Anyone with a WordPress account is familiar with the concept of theming: you slap a new skin on what was already there, and while the content is the same, the look is now snappy and new.
People have applied this same basic principle to literature for centuries.
I'll be the first to admit that variations on a theme are a legitimate means of growth and evolution within the literary world (or any story-based medium), but that's not the same as wrapping orange latex around someone else's toy and calling it new and improved.
Down here, we call that "regifting."
While originality is not the only stick by which a work should be measured, to call something your own involves throwing at least a modicum of effort at it. Placing a completed work inside an unfamiliar box just to capitalize on recent trending is a base, if profitable, tactic.
If you want to be upgraded from the state of harlequin knock-off, but don't want to start from scratch, there are a few considerations to take into account:
1) What the hell for?
While I have also stated that meaning is what meaning does, if you're going to reskin an old story, know why you're doing it. If it's money, then you needn't look far from the source. Check Amazon's best-seller list, I guarantee you a theme will be present.
If instead you want to update a classic so its lessons are not forgotten, you are off to a powerful start in the game of becoming well known on your own merit. Your gift will be perspective: don't just insert a gimmick around the characters, update the issues that made them powerful to begin with.
Layering, say, vampires onto Napoleonic politics provides more than just kink-fuel for steamy romances within the work. Agelessness and inheritance becomes an issue; the breadth of history still rich in the minds of those who have lived it; a dark parallel between human parasites and the inner bowels of post-monarchical France...you get the idea.
Understand your reasons for putting the trappings of that particular trend into that particular story and how the two change each other. It doesn't have to be a particularly good reason (personally, I would be all for a steampunk Hardy Boys myself), but knowing the reason will help you shape the setting accordingly.
Sometimes, those reasons just involve chainsaws.
2) Influence and Consequence
Every action will have an equal and opposite explosion. When you introduce a new layer, things change. Having high technology in the days of Abraham pits Moses against the aliens who helped build the pyramids. Oh wait, that's kind of been done already.
Poorly.
The setting changes around what you introduce like a body reacting to an infection. Consider District 9 and the dehumanizing element of introducing actual non-humans. You have to consider how things would (and wouldn't) change when you throw in a new piece that didn't fit before. What's kitsch can be caustic, especially if you don't account for it.
Consider what superpowers do to average people. Having eyes that shoot lasers sounds great until you find you can't turn it off. Now you're one tap of the brakes away from carving a ravine through East 32nd street. You have to consider the consequences, both good and bad. Sometimes the way things suck is more interesting than the awesome bits.
3) The Best of Both Worlds
Dolling up something awful with a fun new reckoning does occasionally pan out, but the truth is outside of open parody, popular fiction follows similar lines as computers: garbage in, garbage out. Making a hacky-sack out of used cat litter gets you points for ingenuity, but nobody's really going to want to play with it.
You may also get a few bonus points for knowing what a hacky-sack is, but I digress.
Throwing mad science into the middle of Hard Times doesn't make the plight of those characters any more fun to read. Don't think of your themes as just something fun to spice up something dull: look for something beloved and try to make it better.
It can help to pick your theme first. Look for lines of harmony between it and periods of history, genres, or authors you're familiar with. Magic and the dark ages are a natural pair, as is apparently fanciful technology and Victorian England (though I hear the Edward era is getting its due).
Look for other similar synchronisities. Modern gothic themes applied to Edgar Allen Poe. Paladin tanks in the Crusades. Actual demons in the Inquisition. Huckleberry Finn in space.
A raft drifting slowly down the Mississippi isn't all that different from an escape pod on Impulse when you really think about it. Given the recent debate, though, you may have to go with something other than "Klingon Jim."
...That was bad and I feel bad.
The point of all this is to caution writers away from slapping a sample of what the proverbial kids are buying onto a ready-made piece not already vaulted to the forefront on its own merits (or simply long past its day in the minds of the young).
If you're hoping to ensure readership by hitching your work to the coattails of what's popular, at least look for the harmonic trends that might bring out something new and legitimately improved about the trend, your work, or literature as a whole.
And for the love of god, don't let it be vampires...
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