One of Murphy's Laws is"If everything is proceeding smoothly, you have obviously overlooked something."
I don't have a single consistent manner in which I write anything. Some stories come roarin' out fully formed, others need to be teased into existence over a period of time.
One project that I'm working on is going to be a big multi-character piece, and the plot gets kicked off when Minor Character A does something that provokes a reaction from Supporting Character B, which then sets off a chain of events that eventually involves the Main Protagonist.
I came up with what I thought was a great opening line, one that indicated the plot of the story was all Character A's fault because Character A should have been aware Character B would do something, even if Character A couldn't guess exactly what Character B might do.
Please with myself, I typed it up and filed it away. That was literally months ago. Haven't looked at it since.
Then this morning, while in the gym, that opening popped back into mind.
And something at the bottom of my brain pan said, "There's something awfully familiar about that..."
And sure enough, as I thought about it some more, I recognized my opening was just a variation of a line from a Quentin Tarantino movie.
I shoulda known it was too good to have been original...
So, back to square one.
The story beat can stay, but the opening has got to go.
in the words of Popeye
"I yamsk fruskipated..."