It is a strange experience to see fragments ones own stuff rewritten and reused by other writers. It's not something I have ever bothered to persue or comment upon, and I'm not sure whether to be flattered or jealous. I suppose it depends on who gets the publishing contract,

You can't copyright ideas anyway, only their expression - i.e. the words you write them in.

but doesn't that mean there's all the more reason to worry they might get lifted? I've just been looking around the Flash groups and they're swimming with great original ideas and plot twists.

I think, as writers, we hope that we all have a certain nobility and respect for the imagination of other people. Plagiarism cases remain rare, and I can only believe it's for that very reason. The goal is surely to create something as original as possible, and only the worst kind of cheat would feel good enough about stealing someone else's idea to carry it through an entire novel.

Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was talking in a TV interview about how all ideas come from the same place, and anyone can tap into them. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I do know that I have come up with story ideas and titles, only to later see them on the shelves of bookstores under another author's name. I began a story called The Thief of Time, only to discover that Terry Pratchett was set to release a novel with the same title.

JB

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In fact, it can happen quite regularly within certain genres. There was I, thinking how clever I was to write a Dracula novel set in the future. Ha! I thought, nobody's done this before. Wrong! As I discovered when a friend pointed me to Dracula Unbound by Brian Aldiss. Not nearly the same story, but well, there are shades, and I hadn't even known the novel existed.

Yep. This happens all the time. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen ideas of "mine" turned into successful products by other writers. I've had a particular story idea kicking around for awhile now involving an assassination attempt on a famous historical figure, after I read in a biography the fact that there were various attempts on his life which are not widely known about. The last industry person I pitched it to (socially, not professionally) said to me "Your best bet is to turn that into a radio play". OK I thought, fine, "maybe I'll do that then" (an insight into my industrious writing process there). Not long afterwards R4 broadcast a whole series of radio plays on a very similar theme, about famous composers being murdered.

I think there are two ways of dealing with this. You can either think "Oh my ideas are not very original I'll just give up" or think "Wow my ideas are spot-on, exactly what the industry is looking for, see how I keep predicting exactly what ends up being a hit.". I tend to alternate between the two.

Ah yes, Griff, but do you ever become suspicious - even a tiny little bit? I do. I sometimes think we're all plugged into some nasty Overmind that sucks up all the good ideas and downloads them into its employed clones to create more cash for them upstairs.

I'm wrong, I hope.

JB

Having worked for many large global corporations in my time, I can tell you that idea sounds more than plausible.

No that's an illusion. What really happens is this: all the good ideas were divvied out evenly at the birth of the universe with one idea each intended for each soul. Bad ideas were also divvied out but at a much higher rate: roughly two and a half million per soul, with no real upper limit for those inclined to use up their quota, which ends up happening most of the time as it turns out. Unfortunately no individual soul is capable of discerning the difference between a good idea and a bad idea, except certain special souls known in some societies as Artists, to whom it has been granted a very marginally elevated perception. Even then Artists have only the one good idea themselves. Any other good ideas they seem to have they've really taken from non-artist souls who have used them without realising. And that's the Arist's job, looking around for good ideas to nick amidst the trillion trillion trillion bad ideas that are out there.

Z

That's a good idea, Zooter - it's convinced me, anyway!

Frances

Writing makes you kind of sensitive and paranoid to what others are doing: "oh look I can't write that becasue it deals with X" - well so what ... just write it different. "Oh my god he's got a monkey!" Just make sure your monkey is the business etc

As for titles from proverbs, e.g. "Procrastination is the thief of time" it's no surprise that they crop up, like stuff from the Bible and Shakespeare, and poetry. I bet there was a whole slew of writers just finishing off The Sound and the Fury (title courtesy of Shakespeare, from Macbeth) when Faulkner beat them to the draw. That's the way it is. I freaked out when I discovered there was a novel published in the 40s with the same title as mine ...

There's still some good ones in Milton though ... "A Pansy Freaked With Jet" will be mine in a few years, unless you beat me to it ... or someone else already has!

"Fame is the Spur", after all.

Jim

Writing makes you kind of sensitive and paranoid to what others are doing: "oh look I can't write that becasue it deals with X" - well so what ... just write it different.

I'm not sure that's always possible.

I once knew somebody who got a very long way through a novel where the hero was a mathematician breaking the Enigma code. Yes, you've guessed it, he was devastated when Robert Harris suddenly released Enigma. (In those days there was a lot less Internet, and a lot less pre-publicity about any projects that famous authors were currently working on.) He felt, reasonably enough it seemed to me, there was no way he could now submit his work to a publisher with any chance of success. No one was going to buy "the other Enigma novel".

The last thing I heard, he decided to preserve all his research, and started reworking his efforts into a novel about the Nazi efforts to acquire deuterium for atomic weapons. Which seemed to me like a great idea actually, to capitalise on the market created by the buzz around Enigma. Whether he ever got a publishing deal, I never heard, as I've lost contact with him.

Yes Griff, you're right in the case of someone with a subject like that. That's the trouble with "high concept" (if that's what it is). Your eggs is in one basket, aint they?

Jim

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But he did have a go at reworking...

Yes, I think 'high concept' is dangerous. Maybe just becoming a staggeringly good writer is safer, then it doesn't matter what you write about.

I'm sure it happens unconsciously a lot. I'm sure it happens consciously sometimes. But an awful lot of it is zeitgeist, though. How many parents name their child something startlingly original, and then Attila hits nursery, and finds he's Attila LeH for evermore, because there are four others.

EmmaD (yes, that's why...)

Emma - I see the fatigues of that old slave-port Bristol haven't blunted your sense of hunmour!

Jim

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Er, I mean 'humour' not 'hunmour' - appropriate though in the light of your jest.

I was interested to see that Bristol is finally trying to get to grips with its slaving past - only a couple of decades after Liverpool. SS Great Britain has been done up a treat, incidentally, with an excellent museum (Visitors' Centre they no doubt call it - no, probably Visitor Centre). Well worth the visit.

Emma

I was interested to see that Bristol is finally trying to get to grips with its slaving past - only a couple of decades after Liverpool.

Funnily enough, I was living in Bristol a couple of decades ago and wrote an article for the Bristol Recorder about the city's slaving past. I remember going to the city library and ordering loads of old dusty documents up from the archives - absolutely fascinating (and shocking) stuff and yes, seemingly I was the only person interested in such material, at the time (although probably other people were too). I wrote another piece about the city's long history of riots. My aunt was a Bristolian and good at thinking up subjects for articles.

Frances