One of the things that always kept me from wanting to ever think about getting any of my stories published was always that I thought I wasn’t original enough for it. All of my stories’ plots are typical. They’ve been done before. Well after seeing Avatar I had a revelation. ALL the stories have been done before. I mean I knew it, but this movie really made me realize it.
I mean Avatar’s basic story is “guy and girl meet and guy is lying to her but eventually comes to love her but she finds out and he has to prove himself”.
The point is that good writers can take those basic stories that we’ve all heard before and give new life to them. They can take the characters in these predictable plots and make unpredictable things happen to them. So while Demonslayer may be typical “woman gathers a group to fight against the forces of evil”, I would hope that I have embellished the characters and the world enough that the story is still worthwhile.
And then there is the ‘500 Kingdoms’ series by Mercades Lackey (The first book is The Fairy Godmother) where she actually gives a reason why the same stories are told again and again. I just had to mention this since I was breaching this topic.
