a little on the originality of thought and word.
5.3 miles.
To you, this is not earth-shaking. To me, it is yet another milestone in getting back into the Running Groove. I ran 5.3 miles this morning and didn't stop, no matter how much I wanted to. (I did stop for a red light, but after weighing "don't stop under any circumstances" versus "Diane, flat as a rug" I chose safety.)
I was beginning to think I'd never be able to go non-stop again for any distance over 3.5 miles.
On two mailing lists I'm on, the question of other people ripping off ideas and language has come up, and it's got me thinking.
- On the diary-l list, one journaler has mentioned that she's found another journal in which she's found several turns of phrase that are very similar to her own, and she suspects this other journal of ripping her off. The journaler wanted to know if these similarities violate copyright.
(What's strange is that, according to a message that was on the index page of the dear departed Dear Jackie Robinson, Lizzie experienced much the same thing. One wonders if it's the same journal in question.)
- On a screenwriting list, a screenwriter noticed that The Mask of Zorro contains elements found in her own novel, which was published in 1994:
In Zorro, Mexican slaves are working a gold mine in a place they have named El Dorado. In my book, Touch The Dawn, published in 1994 by Penguin, I have Mexican slaves extracting gold from the Stanislaus River in a place called El Dorado.
She wanted to know if she has the basis for a case, because her agent did shop her novel around Hollywood.
Part of the problem with analysing these cases is that I don't have the particulars in front of me, I only have what the complainants have to say. But on the basis of what they've said, neither one of them has a case to say she's been ripped off.
In the first case, the writer mentioned that the second journaler had come up with phrases similar to her own. There could be tons of reasons for this--perhaps the second journaler read the writer's page and, with that writer's writing style in mind, wrote her own entry for the day. Or perhaps these phrases are in common usage. Or whatever. Without exact quotes comparing one to the other, it's hard to judge, but it seems unlikely.
The second case, in which elements from the novel seemed to show up in The Mask of Zorro is way, way more unlikely. One thing that most people, including writers, don't understand or don't want to understand is this:
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
No, really, they are. I say this as someone who thinks she will never come up with a thrilling, inspired idea for her next screenplay. People always want to know, "Where do you get your ideas?" Fact is, ideas are everywhere--pick up a newspaper, listen to the news, do some daydreaming.
Let's play a game. You and I will come up with a few ideas based on Mark McGwire's current record-breaking season in the genres of romantic comedy, science fiction, and thriller. These can be simple one line ideas, nothing fancy. After you've come up with yours, you read mine.
- Romantic comedy: the woman who catches his final home run ball of the season plays hard to get when it comes to Mark getting his souvenir.
- Science fiction: turns out Mark is a mad scientist's experiment gone mad, and the only one who can stop him is the alien-human hybrid from Roswell who pitches for the Yankees.
- Thriller: a killer decides to kill one person for each home run Mark hits. Should Mark end his career in order to stop the killer?
I'll bet somebody out there came up with one idea similar to mine. And I bet the more we worked on our ideas, the more similar they'd be.
Other people are also combing the newspapers, the news, and their dreams for ideas, and sometimes they're going to come up with the same ideas. I've become a lot more tolerant of the concept of "narrative convergence" since the Sitcom Writing Class in which everyone in the class came up with the same notion for Everybody Loves Raymond. Everybody. If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have believed it, but trust me: it happened.
If you take a set of parameters for a story and tell a group of writers to go wild, there is a good chance that two writers will come up with similar ideas. Not necessarily identical ideas, but similar ones. Ted Elliott tells a good story on Wordplay about how he came up with an idea very similar to the idea behind Dragonheart and even had a scene that eventually appeared in the movie. Only no one ever saw his version; the writers of Dragonheart came up with their idea completely on their own.
Let's analyze the case of the novel and Zorro:
- Both take place in California during the Gold Rush. Gold is going to be a factor.
- Both have Spanish themes running through them. "El Dorado" is the obvious choice for a name for a gold mine.
- Having slaves working the gold mines is an obvious choice.
- The famed bandit Joaquin Murietta appears in both stories. Joaquin Murietta is a mythic figure in California's history, and the original character of Zorro is partially based on Murietta.
What makes this writer's case even weaker is the existence of earlier stories that use slaves working in gold mines during Gold Rush California.
On top of everything else, the existence of the gold mine in The Mask of Zorro is incidental to the plot. The real story is about Alejandro Murietta (Joaquin's brother) deciding to do the right thing, and Diego de la Vega finding his daughter. The gold mine is just the Bad Thing the villain does.
Sorry, there's no there there.
Anyone who writes and who cares about what he or she writes needs to find out about copyright law. Go to the Copyright Website or the 10 Copyright Myths page for starters, or pick up Every Writer's Guide to Copyright and Publishing Law, which is cheap and informative.
Don't go down the path of, "This makes sense to me, therefore this is the way that it is." You will be wrong.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com