I was thinking about all this, this morning and I was just wondering what you guys thought and wanted to know if there's any horror stories out there...So, I've been reading "The Writer Got Screwed (but didn't have to)" by Brooke A. Wharton... I just started it, really. The first chapter is called "Why Do My Ideas Always End Up In Someone Elses Script?" - it's all about copyright and protecting yourself. After reading it, it's pretty amazing when you realize the myths that persist around copyright, such as registering your idea with the WGA is an effective copyright (it's not), mailing your script to yourself can prove ownership through the postage dates (it doesn't) or that you can sue someone if they steal your idea (you can't). Truth is, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from stealing your idea. This is why you always see movies with similar premises, this is why The Asylum is allowed to make films like "Snakes on a Train", "Pirates of Treasure Island" and "AVH: Alien vs Hunter". You can copyright an original piece of work, but an idea? A premise? A thought? No. There are ways to protect yourself, but an idea is just an idea. Now, having said that...
I was listening to a podcast from The Advertising Show this morning, where they were interviewing a guy named Scott Belsky. He authored a book called "Making Ideas Happen" and founded a company called Behance, which develops products and services for the creative industries. He was talking about how a lot, if not most, of the creative ideas in the world either just die or fizzle out because they're never executed properly. The reason being is that most creative types don't thrive in corporate environments and they hate to actually share their ideas. He says that we need to share, we need to discuss and we need to write these things down and create action steps around them. We need to create an infrastructure that nurtures and develops creativity, not hinders it. So, talk about your ideas, put them out there and find people who want to discuss them. The more you do that, the better your ideas become and the better chance there is that they'll actually be executed.
So, it would seem that these two things are a bit contradictory, right? Well, yeah... one is the left brained, legal thing and the other is the right brained, creative thing. So, what to do? Here's the thing... I've talked with SO many people who won't disclose their ideas and they hold them tight. "This idea is so great, I just can't tell anyone about it". I can't think of the last time that any one of those people actually made anything... The truth is, most people won't steal your idea. The studios only steal successful ideas and if your idea is successful, you're already sipping mai-tai's on the beach, so don't worry about it. However, let's go worst case scenario, you're pitching an idea and you get turned down, only to see your idea on the screen a few years later and the guy you pitched to is involved. Well, there are ways to prevent that from happening (you'll have to read "The Writer Got Screwed"), but it does happen. But, is that a reason to continue to hold your ideas tight? I mean, if you just hold on to all your ideas, they may never get out. If you look at risk vs reward... Personally, I would risk having an idea stolen for the potential reward of furthering my career and having one of my concepts come to fruition. Maybe I haven't been screwed over enough, maybe I think that most people are honest and trustworthy, I don't know. At the end of the day, I'm going to keep throwing my ideas out there in the hopes that one of them catches. If it gets stolen in the meantime, at least I tried.
What do you think? Are there any horror stories out there? Just interested to hear what other think about this...
I'm halfway through writing a screenplay. Well, maybe more like three quarters, I don't know. It's tough to say. The whole thing's written out (except for the second half of the third act, but I know where I'm going there) and I just keep going over it and over it and over it... I've been working on it for a while now, at least six months. Truth be told, if I could do nothing but write all day long, not only would I be done now, I would've been done months ago. Instead, I try to get, on average, an hour a day in. It's not a lot and sometimes that hour accomplishes nothing... and sometimes I don't even get that hour in. Balancing life and a full time job with a passion that I'd like monetize isn't exactly as easy as pie. Then again, I can't make pies. Regardless, the end is near. I started writing this script after I came up with the goal of writing at least one script per year until... something happens. Maybe until one of them sells, there's a big career change in my life or something to that effect. It sounded easy when I came up with it. My main problem is that, usually, I love working on multiple projects at once, but when it comes to writing... I can't do it. It's like trying to make a baby with nine women over one month, as opposed to making a baby with one woman over nine months. Sounds good on paper, but it's not going to work. So, when it comes to writing, I uni-task, no multi-tasking. When other ideas pop in my head, I write them down and put them in a folder on my desktop and forget about them. Then, when I'm done with this one, I'll go through them all, pick another idea and waste a year of my life on that. So, why am I telling you all this? Two reasons. One, I thought I'd share a couple of good resources that I've unearthed and, two, I read somewhere that when you announce your goals publicly, they have a better chance of coming true. There you go, a script a year... I said it.
to the books page on Amazon.