Janet Blaylock:
Ideas can be recycled. Your emotions or interests can produce an idea for a story. Ideas are anywhere and can be used over again. Be alert to your environment, your interests, and your emotions. Somewhere an idea will spark your imagination.
Also using different viewpoints can be an idea for another story. Any idea can be written more than once by changing something in the story so that it is given a fresh approach. For example. A story could be told by the detective, and then recycled and told again by the villain. You’ll be reading a story later on that is told by the villain.
I’ve heard about recycling ideas in many forms of thought. Some people say there really is nothing new, it’s all just rewritten from a long forgotten original. These people also follow along with the “there’s nothing new under the sun” theory.
I don’t quite agree with that. New things are coming along. It really does depend on how you look at it all. You see what you are looking for. You could say computers are noting new, just a fancier typewriter. Or you could think of them as a whole new culture, a new science, a new business and career section.
A lot of ideas are borrowed and copies and revamped. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, there’s bound to be some repetition. But, how many different words are there? That’s how the writer has to make things different. Change the words around. Only not quite that simple. It’s not enough to just change a few names and hope no one will notice you really didn’t add anything new.
Give your old story new life with a unique flip, a unique character. If you think about it, you can find a new way to tell an old story.
You have to decide for yourself about the “anything new under the sun” thing. Is there? What would you write about the idea of there being nothing really and truly new?