Q: While reading the submission guidelines to a writing contest, the rules said “no cookie cutter stories.” What do they mean?

A cookie cutter story is one that lacks originality because it is like every other story on that topic. This often is a problem whenever a trend is hot in popular culture; for example, when vampire novels, television series and movies were widely enjoyed during the early 2010s, a lot of writers in love with the subject would simply write tales that were about replicas of their favorite characters and that featured their favorite plot elements in books they’ve read or videos they’d seen.

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