What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)
No better application for this verse than in literature. Plots have been done and redone hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. There are millions of novels offered by almost as many authors. To write a unique story is more than a challenge, it's almost impossible.
So what will make a novel different, a story more enchanting, scarier, more engaging, funnier, more thrilling? What will it take to make a book stand out to a devoted reader of fiction?
The easiest and most probable example to be made is in the genre of romance. How many ways can love go wrong or right? How many timelines or time traveling can be used and manipulated to tell the stories of people in all kinds of places who fall in love, stay in love, or experience the sorrow of being "star-crossed" lovers? It's all been done over and over again.
And yet we continue to read those novels that lure us into those basically-the-same stories because . . . why? Because they entice us by the way they introduce us to the premise or we fall instantly in love with one of the characters, or we are tantalized by the action incurred by some courageous hero, or we dread the trap set by the antagonist? Whatever it is that takes place to cause us to finish a story, to find an absolute favorite, to keep reading a series, to continue in a genre we don't normally enjoy - all those sometimes indefinable nuances of a story, a style, a plot we just plain like - this is what makes us select certain favorite authors and commit to reading whatever they write.
And that commitment is the desire of every one of us who writes fiction and longs to share our versions of "nothing new under the sun".
Father, you own my novels. Apart from you, I couldn't have written even one of them. You give me inspiration and words, characters and stories. I can't thank you enough for each one of them. May I always honor you with my novels. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.