There are some questions that all writers get, over and over and over. Anything that is repeated that many times gets very old, very fast. One of the most irritatingly common questions is the perennial “Where do you get your ideas?” But even more irritating are the eager folks who come up and say, “I have this great idea for a novel! Why don’t you write it, and we’ll split the profit?”
This seemingly well-intentioned offer is irritating on three levels. All writers find it annoying simply because anyone who has actually written a novel knows just how much work it is, and how much commitment it takes to see it through to the finish. We also know how much time it takes and how unpredictable progress is.
People who don’t know these things (because they have never written a novel, or even a short story) don’t know what to expect. When the process doesn’t proceed as quickly as they expect, they start asking about it. This is as irritating to a writer who is struggling with mid-book malaise as a kid in the back seat asking “Are we there yet?” every ten minutes.
The other problem with attempting to write someone else’s idea for them is that they quickly become backseat drivers. They expect “I had the idea; you write it” to mean “I had the idea; you write it the way I would write it.” At best, this means they offer lots of unsolicited advice to the writer about how to develop and write the story, often screwing up the writer’s ability to produce anything decent. At worst, they insist on veto power over every word in every chapter.
The second level of irritation is closely related (or perhaps I just think it is because I fall into this category myself). I find this offer difficult to respond to politely because, for me, ideas are the easy, fun part. I have more really good ideas—by which I mean ones that I really want to develop because I want to find out what I will do with them—than I can possibly write in the rest of my life…and this has been true for at least the last twenty years, probably longer. I don’t need new ideas. I need time to develop the ones I have. Asking me to spend a year or more developing and writing someone else’s idea makes me want to punch something. Or someone…
The calm, logical part of me tries to respond calmly and logically by pointing out that a novel takes me at least a year to write, often more, and that I really don’t have a problem getting one idea a year. If the person offering me unnecessary ideas continues to insist that his (and it usually is a him in this case) idea is different, I say “No,” as plainly as possible and walk away. So far, I have managed to do this without ever having to punch anyone.
The third level of irritation comes from observing various friends of mine for whom idea generation and development is not the easy, fun part, or whose overall process is idiosyncratic in other ways. These writers need the right idea, and for them, a “right idea” is extremely specific. Being offered a random idea that has approximately 0.0000000001% chance of being right for them is extra annoying because it reminds them of just how much work they have to do to get their right idea in the first place (in addition to all the aforementioned issues, because the actual work of writing a novel doesn’t change just because getting ideas is also work).
All of this is why the copyright laws are written to protect work “in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression” (emphasis mine). (See https://www.copyright.gov/title17/ for the current U.S. laws—accept no substitutes. There is so very much misinformation about copyright law on the internet…so much.) In other words, ideas are not subject to copyright.
This results in even more idiocy from some people. Realizing that their “great idea” is not under copyright, they go on from “I had the idea; you write it” to “I’ll get my lawyer to write a contract to make sure you won’t steal my idea.” (One guy phrased it as “We’ll get a lawyer to write a contract so it’ll be fair to both of us,” but what he meant was “Don’t even try to steal my idea; I’m on to you, and I have lawyers!”)
What these people do not realize is that no idea is great enough to make up for the hassle of dealing with them for … well, under current copyright law https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html section 302.b, for works with joint authorship, “copyright endures for a term consisting of the life of the last surviving author and 70 years after such last surviving author’s death.” Which means that if the idea really is a great one, and it is one that you find irresistible so you agree with this proposition, and everything goes smoothly and the book becomes a classic that’s made into movies and plays and reprinted over and over and taught in schools forever…you, the writer will be dealing with this annoying person and/or his heirs for the rest of your life. It isn’t worth it.
I appreciate this post. I have never been asked to write someone else’s idea, but if/when I publish books and suddenly have readers (no matter how few), it’s nice to know the logic behind the answer, “NO.” It makes it a lot easier to set boundaries with people when you know *why* it is you’re setting the boundary.
What I find entertaining about this is reading your blog post and thinking about how I would rephrase the information in it to give to such a reader (which may only work because I tend to be incredibly blunt and forceful and am terrible at politeness and tact. Nobody make me a diplomat!).
In response to a person like this, I believe I would say, “My friend, I find that ideas are cheap, and can be found almost anywhere. However, the dedication and study it takes to turn even a great idea into a decent novel is not–which is, I believe, the reason you’ve come to me in the first place. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write the stories for all *my* ideas, let alone yours. Furthermore, I find most of my fulfillment in coming up with great ideas at the end of the process, when I have actually done the work and written the story. Why don’t you keep your great idea and go write it into a story yourself? I think you’ll find a greater sense of satisfaction in it that way.”
Of course, there’s always the chance that they’ll miss the point and say that they could never write a novel, at which point I would probably just walk away in disgust… (:
So true. I need to go up to a lawyer sometime and say, “I have an idea for a lawsuit! How about you do all the research and courtroom stuff, and we split the proceeds?”
From my Writer’s FAQ:
I’ve got a great idea for a story. I’ll tell you my idea, and you write it. We’ll split the proceeds fifty-fifty.
As mentioned above, ideas are a dime a dozen. That makes your idea worth about eight-tenths of one cent. An idea is no more a story than a lump of carbon is a diamond necklace.
Alternative answer:
Why don’t I think about a swimming pool, and you dig it for me?
It’s particularly shocking when it’s a *novel*, because coming up with the original idea is such a small proportion of the work. It would make slightly more sense with a very short story. Once you have the idea behind “comp.basilisk FAQ,” my favorite short-short, and you have the style in which it’s told (a FAQ), you might be able to write the 800 words fairly quickly (though I have no idea if Langford did). On the other hand, there’s some fairly heavy-duty worldbuilding behind the story-series of which this is part, and that should be counted in too.
But a novel, wow. No idea determines a whole novel: you need to assemble a tremendous amount of stuff. I was in CD and away from my video games, we went to the National Zoo, and I got the idea of putting zerglings in a zoo exhibit. But that’s not a novel, it’s not even a story. Who’s doing it? What happens when they do? I’m a pantser but even so, it was a lot of work to get to 50K words and find out what the answers were. And of course it will need revision, assuming I ever figure out what the ending is. (Hypothetical stranger, how about I write the first 80% and you write the ending? I think I might accept halfsies on that, if you did it well.)
I wonder if some of the people doing this are motivated, not by greed, but by the same thing that makes getting an artist to draw your player-character appealing. I want to see my idea made tangible, it would be cool! But then they should be paying *you*–quite a bit, too–rather than vice versa.
Agreed! Although, even if they offered to pay me a whole lot of money to bring their idea to fruition, I’m not sure I’d go for it. I’d much rather work on the ideas my brain thinks are fun, rather than what somebody else thinks is cool.
I hear this so much as a game developer.
I thought the ideas came from a Post Office box in Schenectady.
Does that make them more or less valuable than if one came up with them oneself?