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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16023
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16023
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Let me answer this in a more practical fashion:

Let's say you've written a Hero's Journey, which has a standard pattern. And as you read over your work, you realize "this sounds a lot like _Star Wars_!" (Not unreasonable, since Lucas followed Campbell's _Hero with a Thousand Faces_ pretty closely.)

Find the first element which strikes you as unoriginal, and change it. Let's say your protagonist is a farm boy.

- Make him a city boy.
- Make him a nobleman's son.
- Make him a factory worker.
- Make him an astronaut.
- Make him a woman.

and so on. (Choose as many as will fit into your scenario.)

Then take the next element: Her parents were killed, launching her quest.

- Her parents are absent, and she was raised in an orphanage.
- Her parents are present and loving, and she chooses to go.
- Society allows for group marriages, so she has three fathers and five mothers. Some want her to go and some don't.

Et cetera.

If you change enough of these items, and then carry the changes forward throughout the story, it should deviate you from your visible influences. Your changes can also spark new ideas — for example, if you go with the group marriage idea, that can significantly change the "hero gets the princess" ending, because now the heroine can get the princess, the prince, and maybe a neighboring duchy, and what does that do to inheritance and alliances? And that creates a new, wholly original set of plot problems you can work with.

Original score: 4