The Vampire Diaries was around long before Stephanie Meyer decided to write the Twilight series. The first three Vampire Diaries novels, The Awakening, The Struggle and The Fury, were published as a trilogy in 1991 with the fourth, The Dark Reunion coming out in 1992. Twilight wasn't published until October 5, 2005. A lot of time passed between the original Vampire Diaries and Twilight. In fact, of the seven books currently in the Vampire Diaries series, all four of the original series were already published and the three spin-off novels, The Return, were already announced (1998) before Twilight was ever published.

The Vampire Diaries focuses on the lives (albeit undead lives) of the Salvatore brothers, Damon and Stefan, and the girl they are both in love with, Elena Gilbert. Elena is the spitting image of a girl they both loved in their past and the one who turned them into vampires, Katherine Pierce.