Dr. Dume ~ The Doctor is In

Stumpy interrupted my writing time today. Don't be concerned. I let him live.

He wanted to tell me about a story idea he had. I reacted to this, as I always do, with grace, poise, and mature sophistication.

I stuck my fingers in my ears and bellowed 'La la la' to no particular tune until he left the room.

What non-writers never realise is that story ideas are ten a penny. Finding the time to construct a story around them, and making the idea come to bleeding, screaming, suppurating life is the hard part. If someone tells you an idea, and you use it, they expect recompense. If they tell you an idea and you've already written and published a story using that same basic plot, they'll still claim you stole it. It's best not to hear the idea in the first place.

Every writer has heard the 'I can sell you a great idea for a story' line, or one of its variants. Never, ever, let them speak the idea aloud. Never.

Some writers are worried that if they show their work to others, their idea will get stolen. So what if it does? If someone needs to steal your idea, then they have no imagination of their own. They might scribble something but without imagination, it won't be any good at all. If I let you in on some ideas I've been batting around, you might well go off and use them. I don't care.

Sometimes I put up ideas I've been thinking about. I might write a hundred words about an idea for a novel. That's going to end up at around 80-100,000 words when it's all done. If it ever gets done. Let's suppose someone reads the idea and decides to use it themselves.

Why would I care? They'll turn that 100-word outline into a story, maybe even a very good one. It will be nothing like the one I'll write from the same outline. If you give an outline to a hundred writers, they'll come up with a hundred different stories. An outline is like the signpost in the swamp that says 'You are here'. Where you go next is up to you.

Ideas are not sacred. Ideas are not valuable commodities. Ideas cannot even be copyrighted. Ideas are easy. Clamping your backside to a chair (I use Mole grips for the fast-release function) and writing the wretched thing is the hard part.

If you read an idea here and are inspired by it, good. I'm not going to come to your millionaire's mansion in ten years and demand a cut of the proceeds. I might send Stumpy, but I won't be there. I'll be here. Writing something else.

Any idea you read here is free. Public domain and all that. If you do use one, I'd like a footnote (inspired by Dr. Dume, please visit his castle but don't tell anyone where you're going) but even that's not compulsory. If I find an idea posted here has been written up and published, I'll feel a warm glow from the thought that I might have inspired it. I'm not going to stalk you. I hear people get quite upset about that sort of thing.

There are something like six billion heads in the world. My good friend, Romulus, would say that most of them are empty but even so, the chances of anyone having a unique thought are slim. Whatever you've written, someone else has thought of it. If you're lucky, they haven't bothered to write it.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. Those who could actually make use of the idea have no need to steal it. Those who would steal it are unlikely to be able to use it.

Don't listen to anyone who offers you an idea. You don't need it, and you're just opening yourself up to future problems if you use it. Unless, as here and in the Alienskin articles, you have a written assurance that the idea is offered for free and completely free of strings, threads, and trails of mucus. Well, no strings or threads anyway.

Active discussions of this subject are currently going on all over the Internet, on blogs and writer's groups. That's where I stole the idea for this entry.