Writers (and readers) who are also, in their own way, fineapples. All friendly here.
When association blocks your creativity
I'm writing a short story.
I try to push myself to enter at least one contest every three months to a) have a solid goal other than land a best selling novel b) to force my butt to write without the excuse of "being stuck" and c) I like to stretch my imagination.
So, to start off the year I've decided to enter into a serious Sci-Fi contest that focuses on science-realism. I read the contest guidelines and immediately I was hit with inspiration. I wrote 1,000 words instantly in my allotted time to write. I was so excited that I went home and told my husband the plot.
Now I love my husband, dearly, but he isn't a reader/writer. He doesn't even really like movies except for the occasional documentary. Sure, I can talk him into watching just about anything but usually when it is Sci-Fi he falls asleep within 15 minutes. This being something I know intimately about him, I really don't know what I was expecting.
But I pushed forward. I talked about how it was a drama about an A.I. robot that was sent on a mission and ended up becoming emotionally human and then gets left behind. It's going to be 8,000 words of pure genious! I exclaimed.
He then said, and I quote, "Oh. Like Wall-E
No. Not at all like Wall-e...
I was took back. Baffled. What?
I tried to explain how it wasn't like Wall-E, but he didn't see the differences (HOW THE HELL CAN YOU NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCES, THEY'RE NOT THE SAME PLOT)! But in his mind, robot=Wall-E.
Now, I forgive him, I really do. I understand it. But when I go to write my story my brain is frozen on if I'm flipping writing a Disney movie for a serious Sci-Fi contest and I lose all my allotted daily writing time to being frozen by this idea.
Has this ever happened to any of you, where you've been compared and now you're terrified to write it because you don't want to be compared to it? How did you push through it? Did you end up scraping the whole thing?
I really want to write this story! But since this conversation I now feel like a fraud!
Help!
WriterMistakenForADisneyMovie




The thing is... even if it is the same idea, you're writing words. Your sentences will be different than if you gave the exact same prompt to someone else and they wrote it. There are whole competitions about doing just that thing, and it only works because writers have different styles and individuals have different images, and probably no one is going to cast every sentence just the way you will.
A story isn't just the macro vision of the plot. It's the micro execution of the diction that gets you there.
Magess is right. I had the same problem a few years ago where. I told my inlays about a book I was writing and they immediately thought of another book. I literally froze. And then my writing halted. And it was my sister who reads so much more than them that said "So what?" And that helped.
I tend to do that to myself. I get excited about a new plot, start working out the details, and then BAM- it makes me think of something that already exists and The Flamingo of Doubt starts stalking me.
Many stories can be boiled down to one single plot summery without necessarily being the same story. "Boy and Girl Fall in Love" can describe Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, several of Austen's works, Historical Romance novels, or erotica. The smaller differences are what makes them unique. You are yourself, and you aren't just re-writing Wall-E, you would be able to tell, I promise, even if it doesn't feel that way right now. Try saying out loud, "I trust myself and I believe in this idea" a few times before you settle down to write. It may feel silly, but hearing something out loud can boost confidence, even if it's just saying it yourself. :)
Just about every story or book I've ever read eventually gets compared to another existing story after the fact. Not always in a bad way. Yours just happened to get compared beforehand. My novel Construct, for example, was described by a Redditor as "The Bourne Identity meets The Iron Giant". Not only do I love the description, I've co-opted it for trying to describe my book in short terms.
It's likely the association would've been made to Wall-E at some point. Your challenge is determine what differentiates your story, then infuse that determination into the details. It's 100% fine to use previous stories as inspiration; it's the creativity you infuse into it that makes it your own.
That might be a hard thing to internalize, but that's where I'd start. Accept the surface similarity to a previously existing story, then slough off that similarity by writing the journey you want to write for your robot. If you can focus on that, hopefully it'll help you break through the blockage.
By the time it's finished and edited, it'll likely bear little resemblance to Wall-E, and the parts you've woven into the story will become the description after "meets..." :)