I've been putting together ideas for my first novel for the last month or so and have developed a set of characters and quirky story based around a youngster growing up at the end of the 70s. There's ideas about loss, coming of age, isolation and frustration, but elements of comedy too.

Then I discover Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club, which is about a group of youngsters growing up in the 70s.....

So Coe's book covers very similar ground in some ways. Which means I've had to go back to the drawing board. Which is annoying, especially as I didn't think Coe's book was all that great. At all.

Anyway, I don't want to fall into the same trap again. Which is why I'm wondering whether either of my two new ideas have a similarity to any previously published books.

One is a kind of dual narrative (in fact duality is a central theme) which uses a backgarden time capsule as a plot device. Does anybody know if this has been used before or has been targeted as an agent/publisher bugbear.

The other idea is based around writing a novel about a remarkably gifted musician whose story in the book is told in 'documentary' style, through interviews, magazine articles, recorded conversations etc.

Of course, if both of these are goers, how the hell am I supposed to choose between them...help!

I wouldn't let it worry you. Look at the similarities between the Da Vinci Code, Labyrinth and the film National Treasure, or the Lord of the Rings and every other fantasy novel

Having a similar starting point, or idea isn't a problem, because its where you take that idea that leads to a good or bad novel. If not, there'd probably only be one or two crime novels out there - how many of those begin with a corpse, and then have a detective find the murderer?

Colin

You can make an amazing number of books sound like each other if you reduce them to a sentence or two.

I wouldn't worry about it, if you really want to write your 70s novel, though it might be wise to leave it for a while till Coe's has faded from your memory. The other possibility is to read lots of fiction all round it, and non-fiction, until no one voice dominates, and you can hear yours. It's your voice that will make it original.

As for the others, which really grabs you, which makes your mouth water at the thought of getting down to it? You could try writing a short story about some aspect of each, and see which one keeps trying to burst its seams. (Apologies to all dedicated short fiction writers. I know it drives you nuts to have novelists and others assuming that your exquisite form is just some sort of parade-drill for the proper battle)

If you pull the music one off I shall watch with interest - and I might not be the only one; I think it's the hardest of the arts to convey in fiction. Vikram Seth's An Equal Music is the only one that convinced me, and brought alive what's going on in my two musician sisters' heads when they're playing.

The time-capsule as pitched sounds a bit clunky, but you're not pitching it, are you, you're writing it, and writing something that's got you all excited? Dual narratives get me excited too: I think structure is endlessly fascinating, and the kind of deliberately applied limitation, like sonnet or sonata form, which actually encourages really creative thinking.

If you do meet something that is a bit like yours, don't worry (though I wouldn't read it while you're in the middle of yours, either). You may prove to have come up with the same solutions to problems, but that's okay. I didn't read Possession until after I'd written TMOL, but plenty of people comment that they have things in common.

Emma

Thanks guys, it's was just a little disconcerting I suppose to see the Coe book, but better at this stage than six months down the line.

Yes music in books is a tough one - I've got an idea for a novel based around an orchestra which is written (structurally) as a symphony (with each chapter/movement being written in the literary equivalent of sonata form etc). I also thought about whether you could write in keys and try to replicate modulations, time signatures and the like.

And then I wondered if, like Debussy, I could incorporate elements such as the Golden Number and the Fibonacci series.

And then my brain cracked and it was time for my medication.

PS: It's less of a time capsule and more of a faded biscuit tin filled with memories...

Lots of those time capsules that were sold before the millennium didn't have proper seals, so over time, moisture from the soil surrounding them soaked into the capsule, destroying just about everything in there. Something to think about, or include - because what is left intact might start the mystery as to what the other things could have been.

Good point - I want elements of the life that the contents of the tin creates to be missing or muddied.

This has got my mind spinning. You could have loads of fun with this, seeing how different colours on a photograph fade or discolour with the chemicals in the muddy water, possibly resulting in the removal of an important figure from the background of a photo, while leaving a foreground figure intact, or the same idea applied to differing inks on a letter. Sounds a belter of an idea.

Interesting thoughts, though made slightly scary by the need to research something that involves chemistry - never one of my greatest subjects at school. Just don't suggest anything to do with physics otherwise I'll be completely buggered.