Hi midavis2, I think your premise of few truly great ideas is correct - but it was also correct for Shakespeare, for example. who quite unashamedly picked and borrowed from ancient tales & myths. (Tolkien is a bit stand alone, with the world he created over many years using his scholarly background, I suppose}, but the ideas of quests, revenge, betrayal,defeat of evil, a sort of messiah ..... all obviously basic myth and legend standbys.
As it was for those the Bard nicked
his ideas from.
It's all in the telling, when it comes down to it, isn't it.
One Shakespeare's King Lear is another playwright's dreadful load of old
cobblers !
And there's always the old "there's only one basic joke.." theory.
So your 'go for the story quality of story/teller' is all we have left, in a way.
My philosophy student son first became interested upon finding out it involved discussing a lot of the " great ideas" put in many different ways, which then required, for the ideal answer, a novel question in reply, about the question being asked of him originally...........
No, I didn't quite get it either, but it seems to be serving him in good stead
