EDITORIAL: You Are Your USP

#USP #writing #writingtips

People often worry about their story idea and whether or not it is original enough. Have you ever had an idea and thought 'Nah, must have been done already,'? Or spent ages browsing the bookshop or library for a book with the same theme as your own?

I have. A while back, I had a great idea for a series of children's books where the lead boy could travel in time and was forced by a shadowy organisation to help them alter the past to correct the future. Cool, eh? Kind of Doctor Who/ Time Traveller's Wife / Alex Rider.

A month after I had the idea, Timeriders came out. Go on, click the link. Synopsis sound familiar?

After I had read it and finished shouting "Damn you Scarrow!" At the top of my lungs, I decided to put my project aside.

Should I have? No. 

I could have kept on writing. Because I had yet to learn the vital lesson: the most important ingredient to your story is YOU.

Alex Scarrow told his story in his way, writing it brilliantly.  I would have told it in a different way, bringing my life, my experience and my voice to the project, and making it special, completely my own.

In business, when you are developing a product or service, you are often asked what your USP is; your Unique Selling Point.  It maybe free delivery, cheese-stuffed crust on your pizza, or a free toy with every chocolate egg. In writing you can have that too; your main character is a vampire who is also a cowboy! 

No other book has that, right? But more often than not, YOUR USP IS YOU.

You are unique.  You are the only person to have had your experiences and lived your life, and you are the only person who can write like you.

So go. Go and write. Go and find and develop your voice and tell your story in the way only you can. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a book to write...

storyworld.org.uk danmetcalf.co.uk

image: Emiliano Hernandez   http://www.freeimages.com/profile/josterix