Young Writers Society

This just thought just hit me...
What keeps people from stealing our ideas and publishing them?
I mean, it would bite hard if we worked so hard on our works, and someone steals them and copyrights it.

Every now and then, this concern comes up and each time it's a ridiculous concern

Why is it ridiculous? Your work isn't good enough to be copied. I'm not bashing your work or anyone else's on this site. But quite frankly, people don't copy short stories by people like you. They copy short stories from people like published authors.

Also, read this on copyrights:
http://www.writinggooder.com/2009/08/28 ... d-to-know/

What Nate said.

And to be picky - nobody else can (legally) copyright your work. From the moment you write it, it's yours; and when you post it, you get the time and date next to it as proof. Don't worry.

Ah, thanks. Just made me kind of worried.

Here are some more info about copyrights, if you wanted to know more:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
Hope that helps.

I've often asked that question myself. I know I'm far from being good enough for someone to copy my writing. But what about if I have an original idea and someone just adapts it into their own book?

Pretty Crazy wrote:I've often asked that question myself. I know I'm far from being good enough for someone to copy my writing. But what about if I have an original idea and someone just adapts it into their own book?

If you have a second of inspiration giving you a single idea, and somebody spends years writing a 100,000-word novel and redrafting it ten times and writing a query letter and workshopping it and writing a synopsis and workshopping it and submitting to a hundred agents and signing with one and going through five rounds of agent revisions and going on submission to editors and going through another round of editor revisions and finally getting a book deal? Then they earned that book deal.

There is no copyright in ideas. Nobody owns them. All stories draw on the stories that came before. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Eragon, The Wheel of Time, The Sword of Truth and fifteen million other stories are all based on the same ideas. The reason those series are all famous is because somebody put years of blood, sweat and tears into the execution. Not because of any "original idea".

Karsten wrote:There is no copyright in ideas. Nobody owns them. All stories draw on the stories that came before. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Eragon, The Wheel of Time, The Sword of Truth and fifteen million other stories are all based on the same ideas. The reason those series are all famous is because somebody put years of blood, sweat and tears into the execution. Not because of any "original idea".

When you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. Guess you can never stop learning from asking questions, huh?
Thank you.

Pretty Crazy wrote:

Karsten wrote:There is no copyright in ideas. Nobody owns them. All stories draw on the stories that came before. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Eragon, The Wheel of Time, The Sword of Truth and fifteen million other stories are all based on the same ideas. The reason those series are all famous is because somebody put years of blood, sweat and tears into the execution. Not because of any "original idea".

When you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. Guess you can never stop learning from asking questions, huh?
Thank you.

Glad I could help.