Original Idea VS Competition?

[Nick B]

A good, gripping story gets my vote over an original story every time. You can have the most original idea ever, but if you can't write deep, well defined characters, or gripping scenes, then it will still be a bad book. I have read some very simple stories where the characters are deep and the scenes engaging, that have stuck with me for years. And I have read books that should have been good, with some very good ideas and concepts, that simply fell flat on their face.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

huh interesting. That's one of the topics I didn't touch upon. If you think your novel idea was so common and agents thought otherwise. I mean technically my novel also boils down to that as well, but it's buried under a lot of mythology. That's just a thing that ends up happening.

Basically I'd taken a very epic fantasy like story but set it in a world that is contemporaryish to our own (automated busses, restaurants and farms are within out capability but not as widespread). Unfortunately that made the story not an epic fantasy but it's too much of an epic fantasy to be anything else.