Endrael
(?)Community Member
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- Posted: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 06:11:13 +0000
Yep. That's right. All of your precious story ideas belong to me. Because I own them.
When you think about it, this makes sense, doesn't it? Statistically, chances are quite high that I've thought of the exact same idea you have, or some variation of it, so therefore the idea is actually mine. And since you can't prove you thought of it first (unless you're older than me, which is another statistical improbability, given the average age of most gaia users), I declare, by executive fiat, that all ideas are mine.
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Anyone getting my point? No? I didn't think so.
There is an inherent absurdity and lack of sense in the idea that you can own an idea. It is, in fact, a logical impossibility. You can not own something that is not tangible and which can not be proven to exist. This is like saying you own god. Ridiculous, yes?
This is rooted in the mistaken assumption that putting an idea into a tangible form means that idea is then tangible, and can thus be owned, but this is misleading. The idea does not become concrete when it is written down. It remains an idea, intangible and ephemeral. Writing an idea down, or painting it, or carving it, or whatever, is merely the creation of a representation of that idea, and it is this representation that can be owned. But the idea itself? No.
Of course, there's also the fear that, by sharing your idea with someone else, they'll automatically go out and create something so similar to what you had in mind, and in a better way, that all your efforts will have been in vain. This is just as ridiculous as thinking that you can own an idea, for two reasons.
The first is that no two people think exactly alike, and the possibility of the other person creating something almost exactly like what you had planned is so miniscule as to be an impossibility. Let's take an example given by Stephen King in his book On Writing to make this clear: Say Stephen King and another writer are given the writing prompt of a lake in the desert. Stephen King says the most likely story for him is something bizarre crawling out of the lake and devouring the tourists. The other writer, who does westerns, will likely think of a lone rider stopping to water his horse, or of people fighting as they attempt to control the water source for themselves.
Reason number two is that sharing an idea does not deprive you of the idea. You still have it, and you can still use it to create your own works. This is rather like sending a file to someone over IM: the receiving party now has a copy of the file, and you haven't lost the file you just sent.
Of course, there is a problem with not sharing ideas, and this is an aspect most people overlook because it's not obvious. What is it? It limits creativity, and creativity is the life blood of the artistic endeavor. Every single piece of artistry you have been exposed to in your life (including your own), whether that artistry be in written form, painting, music, or whatever, has come about because of the confluence of ideas generated by other people and those people then giving form to their ideas. To simplify this concept further: art feeds on art, and every piece of art is a derivative of other artwork, even if there is no obvious connection between the inspiring piece and the end result of the inspiration it provoked.
Basically, my point is this: Stop being a**l retentive and getting snarky when people ask for help coming up with ideas. Being possessive of something it is impossible to own is, I dare say, stupid. Why worry that someone is going to use the idea when they're going to see that idea when you make the final product public? And, as Veive said in her Your Ideas Are Not Special thread, your ideas are not unique to you and have been used millions of times in other works all over the world. Hoarding them, then, is doubly stupid.
It is, ultimately, the end product of the idea that is important, and not the idea itself when it comes to getting a story written.
When you think about it, this makes sense, doesn't it? Statistically, chances are quite high that I've thought of the exact same idea you have, or some variation of it, so therefore the idea is actually mine. And since you can't prove you thought of it first (unless you're older than me, which is another statistical improbability, given the average age of most gaia users), I declare, by executive fiat, that all ideas are mine.
---
Anyone getting my point? No? I didn't think so.
There is an inherent absurdity and lack of sense in the idea that you can own an idea. It is, in fact, a logical impossibility. You can not own something that is not tangible and which can not be proven to exist. This is like saying you own god. Ridiculous, yes?
This is rooted in the mistaken assumption that putting an idea into a tangible form means that idea is then tangible, and can thus be owned, but this is misleading. The idea does not become concrete when it is written down. It remains an idea, intangible and ephemeral. Writing an idea down, or painting it, or carving it, or whatever, is merely the creation of a representation of that idea, and it is this representation that can be owned. But the idea itself? No.
Of course, there's also the fear that, by sharing your idea with someone else, they'll automatically go out and create something so similar to what you had in mind, and in a better way, that all your efforts will have been in vain. This is just as ridiculous as thinking that you can own an idea, for two reasons.
The first is that no two people think exactly alike, and the possibility of the other person creating something almost exactly like what you had planned is so miniscule as to be an impossibility. Let's take an example given by Stephen King in his book On Writing to make this clear: Say Stephen King and another writer are given the writing prompt of a lake in the desert. Stephen King says the most likely story for him is something bizarre crawling out of the lake and devouring the tourists. The other writer, who does westerns, will likely think of a lone rider stopping to water his horse, or of people fighting as they attempt to control the water source for themselves.
Reason number two is that sharing an idea does not deprive you of the idea. You still have it, and you can still use it to create your own works. This is rather like sending a file to someone over IM: the receiving party now has a copy of the file, and you haven't lost the file you just sent.
Of course, there is a problem with not sharing ideas, and this is an aspect most people overlook because it's not obvious. What is it? It limits creativity, and creativity is the life blood of the artistic endeavor. Every single piece of artistry you have been exposed to in your life (including your own), whether that artistry be in written form, painting, music, or whatever, has come about because of the confluence of ideas generated by other people and those people then giving form to their ideas. To simplify this concept further: art feeds on art, and every piece of art is a derivative of other artwork, even if there is no obvious connection between the inspiring piece and the end result of the inspiration it provoked.
Basically, my point is this: Stop being a**l retentive and getting snarky when people ask for help coming up with ideas. Being possessive of something it is impossible to own is, I dare say, stupid. Why worry that someone is going to use the idea when they're going to see that idea when you make the final product public? And, as Veive said in her Your Ideas Are Not Special thread, your ideas are not unique to you and have been used millions of times in other works all over the world. Hoarding them, then, is doubly stupid.
It is, ultimately, the end product of the idea that is important, and not the idea itself when it comes to getting a story written.
