So, yeah, wandering around Yahoo!Answers again...

[agilebrit]

And someone asks a perfectly legitimate and innocent question, wanting a list of humanoid creatures for her urban fantasy tale. That's all. She didn't ask for the entire plot handed to her on a silver platter. She didn't even ask for names for her characters. She just wanted a list.

And the very first responder pops off at her and says (quote): you can't say its "your" book if other people helped you -- capitalized just like that, and with no period.

To which my response is, succinctly, "Bullshit." (I know, I know, and you can now take your jaws off the floor at the notion of me being "succinct" about anything.)

Writers are riffing from each other, the people around us who aren't writers, and the world all the freaking time. It's what we do. Did my Writing Buddy give me an awesome idea for how to inject a spec element into the not!Iron Man story? Why, yes, yes he did. But I'm the one who wrote it. I'm the one who put the actual words on the actual page. I'm the one who ran that idea right into the Wall of Wrong and then garnered another 250,000 words out of it over three other works.

Did my husband make an errant remark about bears when we were in Glacier National Park? Why, yes, yes he did. But he's not the one who took that remark and turned it into a 6700-word story.

Did AlienSkin run a themed contest that gave me the idea for the Bunny From Hell story? Yup. Did they write the story? Nope. Did I read a movie synopsis that gave me the idea for another story? Sure did. Still my story. Did someone make a blog post about mouse shows that sent me skittering off in new and odd directions (tips hat to ellen_datlow)? Ayup. STILL MY STORY.

I could go on, but you get the point. Ideas come from everywhere. It's what we writers do with those ideas that make the stories ours. And anyone who thinks that writers are just lonely creatures slaving away in a dim room all by ourselves until the story springs, minty and fresh, from our exhausted fingers, with no input from anyone else ever? Has never done this.

Comments

[kantayra.livejournal.com]

Just think of it: other people invented all those words writers are using! And writers have the nerve to think it's still their story, just because they rearranged them. Pshaw! Slackers!

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

YEAH. WE SHOULD ALL BE LIKE TOLKIEN AND INVENT OUR OWN LANGUAGES!!!

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

People like the responder are the type who sue people for "stealing" their "ideas."

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

...and then are shocked when they are laughed out of court.

[malora.livejournal.com]

I think people on Y!A are highly sensitive to questioners who want others to do their homework for them, and so they fly off the handle easily. I've answered a few "homework" questions because the person wanted guidance on HOW to do something--and someone assumed they wanted to cheat on their homework and yelled at them. There's this attitude of "I assume you're lazy and I won't do your work for you."

But yeah, it's perverse to go on Yahoo Answers and spend your time berating people for asking for help.

"writers are just lonely creatures slaving away in a dim room all by ourselves until the story springs, minty and fresh, from our exhausted fingers, with no input from anyone else ever?"

Interestingly, there's a SF story about this. A boy is a gifted musician, and he's put in a secluded cabin so he can never hear the music of others and never be influenced by it. I'm sure the author stole that idea from somewhere... ;)