As you know, there are only fill-in-the-blank number of plots. Millions of novels have been written in the last few centuries, and before that, there were stories and plays and operas and songs and poems.

Face it: even your zombie-vampire-werewolf-romance-action-horror-tragedy isn’t really new or original. (Though it does sound very tragic.) All the ideas ever have already been thought of. They’re taken.

There are a few things we can do with this news. We can worry about trying to prove it wrong and come up with something so completely new and original and unheard-of that people will stop and stare (and probably run away, because that’s what happens). We can hang our heads and trudge off in defeat. Or we can learn to stop worrying and embrace the idea that there may not be anything new under the sun—but we can certainly put our own spin on it.

I know I often come across the seed of an idea and quickly reject it because it’s been done before. But honestly, some of the most popular and best literature we read today isn’t “new”—it’s an unapologetic take on something that’s been done before, and done really well the first time.

For example, it is a truth universally acknowledged that works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Jane Austen’s Emma and Pride And Prejudice are classics, or at least fairly well known. Students and scholars alike study these works centuries after their original publication.

And yet we see “retakes,” adaptations and riffs on these works all the time. And they’re not relegated to the rubbish bin, or automatically rejected because “That’s been done before.” If anything, drawing on those classics seems to have helped The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Clueless, Bridget Jones’s Diary and most especially Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

All of those stories use classics as their models, often taking their full plots from the original and simply updating or adapting them. And yet all of those stories stand on their own as well, with new elements and a fresh take (usually) from the author. Just because something has been done before doesn’t preclude you from doing it again with a new spin.

What do you think? Have you ever discarded an idea because it had been done before?

Photo by Thomas Levinson