I donāt get all this drama about āpotentially copying someoneās storyā. If the idea is widely spread (soulmate) and you come up with an idea (specifically when you plan it out like you do) thereās literally no way that the idea is identical to another.
I donāt really know why youāre calling it drama, since I havenāt seen this broadly debated at all. Itās pretty general: the more widely a trope is written, the higher the likeliness of one story of that trope being similar to another.
Using the soulmate trope as an example, it has a very straight-forward formula. I have read numerous soulmate fics that have been constructed on this formula and have been identical in many aspects, despite that the authors definitely wouldnāt have copied each other. Itās simply because thereās only so many ways you can write a trope and most writers tend to go for the first that pops into their head: soulmate meets soulmate > conflict occurs between the soulmates due to them previously being enemies or one of them having a sensitive past or one of them already having a soulmate > conflict resolves and soulmates end up together because love always pulls through and they were designedĀ by the universe to be united.
With soulmate fics especially, the likelihood strengthens, as there are many categories that narrow it down. The matching tattoo. The connection of senses. The monochrome vision until you see your soulmate for the first time. The changing hair colours. Unless you come up with aĀ ābondā that is very unique or throw in a very original twist, matching one of those categories with the general formula is bound to cause similarities to appear.
And Iām not saying that fics like that are bad at all. Iām a slut for soulmate fics. My old soulmate series, Sillage, was constructed on that exact formula. Theyāre just more susceptible to similarities with other soulmate fics of that nature, which is what occurred with Sillage and is part of the reason I lost inspiration for it. When readers start to notice this, they call you out on it for plagiarising, even if youāve never read or heard of that other fic before.
Also, Iām not saying that you cannot write an original soulmate fic, because you definitely can if you put a lot of thought into it. For me, not writing one is personal preference in order to avoid the possible backlash.
Another example that Iām going to leave you with is A Ticket to the Sun. I thought it was a highly original idea when I came up with it, despite that the ballot element of it was vaguely inspired by The Hunger Games. At the beginning of this uni semester, one of my readings was The Lottery by Shirley Jackson; a short story published in 1948 in which a village has an annual ballot, and whoever draws the paper with a dot marked on it is sentenced to death by stoning. Even though Iād never heard of The Lottery when I started writing A Ticket to the Sun, the plots are very reminiscent of each other, and I was both horrified and amazed whilst reading it because of the shocking similarities.Ā
So ideas may not be identical detail-for-detail, but no thought is necessarily original. And in fics, where there are commonly written AUs and tropes, the chances of similarities appearing between fics of those AUs and tropes only grows as more are written and posted.