Writers: How do you deal with accusations of, "You stole my idea!"

[mckitterick]

Today I've been dealing with a guy who feels I used his idea for a recently published story of mine. (Just to be clear: I didn't.) Anyhow, it seems that this guy has a similar setup for a novel he's been working on, and someone who read his novel and heard about my story wrote to him to say it looked suspicious, and the third-party guy thought I had this similar-story-guy in my summer SF Writing Workshop (I didn't - he was in Kij's Novel Writing Workshop, so I never saw the book, outline, or any of that).

So I wrote to the similar-story-guy to clear things up, and now it appears that he thinks I'm a liar and a thief.

Egad, Charlie Brown.

He went from accusatory and "shocked" at my taking his idea to passive-aggressive a-hole during the course of the conversation. I feel I could have handled this better, but at least I did delete such phrases as, "your Machiavellian little mind" before sending the messages. Ahem.

As I publish more and teach more writers, I expect this kind of situation will come up more frequently. I imagine that John Scalzi hears from half a dozen writers every day with similar accusations.

Writers: Have you had to deal with such situations? If so, how did you handle it? I'd like to be the paragon of gentlemanly and instructive without telling the accusor to piss off.

Thanks,
Chris

Comments

[pendamuse.livejournal.com]

You deal with it by not dealing with it. You don't acknowledge it, you don't give tit attention, you let the person in question cry and rend their clothing. Every denial is admittance. You'll never convince them you didn't steal their notes, or peek over their shoulders or use witchcraft to pick the plot from their unfulfilled dreams. You will always be the reason they never made it as an author.

Because, you know - writers only have one good idea...

You can't steal ideas - ideas are not plots, characters, entire stories. All writers wade in the same creative pool and we often have similar ideas - cannibal Santas, Creepy Kids, Zombies affect on society - but it's the story, the writing, that makes it unique.

Hi, by the way.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what pendamuse said.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Good advice.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yup, I should have just done that in the first place. *sigh*

Yeah, I started off by discussing how ideas are cheap, that even if a dozen authors all wrote stories about the same idea they'd all be different, yadayada, but he just heard that as condescending. I'm chalking this up as "lesson learned."

Hi back!

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Granny Won't Knit by Sturgeon and The Stars My Destinatin by Bester were based on the same idea -- given them by John Campbell. Ted used to tell that in his classes.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Good point! And, hoo boy, different stories.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I liked The Stars My Destination better when it was still called The Count Of Monte Cristo.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

;-D

(Dunno, though, I like Bester's better.)