The Word Cloud

IDEA! Brand new - unique. No one's ever thought of it before! Not on WordCloud on a Wednesday morning at any rate.
For our next Monthly Competition, let Harry give us all the plot for our story - then, from all the (vastly varying) entries we'll see the difference between sharing an idea (which this will be) and pinching other people's work, which it won't be (not for the first few entries anyway!).

Yes, as Harry says, there's no copyright in an idea, only in its expression in a particular form. And the copying has to be substantial, too. Which is just as well, otherwise we'd all be plagiarists every time we made a character say 'I love you' or - beloved of soap writers everywhere, 'You'd better come in,' or 'They're good kids'.

Plus, be careful who you pay hommage to: Atonement is deeply, deeply indebted to The GoBetween, but the latter is a masterpiece, and shows up the flaws in the former all too clearly. It's also much indebted, as McEwan has always said, to a novel by Lucilla Andrews, set in a wartime hospital: it's interesting that the press made far, far more fuss about that, which was largely about fact-gathering, than anyone has about the Hartley, which is all about making a work of art. I know which I think is more important, and more interesting.

Tony;
Bring it on! I love that idea!

EmmaD
You forgot "I'm leaving..." :o)
Good point about Atonement/The GoBetween and there are so many more examples out there

Ez

I read Atonement last year sometime. Was not dead impressed by part one -- there were some anachronisms that seemed really weird and it did not grab me in the way that I expected to be grabbed after all the hype.

But when I got to the second part, I had a total de ja vu. Has it (the second part) been previously published as a short story/nevella/under another name by the same author? I could swear that I had read Part II (or at least the Dunkirk part) several years before but divorced from Part I and not under the name of Atonement. Or was there a film made of it?

... Or am I just losing it (the plot)...?

Rachael, I think the whole novel is pretty derivative and McEwan had a lot of eye-witness accounts to draw on for that particular section of the story. It reminded me a tiny bit of 'Goodbye to All That' by Robert Graves, but that's probably because this is the only first-hand account I read of WWI. Much more recently, Pat Barker's Resurrection trilogy (which I've only dipped into) covered similar ground. I called 'Atonement' pastiche somewhere else on this site and by that I meant that there is really nothing of McEwan in this book: not just the source material, but the style, point of view etc are all second-hand. Obviously no book can be entirely original, but I still feel it needs something of you, the writer, in it even if you are borrowing heavily from other sources. I also have a deep-seated prejudice against a certain kind of book which seems written for book-clubs. These books always seem to involve the same two ingredients: (1) a doomed love affair (2) an unusual historical backdrop. Captain Correlli's Mandolin, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Atonement. I could go on and on and on...

"...These books always seem to involve the same two ingredients: (1) a doomed love affair (2) an unusual historical backdrop..."

Woohoo! Book-clubs here I come!
:o)

Ez

"(1) a doomed love affair (2) an unusual historical backdrop. "

I wouldn't disagree with you about the second-hand elements of Atonement, but you could describe a lot of literature in those terms, of course: Othello, Scott, Tale of Two Cities, The End of the Affair... You can make any book sound foolish if you're reductive enough in the description.

But you're right about the book clubs. TMOL does very well with them...

'Times' Dark Eons'. A hauntingly evocative story of a love that could never be: she was a humble merchant's daughter, he an omnipotent being who had created the very reality she inhabited.' Hmmm. Maybe a bit too far out for your average book club. Just thought of another one, actually - 'The English Patient.'

Sorry, Emma - your comments only came up after I posted up my reply to EZ. Yeah, I am being reductive, and I guess it very much depends on the book. I just feel these books seem to form a distinct (but for some reason unacknowledged) genre in their own right. Crime, sci-fi writers acknowledge that they're writing within the constraints of a particular genre. Books like the ones I've cited above often get lauded as 'literature' when they're just as commercial in their appeal.

And intent.

I could trail my coat and say that if a woman writes about love and war she's sold as Romance, and if a man does he gets shortlisted for prizes... But I won't, because last time I looked I was a woman, and my WIP isn't about war anyway. Nor all that much love, either... Mind you, Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger won the Booker before book groups and The English Patient were born or thought of, only not many people seem to have notice that it's exactly the same territory, and to my mind a much better book. Ditto in the 1960s (?) Olivia Manning's Levant Trilogy, which is also that territory but in greater and much more fascinating depth, and minus the love story. One of the most underrated writers of her generation.

There undeniable is a crossover market, and I don't know about the others, but I inhabit it by nature but also of intent: I don't see why you can't write a novel which can be read as a thumping good read AND operate at other, more soi disant literary levels too. And I certainly don't see why the former quality should disqualify a book from being considered worth discussing at the latter. Things don't have to be either/or, they can be both/and.

It used to be called crossover, now they call it book group, because book groups like books which are full of stuff to talk about. There's also the rather more sneery category of 'faux lit', but I think that's more specifically the slim vol with pale, hazy cover, which is sold as super-refined 'haut lit', and is actually much easier to read and arguably simpler than the real thing: I gather The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveller's Wife are cases in point, but I haven't read them.

You're right, Emma - there's absolutely no reason why a book can't be a good read, and still be 'literary' in the best sense of the word. The two aren't mutually exclusive. I do think the writer's intentions are crucial and my main problem with 'Atonement' (I haven't actually read the other books I've cited) is that I felt it was a cynical book, written to a conscious formula. And I wonder if it would have received the same level of critical acclaim, had it been written by a woman.

The moral question of taking a plot which somebody else has worked hard to create is pretty straight-forward: it's theft. From the legal standpoint, I'd not so sure.

For example, the Vampire is a creature of myth; no-one owns it. Stories about what Vampires are, how they live and die, etc., are also the stuff of myth, going back far beyond copyright.

But think of the Vampire movie, 'Nosferatu': The film-maker used the plot from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' but changed character names, dropped many characters altogether (including Van Helsing), changed the Vampire into something unrecognisable from Stoker's version, physically as well as in other ways (sunlight kills it; it kills rather than 'turns' victims), changed the ending completely and did various other things to make it the director's own vision of the Vampire myth.

Despite the film-maker having the legend of Vampires to back him up, Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement and won. The court ordered all prints of the movie destroyed (thankfully, they weren't), and the movie company that made it was forced into bankruptcy and closed down.

Regardless of anything, you should consider yourself the owner of any work that you've put yourself into and which you believe is original; and, in my opinion, you should be prepared to fight for it, too.

well said pat !!!

i salutetay

i've always thought that there should be copyright for the order in which the ideas are, for say if someone had twenty ideas in order then that arangement would be copyright, maybe someone on here will get it put forward to someone professional who will actually do something about it because at the moment it needs changeing to like i suggested

or it should be the order of the whole plot of ideas which is copyright and no one can copy or come up with the same plot of ideas

Hi Lee,

You have a basic moral right to fight for anything you create, if you're absolutely certain somebody has had away with it, used it or sold it, or whatever.

On the other hand, movie-studios, for example, are so sick with worry about getting sued that they always send a "Release" form for you to sign before looking at your work. This is a legally binding document that basically states that if the studio happens to come up with something that is EXACTLY the same as your work in every single way, you can't do a damn thing about it.

They do this on the advise of their lawyers, in order to protect themselves from people who may have sent in SPs and synopsis similar to their last big release. That happens a lot, of course.

It's also true that even big movie studios have been successfully sued by people claiming their work was stolen. Similar storylines can (easily), be coincidence. It's all a question of how big a coincidence and what you can prove. Or it seems to be.

alright pat
it seems a bit iffy for them to send documents of that nature. if the movie makers have already had someting which they've released, how could anyone sue for infringement when the film makers have already released it. i guess that document is for future scripts which get sent in, and if the movie maker makes one of them, their document is to protect against old scripts which have been sent in, but still, this copyright thing is full of legal document minefields i wonder if i would sign such a document, i'd be guted if i did and then the film company released my script and i got nothing

A bit of paranoia creeping in there Lee, fella.
If you think it through, why would you not get anything?
Because they stole it?
Why would they steal it? Think of the risks to themselves. You could challenge their (signed by you) document. Their theft would be made public and their morality questioned - either by the law suit or just by the posting on the internet. A bad reputation can be highly detrimental to a big organisation.
Also, why steal what you wrote? The only advantage is to cut out your fee. Which is piddling in the grand scheme of things "film"; think of the millions needed to make a film; your remunuration will likely be tiny. Against the risk of a bad reputation.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but...

Ez

yes your probably right ez but when there is a world with alot of dogs, it is better to think paranoid to survive, if not think of the dogs........... i'm not that paranoid thinking but sometimes it helps a great deal just to beat off the dogs

There is a website, advertised here on WC, that actually tells you how to use other peoples ideas. The secret to a bestselling novel, he says, is to find a best selling novel from 5 or 10 years ago and copy the plot but change the genre, the era, swap the characters around, male to female etc and just like that you will have a bestselling novel. Easy as that! Of course, you have to pay for all the nitty gritty details.

Haha! I like your attitude lee: just coz you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get ya, huh? As has already been said within this thread, there simply ARE no original ideas. Everything's been done. Everything! Look at Tolkien: anyone who has read his Silmarillion/Hobbit/LOTR will appreciate the sheer scope of that man's vision. But if you happen to have read any Norse literature (Voluspa, Kalevala/the sagas & eddas) then you'll realise he isn't quite as original as first appears. Even his most familiar characters names - Frodo, Gandalf, Thorin, Gimli, Fili, Kili, loads more - have been borrowed. That Eragon thing - can ANYONE seriously tell me that isn't Star Wars in a fantasy setting??? And Star Wars was hardly original! Everyone seeks inspiration from others, be it a living author, a past master, or the myths & legends of antiquity. It's not what you take, but how you choose to relay it yourself - if you honestly believe you can improve on an idea, twist it into your own creation, then do so. If not, leave it alone. And if you're fearful of someone directly ripping off your ideas, just remember that imitation is the highest form of flattery. If they nick it, then it must be good!