By Sarah Hoyt

*This is the third in a series of posts “What’s the Big Idea” which I’m doing over at my blog, According To Hoyt.*

We come at ideas many ways.  Probably the least likely, the least useful, is the person who accosts us and says something like “I’ve always had an idea for a story, you can have my idea for free.”

These ideas usually fall into three categories:

The concepts, which have been done so many times that they will induce sleep on any editor at first glimpse.

The more developed concept plus pattern which are still fairly familiar, and would take more effort than most of us are willing to expend to turn into something worth reading.

And finally the fully completed story idea which would take a certain turn of mind to make moving or interesting or whatever the aim of it might be.

For instance, the last time it happened to me was a lady a little older than I, on finding I was a writer of science fiction and fantasy telling me that she’d always had this idea for a story and I could use it, for free, (this offered with a big, magnanimous smile, by the way.)  It’s about this woman, you see, whose daughter has died.  And this weird shop opens in the neighborhood, and on the window is a doll like her daughter used to have, and so the woman goes in, and there, behind the counter is… her daughter all grown up.

Not only was this proffered with the generous “for free” stipulation, but with the sort of smile of a queen conferring a boon on a peasant.  She was sure, you see, this idea would make a brilliant story, a story so fantastic, in fact, that it would make my name forever.

What she was in fact giving me, though – supposing I was fool enough to pick it up, which, thank you, I’m not – was an episode of Twilight Zone, complete with shock unexplained ending.  And at that, to make a decent episode it would need some hint of an explanation in the leadup to the end and, to make it emotionally satisfying, the woman would have had to have something to do with her daughter’s death either or purpose or accidentally (which would make the ending either terrifying or redeeming.)

Look, I’m not disputing that Ray Bradbury could take that bare skeleton, add very little, and make you sob like a baby at the end.  I’m not Ray Bradbury.  I can’t even imitate him with any degree of consistency.  The roads of science fiction are strewn with the literary corpses of those who thought they were Ray Bradbury.  Also, if it comes to that, even supposing I did it perfectly, it would be just a short story.  Even if it should win the Hugo (unlikely, as there’s a lot more that goes into that than “a good story”) it would not make my career.

However, my experience with this lady is neither unusual nor to be honest that different from what goes on in the minds of beginner writers.  I think, frankly, that these people who maniacally try to give us ideas whenever we turn around, are just would-be writers who are to scared to write the story, or who have tried and failed.

Which means, if you’re a beginner writer and you get this fully formed idea, examine it.  Try to figure out where it came from.  There is a chance what you’re remembering (as I’m sure the lady above was) is a confused hodge podge of a television show or a story you read long ago.

Does this mean that this is a bad idea?  Or that you’re plagearizing?

No.  Under the “there are no new ideas” when you reduce an idea to pattern/concept you’re pretty close to the universal. And when you don’t even remember where you saw the thing, it is likely to be like that.

I have a friend who lives in fear of being inspired by anyone’s stories.  He’s convinced this is plagiarism.  In fact one of his best short stories was written based on a song, and he’s convinced that this is plagiarism.  It’s not.  Well, not unless it is a story-song and you use every event in the song.  Then it’s a little close for comfort.  But if it’s just that you were inspired by a verse, or you interpreted the song as meaning a story, well, go on with you and write it.

We do get inspiration from other stories, which doesn’t make ours unoriginal.  It is a good thing to be aware of those stories.  To be aware in fact of where our idea has been.

I’ll confess I don’t try very hard for short stories.  As long as I’m sure I’m not echoing another person’s story point by point, I don’t care.  I rarely get fully fledged ideas.  When I get them, they’re usually so odd, and based on a dream or something like it, that it’s unlikely anyone ever thought of them.  And if I DO get a story idea I know it’s based on a story I read it’s usually a dialogue thing, where my story is going “Oh, no.  You’ve got it all wrong.”  Or “Yes, but” to another’s.  I.e., I normally know where it’s been.

But if you’re doing a novel, you might as well research where the idea has been so you know what you want to avoid and what you want to emphasize.  I’ve grown resigned to the idea, for instance, that my science fiction will echo Heinlein to some extent.  This is not on purpose most of the time, it’s just the result of having been raised IN his books.  You form an idea of what the future is going to be when you’re very young, and no matter how irrational it seems as an adult, bits of it leak into writing.  (Irrational?  Vibro.  Freshers… that sort of thing.)  This is why I must read Heinlein regularly, to overlay rational interpretation in what my subconscious spews up as “futuristic.”  This way if I steal, I steal with malice aforethought and not blindly and whatever happens to be laying around.  Look at it this way, to quote Heinlein “If you’re going to steal, steal from the best” and not just that, but steal the best from the best.  If you’re going to break into the palace, steal the chandelier, not the light bulbs.

And lest it be thought I am advising plagiarism, I’m not.

My friend above who is afraid that he’ll commit plagiarism unwittingly is also very fond of doing the sort of critique that starts with “You can’t possibly send this out.  Everyone will know you stole it from the 1928 play by I Iz Unknown.  You plagiarized it!”
Of course, nine times out of ten (and often iffy on the tenth) I’ve never read I Iz Unknown and never heard of his “famous” play from 1920.  Leaving that aside, when I manage to pry the “why it’s plagiarism” out of my friend (this normally involves plyers) what I get is “It’s also about a man who lost something essential to himself and is looking for it in a senseless universe.”

In other words, what he thinks I stole is one of those universal, fleshless patterns which can fit a thousand stories, and no one would ever attach to a particular one, unless they have convinced themselves that any resemblance between stories is plagiarism.  In which case they’ve paralyzed themselves and can’t write at all.

We’re again up against that “All ideas have been used a million times and are therefore free” (not true) and “I must avoid all resemblance with another creative work or I’m a dirty rotten plagiarist” (also not true.)

Confused?  Don’t be.

Most ideas, even complete ideas, reduced to their bare bones have indeed been done countless times.  If you want to play you have to admit you’re not so startlingly original that you’re going to come up with one that’s completely new.  That said, in most cases you should avoid stepping into someone else’s world too much, because then you murky up (shut up.  I’m a writer.  I can make up expressions) your legal position.

Look, take my series of short stories in which I recreate either mythological stories or mythological beings in science fiction in the future, with bio-engineering and technology.  Has this been done in the past?  Sure it has.  But I made it mine by fitting it into my future history.  The stories: Ariadne’s Skein, Castor, Neptune’s Orphans, and Ganymede fit into the time before and up to the turmoils.  Most of them deal with “What’s human” and what should we do with biological creatures who are humans except for having extra abilities and being grown in vats.  Of course they also deal with slavery, chattel, human perception of the extraordinary outliers, etc.

Let’s say you read Neptune’s Orphans (boys bioengineered to be mermen, who were created for use in war and are then almost killed by their creators, who want to hide that they were made at all) and you think “Oh, no, they should have been killed.  That’s how it should be.  Keep the human genome pure.”

Well, it’s your option to do a story that’s “yes, but.” Or even “hell, no, you got it wrong.”  The thing is in doing that story you’ll have to have some elements of mine, obviously.  For instance, you’ll need bioengineered humans.  Wait, that’s all you need.  You really don’t need that they be aquatic, though I suppose that’s an option you could use.  What you couldn’t/shouldn’t use are the other elements of future history: the war between the seacities and the land states, for instance, as a framing device.  The entire mule issue.  (Weirdly, despite the name, I was not in fact making an allusion to Asimov’s mule.  For whatever reason Foundation is one of those works I’ve read a hundred times and can never remember anything from.  “Mule” came from the fact that they look human but can’t reproduce.  I grew up in a farming village.  The word came naturally as a derogatory term, though I suppose to be exact they should have been cross-bred with another species.  So, clearly I’m not saying you can’t write the word.  I’m saying you can’t have mules be what they are in my world.)

If I were writing it, I’d boil it to the essentials: should humans created by humans in labs, with some special innate power other humans don’t have be allowed to survive?  And if I were doing it as an “answer” I’d do it deliberately as different in set up from the one I was “answering” as possible.

And that would be fine.

Now, say you read my story and you go off and write a story about mythological creatures, created in a lab and living through one of the Greek myths…  Is that plagiarism?  Probably not, unless you steal the specific story and framing device.  Is it a new idea?  Well, hell no.  And, particularly if you’re submitting to an editor who’s read me (I know, I know.  But there are a few) it will leave a bad taste in the mouth.

At worst, you’ll get rejected because the editor won’t be sure how much you took and will be leery of getting in the middle of it.  At best, you’ll become known as a “derivative” writer.

And, of course, if you publish on your own, if you’re in the habit of doing this, the best you can hope for is a “Yeah, he’s pleasant, but never had an original idea in his life.”

So, in these indie days more than ever – know where that idea has been.  And wipe its little nose before you love it and make it your own.

Next up: Making It Your Very Own.