Stop me if you've heard this one.
October 24, 2018 11:30 AM Subscribe
I'd like to write a story. How can I do 'due diligence' to make sure I'm not ripping off someone else's story idea?
Suppose I want to write a story about... let's say, someone tries to get kids to stop believing in Santa Claus by getting control of the Tooth Fairy's tooth collection and using sympathetic magic on the teeth. Suppose I now spend years writing this story and when I go to sell it to a publisher, he tells me that this same plot idea has been used in Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, and by the "Rise of the Guardians" movie, and therefore my idea is seen as a 'rip off' of those productions.
Is there a way I could have found out, before putting in the work, that my idea was already in use? Googling obviously, but that can be hit or miss. Is there a website, maybe, where people can throw ideas up to a 'hive mind' like this and someone can say "Wait, that's kinda close to book X; you might want to check it out."
Should I not even bother to worry about it, and trust that my take on the idea will be different enough (since it's coming from me and I'm not setting out to mimic or parody anything) to stand on its own? How can I avoid ripping off someone else's idea? What do I do, if I was a famous author like Pratchett, if I see someone else ripping off my idea?
Suppose I want to write a story about... let's say, someone tries to get kids to stop believing in Santa Claus by getting control of the Tooth Fairy's tooth collection and using sympathetic magic on the teeth. Suppose I now spend years writing this story and when I go to sell it to a publisher, he tells me that this same plot idea has been used in Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, and by the "Rise of the Guardians" movie, and therefore my idea is seen as a 'rip off' of those productions.
Is there a way I could have found out, before putting in the work, that my idea was already in use? Googling obviously, but that can be hit or miss. Is there a website, maybe, where people can throw ideas up to a 'hive mind' like this and someone can say "Wait, that's kinda close to book X; you might want to check it out."
Should I not even bother to worry about it, and trust that my take on the idea will be different enough (since it's coming from me and I'm not setting out to mimic or parody anything) to stand on its own? How can I avoid ripping off someone else's idea? What do I do, if I was a famous author like Pratchett, if I see someone else ripping off my idea?
What do I do, if I was a famous author like Pratchett, if I see someone else ripping off my idea?
You ignore it, because "fishing from the same stream" is a known thing:
posted by Etrigan at 11:46 AM on October 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
You ignore it, because "fishing from the same stream" is a known thing:
"[When people ask:] So, are you accusing JK Rowling of plagiarism? [I] sigh deeply and say: No. Don't be silly, that's how genres work. Writers have always put a new spin on old ideas. I can think of a dozen pre-Hogwarts 'Magic schools'. Some of them are pre-Unseen University, too. It doesn't matter. No one is stealing from anyone. It's a shared heritage."As for the other part of your question, write it anyway. Put your own spin on it. If it's good enough, then it's an homage to or influenced by that other idea.
posted by Etrigan at 11:46 AM on October 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
If you're looking for pop culture references, though, check out www.tvtropes.org
posted by Mogur at 11:47 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Mogur at 11:47 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
TV writer Sherwood Schwartz had been pitching his show The Brady Bunch to the networks for years, but it kept getting rejected. It was only after the uncannily similar film Yours, Mine and Ours was a hit that The Brady Bunch was picked up. The producers of Yours, Mine and Ours threatened to sue Schwartz for plagiarism, but since he had registered his script with the Writers Guild, he could prove that he had written the script before the movie came out.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:53 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:53 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Is there a website, maybe, where people can throw ideas up to a 'hive mind' like this
What about the mefi hive mind?
posted by acidnova at 12:04 PM on October 24, 2018
What about the mefi hive mind?
posted by acidnova at 12:04 PM on October 24, 2018
Write your story, develop your ideas how you want, and don't worry so hard about whether someone else has had a similar idea - it's not the idea, but what you do with it that makes it unique and interesting.
posted by bile and syntax at 12:07 PM on October 24, 2018
posted by bile and syntax at 12:07 PM on October 24, 2018
Google thoroughly to see if something super similar has been done. If it doesn't come up, then don't worry at all. What you do will still almost certainly overlap with other things, but only to the extent that everything does.
I am writing a novel in a well-trodden genre, and I admit that I sometimes break into a cold sweat when I hear of a new book, movie, or TV show in said genre – especially when someone asks what I'm writing, and then they respond, "Oh, so kinda like..." [cue sweat]. It's natural to want to avoid being scooped or late to the game.
But then I remind myself that what differentiates stories is more than plot. Even things that are super similar in terms of events or a plot conceit (look up Jenny Erpenbeck's "The End of Days" and Kate Atkinson's "Life After Life") are still extraordinarily different in their execution – which means voice, feeling, and from there, the entire meaning of the story.
posted by Beardman at 12:10 PM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
I am writing a novel in a well-trodden genre, and I admit that I sometimes break into a cold sweat when I hear of a new book, movie, or TV show in said genre – especially when someone asks what I'm writing, and then they respond, "Oh, so kinda like..." [cue sweat]. It's natural to want to avoid being scooped or late to the game.
But then I remind myself that what differentiates stories is more than plot. Even things that are super similar in terms of events or a plot conceit (look up Jenny Erpenbeck's "The End of Days" and Kate Atkinson's "Life After Life") are still extraordinarily different in their execution – which means voice, feeling, and from there, the entire meaning of the story.
posted by Beardman at 12:10 PM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
Due diligence of any kind will make your anxiety about this worse, and increase odds of your being overly derivative of somebody else's work. The best thing you can do - emotionally and creatively--is put your head down and WRITE. When you're done, it's indisputably yours.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:13 PM on October 24, 2018 [23 favorites]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:13 PM on October 24, 2018 [23 favorites]
All stories have been told already. Breathe that in, accept the existence of the fact, go on with your writing. There is no due diligence you can do, because even if you could search the entirety of thousands of years of storytelling there is no way to know that while you crank away on your vampire-werewolf love triangle story, Stephenie down the street is doing the exact same thing at the same time and one day one of ya'll are going to find out about the other and be mad and cry and there's not a damn thing you can do about it or to prevent it.
It's just a fact of writing life. Some version of the story you want to write today was already trite when it showed up in the Bible. Some cave painter, if he'd been able to travel the 20 miles to the next cave, would have thrown a rock at the wall shouting GODDAMMIT MY HORSE WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS CRAPPY GOAT-WITH-A-MANE BULLSHIT.
Don't confuse the thing you're worrying about with plagiarism. That's when you copy someone's actual words, and the best way to not do that, not even accidentally, is if you've never read their words.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:16 PM on October 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
It's just a fact of writing life. Some version of the story you want to write today was already trite when it showed up in the Bible. Some cave painter, if he'd been able to travel the 20 miles to the next cave, would have thrown a rock at the wall shouting GODDAMMIT MY HORSE WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS CRAPPY GOAT-WITH-A-MANE BULLSHIT.
Don't confuse the thing you're worrying about with plagiarism. That's when you copy someone's actual words, and the best way to not do that, not even accidentally, is if you've never read their words.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:16 PM on October 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
To use a quote from Roger Ebert (cannot remember the source but my memory is that it's originally in reference to movies that cover material that some consider distasteful) but I think is appropriate in this context here, "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it."
posted by acidnova at 12:18 PM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by acidnova at 12:18 PM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
Well, if you really really want to go this route, you could try and look up the pieces in TVTropes. But I suspect that way lies madness.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2018
posted by BungaDunga at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2018
In the last couple of years I've read two science fiction/fantasy books with the same central idea - a person dies and rather than being, you know, dead, they find themselves back as a young version of themselves, living life over again. The books are "Replay" by Ken Grimwood and "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North.
These books are unlike in just about every way except for the central idea.
If you want something else that has the same basic idea, try "Edge of Tomorrow", although that's really "Groundhog Day" with guns.
Which isn't to say that you should write a book about a young boy named Henry Parter who doesn't know he's the son of wizards who attends a wizarding school and ends up battling the evil dark wizard that everyone thinks is dead, particularly not if you take seven books to do it, but if you write a story about a young boy who cheats to get into wizarding school and ends up battling the evil dark wizard that everyone thinks is dead you probably have a completely different story.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:07 PM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
These books are unlike in just about every way except for the central idea.
If you want something else that has the same basic idea, try "Edge of Tomorrow", although that's really "Groundhog Day" with guns.
Which isn't to say that you should write a book about a young boy named Henry Parter who doesn't know he's the son of wizards who attends a wizarding school and ends up battling the evil dark wizard that everyone thinks is dead, particularly not if you take seven books to do it, but if you write a story about a young boy who cheats to get into wizarding school and ends up battling the evil dark wizard that everyone thinks is dead you probably have a completely different story.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:07 PM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
Similarly, "what if Harry Potter but college?" has spawned two media franchises (The Magicians) and "what if Harry Potter and D&D fell in a pile of fantasy tropes" is a hugely popular not-yet-completed book series that is being turned into a TV show by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Kingkiller Chronicles), so it's not like similarities disqualify from success.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:05 PM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Lyn Never at 2:05 PM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Many years ago, a lawyer from Seattle seemingly took a copy of the Lord of the Rings and put it in a blender. What he poured out was "The Sword of Shannara." Personally, not a fan. Much of the rest of the world disagreed, and Terry Brooks is almost as popular as Tolkien.
It's not about the bones. It's about the skin.
posted by lhauser at 9:09 PM on October 24, 2018
It's not about the bones. It's about the skin.
posted by lhauser at 9:09 PM on October 24, 2018
Am editor. I buy stories from slush. Originality of the story idea, though I won't say it isn't ever a consideration, is way behind things like prose quality, three-dimensional characterization, and pacing the plot correctly.
You read a lot in the genre you're writing in, right? Like, you're not writing a romance about a billionaire bear shapeshifter without ever having read any romance novels about billionaires, bears, or shapeshifters? Because reading is how you're going to get an idea of what's going on in the field you want to join, and what conversations are ongoing, and what's been done and what hasn't been done lately.
You're far more likely to come across as derivative if you have no idea what anyone else is up to-- I know this sounds counterintuitive, but I promise it's true. It's because, if you start from the first principles of a genre, you're going to come up with things that have been done a lot. Like, if I say Western, you think horse, cowboy, sheriff, but if I say Western to a professional writer of Westerns, they're going to tell me about some concepts suited to this year's market and this year's trends and whether the audience still wants to read about cowboys-- a much higher level of knowledge to draw on when coming up with those ideas, and thus more likely to be original. Get yourself that level of professional knowledge.
Everything has, of course, already been done. But that's been covered by above commenters, cf. Ebert's Law.
I work in genres where we can tell when there's been a big anthology call for themed stories because we get all the ones the anthology didn't take in our slush pile. At the same time. And so I can tell you for certain that the question is not 'how can I find a completely original story idea' but rather 'how can I make sure my vampire squid story is the one the editor can't put down?'.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 11:35 PM on October 24, 2018 [9 favorites]
You read a lot in the genre you're writing in, right? Like, you're not writing a romance about a billionaire bear shapeshifter without ever having read any romance novels about billionaires, bears, or shapeshifters? Because reading is how you're going to get an idea of what's going on in the field you want to join, and what conversations are ongoing, and what's been done and what hasn't been done lately.
You're far more likely to come across as derivative if you have no idea what anyone else is up to-- I know this sounds counterintuitive, but I promise it's true. It's because, if you start from the first principles of a genre, you're going to come up with things that have been done a lot. Like, if I say Western, you think horse, cowboy, sheriff, but if I say Western to a professional writer of Westerns, they're going to tell me about some concepts suited to this year's market and this year's trends and whether the audience still wants to read about cowboys-- a much higher level of knowledge to draw on when coming up with those ideas, and thus more likely to be original. Get yourself that level of professional knowledge.
Everything has, of course, already been done. But that's been covered by above commenters, cf. Ebert's Law.
I work in genres where we can tell when there's been a big anthology call for themed stories because we get all the ones the anthology didn't take in our slush pile. At the same time. And so I can tell you for certain that the question is not 'how can I find a completely original story idea' but rather 'how can I make sure my vampire squid story is the one the editor can't put down?'.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 11:35 PM on October 24, 2018 [9 favorites]
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Note that you should be familiar with the conventions of your genre, but that's not the same thing as avoiding every single thing that has ever been written.
posted by Mogur at 11:46 AM on October 24, 2018 [12 favorites]