Just a coincidence

It’s often said that there are only so many stories in all the world, is it five? Is it seven? It’s seven, Christopher Booker the journalist, columnist and writer published a  book outlining them in 2014:

• Overcoming the Monster
• Rags to Riches
• The Quest
• Voyage and Return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

I’m not sure tragedy and comedy count as plots, they could characterise any of the other five stories that Booker has identified. The reason I was thinking about this was that it’s something I think about as a writer, and I wonder if other writers do too, that I might have unintentionally taken a plot from somewhere else, a story I read or heard, a play I’ve seen or a film… I don’t mean being inspired by something, but taking up a character or setting or even aspects of a plot.

Then there is something else which sometimes happens… something I have written about, a situation I have described or an incident in a story actually happens. I’m not suggesting precognition, premonition or anything like that, just coincidence. In the story I am writing at the moment there are several plot lines, a missing daughter,  a missing father, a man under the control of a powerful leader of a sect, and the mysterious appearance of flowers on a grave.

I had this last idea many years ago but it is only now being included in a novel, and I’ve written about it several times here over the last few months. Now I’ve seen reports on the BBC web-site and a TV report of a situation exactly like this. A woman whose brother died as a child in 1946 has noticed flowers on his grave, flowers put there by an unknown person…. I hope they don’t think I’m copying this real incident when my novel is published!

Here is a link to the report:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-34515013