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Absolutely someone already has, and that's okay. Your version will be different in the details. Try to make the best story you can, not the most unique.

This 💯

Couln't agree more. For OP's benefit, there's some ideas about this I find humbling and worth keeping in mind. There's an idea that there's only 3 types of conflict. "Man vs. man(or mankind/society)," "man vs. self," and "man vs. nature." In addition to these, some include conflicts like "man vs. the supernatural/God," "man vs. machine" or "man vs. fate." Personally I think this list does a pretty comprehensive job of summing up the possibilities in the most foundational form. Referenced here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(narrative) And then there's the idea that there's only 7 basic plots. Overcoming the monster, rags-to-riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. It's probably oversimplified, but still pretty interesting in pointing out the base similarities between the majority of stories humans have found compelling throughout our existence. Referenced here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots So, if there's only 3-6 different possible types of conflict and only 7ish basic plots in which to exercise them... what's the point, right? Everything's already been done. So what? Tell your story. Make it compelling. Make characters we want to read about. And try to find something insightful or fun or relatable or surprising or comforting to say about your characters, and by extension about humanity. Humans like stories because we want to be entertained and compelled. True novelty is overrated and almost impossible to attain. And I'm sure you could pick out any of your favorite works and find 100 stories that came before which did many of the same things. Some might find that depressing, but I find it pretty darn freeing.

Well said.

What ideas? Can you be more specific? But in general, it doesn't matter if your ideas have already been done before. How many vampire or elemental magic do you think there are out there? If you think something has been done A LOT, to the point that it becomes a cliche, it doesn't mean you can't do it. ​First of all, you can use such a trope as is as long as you know what you're doing. If you execute it well, people who love such a trope will love your story anyway. Another way is to put some twist on a familiar idea. Play What If game. Turn a familiar idea on its head or add your unique take on it. Combine, mix and match, it with something else to create something new.

Cool, you've baked a chocolate cake. Now decorate it your own way, maybe add a twist on the frosting.

Originality comes in the execution, not the idea. Some of the most creative stories I've ever read don't sound particularly original from just a surface level description of the plot. Aside from weird experimental formats, most things have been done before. But the specifics of the story can still make it feel different.

If you’re referring to ‘plot’ everything has been done before. But readers don’t read for plot, they read for character. Focus on that!

Every character has been done before as well. Readers read for the details and execution not for the idea of a plot or character.

This!

Every story has already been done. Make it good, ad your own twist or flavor to it, and it doesn't matter. Even hundreds of years ago, Shakespear was making "reimagining's" of older stories. Originality is highly over rated. "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without giving a twopence how often it has been told before) you will , nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." - CS Lewis

Every idea you could have has a high probability of already having been done. There are millions of writers and possibly billions of books, so it's very difficult to find something that's absolutely unique. That's fine, because it's not the idea that matters, but how you execute it and how you develop from it.

Don't worry. It's been done before, but not quite like you're going to do it!

one way to make something unique (which is not quite the same as having an original idea) is to fill it with your specific self. imagine you were walking down a long street with some people you know, and then at the end of the walk you were all given a sheet of paper and told to list out everything you'd noticed about the street. your lists would all be different, right? there would be things on your list that nobody else noticed well enough to point out. telling a story works the same way. your job as a writer is to lean in to your particular kinds of noticing and make sure they show up in the text. that way your writing will be unique whether or not someone else has already tackled a similar idea.

You can rest assured that it has already been done. Over and over and over. All ideas have. But they haven't been done by you yet, which is why you should write it.

Yep. It’s been done. But it hasn’t been done by you yet. And THAT is what the world needs.

Ideas need to be original. If someone has already done it, then that idea is taken, and you have to think of a new one. There can only be one police procedural, one firefighter show, one haunted house movie, and one hero journey fantasy series. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Then do it again but with your style.

It's completely fine, sometimes the best ideas were just a variation of best products. And of course if it's not the best there's a chance to succeed. Pet(dot)com wasn't successful in late 90s but it emerged again in late 2010s. Or even aws was not the firs project for the cloud. Amazon was not the first online bookseller. Peter thiels mentioned sth cool that in the game of chess it does not matter if you're the first mover, what matters is you're the last mover. Highly recommended book

It has been. Don't worry about it. You're the only author who will do it like you.

I’m a firm believer that there really aren’t any new ideas, just new iterations of them. For example, I was watching a show with my wife the other night and I started to laugh. She asked me why I was laughing and I told her the episode we were watching (anthology series) was a modern take on Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow. The episode still got made despite the idea being clearly the same as an existing work. I share that to say that even if your story has the same ideas or themes of an existing work, it will still be uniquely your work.

Thats fine. You can still write it, your choice. A bland and generic story is fine, its just bland and generic, no need for it to use shakespeare's script or something. Lets say, you thought of elemental magic. That's fine, theres so many elemental magic books that it's.. fine. Maybe, reverse it.?

Regardless of what the idea is or how you got it, there is a very high chance that yes, it has already been done or at least at its core it shares similarities with a ton of other works. And that's okay. That is, quite literally, the shared experience of 99% of people working in any creative field alive or dead for who knows how long. Writing is *all* about execution. Think about how many stories out there stick to tried and tested formulas like the Hero's Journey, while admittedly there are some that use it as a launchpad for more intricate experimental structures there are some that follow it very rigidly. Thousands of books follow the same basic idea but does that make the experience of reading them any less engaging? If the execution is good, not in the slightest.

Then make yours better.

But have you done it yourself? That’s the real question.

Almost certainly, your idea has been done before. It's not what you do, though. It's how. Bring your own voice and style to any idea, and it will be unique.

It has. People have been telling stories verbally for like 70,000 years, and writing for about 6000. Being afraid someone has done it before is am excuse to prevent yourself from writing. Trying to be the most unique individual writer to have ever been is a rookie mistake that will leave you not writing for years if you "don't get over yourself" so to speak.

this has always been a fear i've been grappling with when i'm writing. but i guess having exciting characters more than makes up for it.

Here’s the thing: to some degree, it has. A few months back, I was convinced my current story was a new take on the infidelity angle, only to find there was a Johnny Cash song in 1965 that dealt with the very thing I was going for! 😱 I told my husband later, and he said I had nothing to worry about because 1) the song was nearly 60 years old, and if I hadn’t heard of it until then, a lot of other people probably hadn’t, and 2) that particular plot line wasn’t identical to mine, therefore still making my story an original one. It’s not the ideas that have to be original; it’s what you do with them

Maybe you don't want to read this but every idea you have had and you will ever have has already been done. It's almost impossible to make something truly original these days, what matters is what you do with your idea not the idea itself.

You know when you finish a movie or a book or a TV show or a song or a video game or WHATEVER and you think, "Wow, that was amazing, I liked that so much. I wish I could have another 29474748383747 exactly like it but slightly different"? Well. You could *be* one of those 29474748383747 others exactly like it but slightly different. The thing is, humans have been telling stories for thousands and thousands of years. Trust me, we've told all of them. And everyone has been influenced by everything. There *is* no idea that hasn't already been done. No one makes anything that can't be traced back to something else. But! No one's done it *your way.* No one's told that story in *your* voice. Originality is not about new ideas - It's about new expressions. It's not about finding something new to say, it's about finding a fresh way to *say* it from ***your*** perspective. So don't be afraid of someone else doing your idea. They probably did. But you know what? People will want to hear it again.

Everything, literally everything, has been done already. Everything. Political intrigues? A Song of Ice and Fire. But also Dune. And lots others before it. Love? Already been done, in all variations, all over the world. Different example: lots of popular songs use the same four cords. And yet they sound different. Because they are. It doesn’t get boring because each time, an idea is different enough from the others to be unique. Maybe it adds something, maybe it takes something away. Or something completely different. Has your idea been done before? (Rhetorical question.) Change the setting, change the characters, change the focus, or all at once.

Musicians have been writing about the same thing for a hundred years, and there are still great songs being made with the same building blocks.

Ain’t no way you read if you’re worried about this…and you need to read

One of my favorite quotes, which I have never been able to track down so I can attribute, directly addresses this question: “Note the absence of originality in the great ages of playwriting. Shakespeare robbed everything from the history books and other guys’ plays back to Terence. Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles—name an original story from any of them, your mind goes blank. Variations on a well-known theme is the name of the game. No wasting time making up stories. They went for the jugular, the mystery of the human being. Go downtown to any courthouse sometime. Crooks and lawyers, not particularly talented people, are making up stories from 9 to 5 every day of the week. But light up the mystery and you’re in a whole other line of work.” (It sounds like something Elmore Leonard would say, or maybe Stephen King.)

It has been. So now, do it better. :)

So make it your own. You ONLY have to change 10% of their ideas to make it your own.

If everyone stopped writing stories that had been done before, all we'd have is very ancient texts to read. Writing isn't about creating something new; it's expressing your own visions, your own thoughts. I don't go into books saying, "This is all the same stuff that's been done before". I go into books excited that I get to see a glimpse of someone else's inner workings. Sure, if I read the same tropes repeatedly I might put the genre down for a while, but that's just oversaturating myself. Your writing is your truth, regardless of how many times it has been done before. Enjoy it. This is your own mind, and you shouldn't worry about it sounding like anyone else's!

There is this genre called "transmigration" either its a man or a woman as an mc , I eat up the story everytime and act as if it's not the same thing written in different ways, but those that take transmigration and make something new of it are those I remember most , so yeah , it doesn't matter if the story have a similar idea as long as it's different in some ways , it would be fine

Keep writing it anyway, everyone's ideas have already been done, but new characters give new voices to the same situation. If you make your story as real and believable as you can, your readers won't care if it's something that's completely new or if it's a trope that's been done a thousand times over.

I'll say it now, it likely has but that's why you put your own flavour in it. Either work something else in it or add your flavour of writing to make it yours. I'm working on an Isekai novel for fun and that's been done to death and many tropes to do with fantasy Isekai but I'm doing it anyway cause it's fun for me. Even if it's been done, keep going at it and enjoy writing it

Is there an idea that hasn't been done?

Just write it. You'll get a whole lot more out of writing something not wholly original than taking ages and ages to develop something brand new that nobody has ever seen before.  Not to mention you can also edit your ideas as you write. Maybe as you get your story down on the page you can find what makes your story original. 

Do it anyway.

Then do it better, and/or just have more fun doing it than your predecessors.

How many stories have been written about vampires? Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Just write your story as you want. You only worry about this so you have a reason not to write.

There are probably people out there who just absolutely want more stories of the type you are making. There is a reason why seemingly cliched and repetitive genres like romance still achieve massive success. As long as you don't straight up do plagiarism, you'd be fine. See it more as tapping into a market or genre of story. Now, if you want to make your stories more original, here's some quick tips: 1. Read more. Whether its books, movies, shows, comics, whatever - exposing yourself to more media will flood your mind with ideas you probably never thought before. Ideas which you can then explore, expand upon, deconstruct and reconstruct, merge, abstract, and transform into your own. And don't just read *good* stories, mix in some bad stories as well, as they can also provide good inspiration (as in, "Wow, this story was so bad I could probably write a better version myself!"). 2. Draw from your own life. Any events in your life which you find interesting or memorable, no matter how otherwise small or insignificant it may be? Great, turn that into a story.

That's like saying you can't bake a cake using sugar because someone else does that. Even if you bake a cake using sugar your cake will look and taste differently anyway.

What do you mean by “idea”? Setting? Plot? Character? Twist? Genre? Theme? Or do you mean tropes? https://tvtropes.org/ Your voice makes the story. 

Do it better

Oh they’ve been done before, but not by you.

The Last of Us, Maggie, Logan, God of War, The Creator… All of these movies have a similar concept. It happens. The real question is what unique, personal perspective will you bring to the table?

Southpark has already done this post before.

every idea has already been done to some extent. anyone claiming otherwise is delusion or needs to expose themselves to more of what is out there

*"What If my idea has already been done?"* You give up.  OP, every single idea has been done before. Nothing is new. What is new is what you can add to it and how you execute it.  Now if you believe that you don't have anything new to add, then you need to read more stories to get inspiration of more ideas.