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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32552
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32552
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Personally, I would write a great deal before I ever read somebody else's work, specifically to ensure that what I write is NOT derivative or copied from somebody else.

I do not mean to finish a novel. I mean try to get the ideas **you think are original** in a file. If you have ideas of a plot, ideas for devices, ideas for characters, ideas for a setting, whatever it is.

Do that until you are exhausted. Not necessarily physically exhausted, just you find yourself with no new ideas. Or your only new ideas are tweaks to existing ideas, so you are circling the same camp again and again. When that happens, quit that, and **then** go read some books that might be similar.

There is no risk of contaminating your mind, you emptied that into a file, your original ideas are intact. But are you just going to rehash good stuff that has already been written about?

If your heroes, villains, story [plot] and setting and imaginary tech are all "more of the same" then maybe you want to proceed, or use it as impetus to come up with something more inspired. Or use it as an excuse to not try, you don't want to spend a few years writing and hear "This looks like a second-rate rip-off of Battlestar Galactica" or something like that.

Original score: 2