First, I have to squee. I've always loved watching what wild life I could, both at home, and when I worked at a barn for a few years. (That one was fun. I saw everything from coyotes and wild turkeys to red foxes and leeches.) Today, I saw, for the first time, a live, in my face hummingbird. I thought it was a bug at first, a remarkable bird-shaped bug. I didn't think they lived in my neighborhood, though we do have a hawk of some kind. It was one of those rare, adult-experienced magical moments.
On to the musing of storylines. The truth is that stories and plots are limited. Woefully limited. We all recognize them. One special person to save the world. One under prepared person to avenge a death, or save a world. Exploring new planets, new dimensions and learning about human nature in the process. Forced seductions. Sacrifice stories. Monster stories. A person quickly becoming the last remaining icon of a older, kinder time. The Quest. Save the Princess. Survive the War.
Stories are slim. Writing a good story is about taking something and making it your own.
I admit, I first hear that phase on ^cough^ America's Next Top Model. But it is meaningful for us as writers as well. Especially significant.
When agents and editors say they want fresh, new exciting they don't mean zombie Santas or alien bunnies procreating with sentient earth raccoons. They know that a story is about the execution, and not the twist. It's the treatment, the colors, the textures, not the fact that the room is a couch, a table and a book shelf.
So don't worry if you have a unique enough plot, make your work a unique enough story. Books are no more only plot than they are only letters.
And at that point what stories that you've read have been stamped with enough personality, enough differentness to make them revolutionary?
In that category I want to put Dracula by Bram Stoker, Carrie by Stephen King and Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, all of which changed the horror genre. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series changed fantasy as much as Tolkien helped define it.
And as unpopular as if might be I want to add Laurell K Hamilton in there too. Urban fantasy may have existed before her, and the worth of her current projects might be arguable, but what she was with her first few Anita Blake books kicked off a great deal of the current urban fantasy popularity. She might not have been the first, or the best, or still be the best, but she was Horror (monsters! Gore!), Mystery (remember the mysteries?), Romance, Fantasy (magic) and Science Fiction (alternate history, though I think it wouldn't be classified as that now, I remember seeing it put that way then).
Who do you think put out the best treatment of an established idea?
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