Are you worried about sharing your ideas because someone might steal them? What if someone writes the book you’ve been wanting to write? Your idea is the most original idea you’ve come up with. You’ve avoided media, tropes, and have made sure your characters are all their own people. Even so, I have good news and bad news:
The good news: No one wants to steal your ideas.
The bad news: There’s no such thing as an original idea.
I came across this post on social media (cropped for the privacy of the poster), and I thought it fit this subject. Don’t worry, your ideas are safe!
Most of us have enough ideas already
Most writers, or creatives in general, have so many ideas for future projects. Whether they’re novel-length ideas or flash fiction scenes, we don’t need to take someone else’s idea. Sometimes we need help pushing through on our own ideas—curses to writer’s block—but we have enough of our ideas in the backlog.
I know I personally have too many ideas. I’ve accepted that I’ll never get to all of them. I have a whole spreadsheet of my future works. Never have I needed to steal an idea from someone else, because I have too many ideas on my own.
This isn’t the whole list, just what I could fit in a single screenshot.
I know I’m not alone in this. So many creatives commiserate about having new ideas while they’re working on a long-term project. Ideas come easily to a lot of us. Whether it’s a new world for your fantasy story, a character concept for your contemporary romance, or a scene of what happens in the middle of your project, we’re inundated with ideas.
Ideas are only part of the execution
As mean as it is: ideas are cheap. They’re the easy part of creating something. The Idea Guy™ brings nothing to the table that other creatives can’t do themselves.
What matters is the execution of the idea. Only you can bring your idea to life in your own style. You add life to the idea in a way no one else could. Even if someone took your idea (I promise they won’t), they still won’t tell the story in the same way as you. Your characters, your story, your prose—all of it is exclusive to you.
Everything is inspired by something else
This might seem contradictory to what I’ve been saying, but: your ideas are taken from elsewhere. You’re inspired by the media you’ve consumed and the experiences you’ve had. This means your idea isn’t original, even if you’ve tried hard to make it. It’s inspired by something no matter how hard you’ve tried to make it original.
A lot of stories can be broken down into:
> PROTAGONIST wants GOAL because MOTIVATION, but first they must OBSTACLE before STAKES.
For instance:
Lord of the Rings
A hobbit wants to travel to Mount Doom to destroy The One Ring because a dark lord wants to reclaim it, but first the hobbit must journey across a dangerous land before the dark lord plunges the world into darkness.
The Martian
An astronaut wants to leave Mars because he’s stranded there, but first he must outsmart the planet before it kills him.
Chances are, your story fits this template, too. That’s not a bad thing! It should be simple to understand at a glance, so your readers know what they’re getting into and you know what your stakes are. Humans associate things with other things; it’s how we function. Don’t stress about your idea being original and instead worry about making it yours.
Conclusion
The original idea is a myth. Every idea is built upon ideas before it. Most people who want to create something have enough ideas and have no interest in stealing yours. What’s original is what you bring to the table and how you execute your idea. That’s what should matter, and that’s where your focus should be.
