by Janet W. Butler
We hear this all the time, don’t we? Especially if we write fiction. After all, nonfiction’s a little easier—you look at a topic or issue, you do some research…

But that fictional world? That’s all smoke and shadow. How do you know which one to grab? And how do you keep people from stealing them?

Answer to the first question is, “I figure it out.” Answer to the second? “I can’t.”

Don’t panic when you hear that. Ideas aren’t copyrightable. But the good news is—they don’t have to be. 

The world is full of writers who start with the same "idea" and come up with drastically different stories. This is even used as a writing exercise: everyone's given a sentence from which to write 500 or 1000 words, and all the stories are different. It happens so often now that it’s a cliché.

So while it’s depressing to see a book in the market that “stole your idea”—only it came out first, while yours got rejected or is still being written!— it’s also encouraging in that you never have to rack your brain trying to get an idea that’s completely new. (Someone will have already thought of it. Trust me.) Nor must you twist an ordinary idea like a pretzel in order to make it "fresh" and "innovative." Just change one element…and poof! It’s original again.

The other good news about ideas is...they're everywhere.

Literally.

My Golden Heart book came from a newspaper clipping I kept for nine years.   Another great source of book ideas?  Song lyrics. There are certain songs that I know have a “book in them” somewhere; it just hasn’t come to me yet.

Some of us are lucky enough to have ideas strike us as we sleep.

Some of us dream them.

So when you’re asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” you can truthfully say, “Everywhere.” You can even feel free enough to share those ideas, knowing that one idea can generate an infinite number of variations—as many as there are authors who play with it. The difference is in what each of us will do with that “baby” idea.

How do you grow an idea? Depends. I start with a scene, one very vivid scene. Often, this scene never makes it into the book, but it's the emotional hook upon which I hang my story.

Some of us start with a character.

Some of us are plot-driven and start with, "What if...?"

Doesn’t matter where we start, but what we do with it.

Story ideas aren’t some deep mystery. They’re not hidden behind doors that only a select few can unlock. They’re all around you, with plenty to share. In the unlikely instance that you happen to develop an idea identically to another writer’s “take,” you can tweak it a bit and be fine. Or, better yet, just write the Guinness Book of World Records about it; it’s not likely to happen even once, let alone twice! ~BE 

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Janet W. Butler is a freelance writer and editorial consultant by day and a “small soprano” by night. An RWA Golden Heart Winner, her new romantic suspense, Voice of Innocence, is now available from Desert Breeze Publishing. She blogs at www.catholicfictionwritingchick.blogspot.com.