that people wouldn't have, which works well for the kinds of stories I write. For my current stories, I haven't come across anything that has the exact same plot line, which is just what I'm going for anyway.

The closest I come to seeing other people who look like my characters are anime characters, XD. The girl in Air (I forgot her name), the really cute one in the first episode looks almost exactly like one of my characters (same hair color and style, same eye color, for the most part). I think it's kind of cool when I see anime look alikes of my characters, but that's as far as the similarities have gone for me so far.

One thing I do like doing is googling my characters' names and seeing what comes up. One of my villains shares a name with an African city and one of my characters' names is part of the name for a type of bird.

Come to think of it, there may have been a few times where I found a plot point from my story in something else and then I made changes to my story to make it different. That's the best you can do, really if the similarities make you too uncomfortable.

[SnoringFrog]

I had a weird experience yesterday. I was at Fry's buying some parts for a computer system (school's starting up soon, and one of our desktops fried over the summer. Can't have the boys using 'I'm waiting for the computer' as an excuse not to start on homework.)

So I walk to the register and a pretty Vietnamese girl greets me as I pile the bits and pieces on the counter for her to ring up. I hope she didn't think I was staring at her chest, because at that moment, I was reading on her name tag the name 'Thuy Nguyen', the same name as the one of the young pilots in my short story series 'Tales of the ESDF'.

I can understand having a character named 'Mary Jones' and not thinking it strange to meet a real one. But 'Thuy Nguyen'? What were the odds I meet someone with a name like that?

The fact that she couldn't have been more than a couple years older than the character didn't help either.

Well, I will definitely have a face attached to that character from now on, anyway.

Wow. That's crazy...

I've never really had that happen to me. I mainly write poetry, and the few non-poetry things I've written tend to have unnamed/undescribed characters. I like leaving things up to the reader as much as possible in that respect, especially in a short story. I got annoyed with one of my stories because I was forced to reveal the gender of the character, lol.