Writing.Com General Discussion

Nothing can stop someone from "stealing" an idea. But if you follow meme theory or study Jung's archetypes then no idea is unique or the sole property of someone else. No story is unique. As Steven pointed out, what matters in the end is how well the story is written. I think this can inspire and free most writers from the stressful idea of "I need to do something totally new, no one has seen before!" Look at how many adaptations and rewrites there have been of Romeo and Juliet which was itself adapted from many other Italian sources including possible real events. Or adaptations of any Shakespearean play. People love to rework his stories. And many of them are good.

Historical fiction is another genre that comes to mind. About 5 or 6 years ago, I think every historical fiction author who dealt in Renaissance Europe published a novel on the Borgias. It was all the rage. I can think of 3 that came out all within 2 years of each other. Some of them are good. Some of them are... um not so good. As far as I know the authors didn't sue each other for stealing their ideas. (Though maybe they did, who knows.)

It might not be quite the genres or ideas you have in mind, but I think it raises the point that we can be and are easily inspired by events and people around us. How many writers have said they've been inspired by another writer? What is important and what lasts is how we adapt and tell the story and make it our own.

As for posting a story online for the public when you'd like to publish it professionally later... This is a more nuanced subject due to publication and copyright laws. But on basic terms what we need to keep in mind is often times publishers will not publish something that has been published in its entirety online for public consumption. Even stories and writing here on W.com can be exempt from professional publishing later depending on how much of the work has been posted here, and in what form.

To keep this post short: if you want to send something out for publication later, you should restrict access to it. But that doesn't mean you can't post something on W.com with a passkey, for example, and send that passkey to people asking for reviews and feedback.

I wish I could explain copyright laws further but I am really bad it. Someone here wrote a great article years back on publication rights, copyright, and the internet explaining all the laws etc... I'll see if I can find it and post it here because I remember it gave great advice on how to protect your work for any publishing and copyright problems later on. (Who knows if it's still here even, this was back in 2003 or something)

From poking around just now it looks like GabriellaR45 has some useful resources here " Visit Publishing Place"  [E] for people who might be interested in publishing.