My mother used to stuff our bookcase in the hopes that we’d start self-educating from a young age.  In addition to the religious propaganda and encyclopedias, I happened upon a book about science geared towards children.

One idea I found fascinating as a young’un was that water has been used countless times before.  You know, water flowing away from a river bank where some ancient person washed his shirt evaporates then is rained down in a thunderstorm miles away.  The water becomes part of an underground aquifer, is brought up through a well by some medieval person who in turn excretes it into his subsistence garden when he thinks no one is looking.  Whatever doesn’t get eaten (and re-excreted) evaporates when the leaves turn brown.  And on the water cycle goes until it gushes out your tap and you make your morning coffee.

I wish I remembered the book title / author so I could give proper credit to whoever penned this idea about the water cycle, because the purpose of this post is to gripe about idea ownership.

I thought I was such hot stuff when I had a character in my novel tell the world that TV is the opiate of the people.  Karl Marx is in the public domain by now, so like water from a public waterway I felt free to help myself to his ideas.

Rodman Philbrick beat me to it in his novel “Freak the Mighty” that my sixth grader had to read for her English class.  So I can’t take credit for my cleverness.  I swear, I thought of this myself long before my child was assigned that book, but since Philbrick published it first I have to defer to him.

Maybe I can pretend my character read Philbrick’s book, but that’s not realistic as that character wouldn’t do such a thing.  His child might, but he wouldn’t.

What a bummer.

There’s no such thing as an original idea; ideas are like water that is countlessly used and recycled.  There’s nothing new under the sun.  The tricky thing is, if the water in my coffee put has someone else’s name on it, how can I use it to make “refreshments” with my name on it for others to “consume” i.e. read about in my fascinating fiction?

Once on a writing group message board I contributed my two cents on a thread popular with new members – the old conundrum of whether or not male writers can write believable female characters and vice versa.  I said what I thought was a smart idea:  that as a woman I’d write female characters from experience but I’d write male characters from observation.  I mean, I was merely pointing out the obvious.

Someone flagged my post.  The site administrators removed it.  And someone else quoted a person with respectable academic credentials saying pretty much the same thing as I did.  Apparently whoever tattled on me thought I was passing off that academic’s ideas as my own.

Let it be known that while I’m about as honest as the next person regarding giving credit where credit is due, I had no idea that someone else had beat me to the punch in putting this idea in print and obtaining a copyright, therefore owning the idea and no longer allowing others to say as much without proper referencing.

So it isn’t who thinks of it first. but who publishes it first, who gets to claim ownership?

I can offer up the annoyance of being “unjustly” accused of plagiarism over an idea which seemed to be common sense that any uneducated idiot like myself can articulate, but whatever.

Maybe this dangerous world of putting ideas on paper (or in pixels) isn’t for me?

NO WAY.

Multiple guffaws have been guffawed over amateur writers blogging and telling other amateur writers how to get ‘er done. But as fools rush in where angels fear to tread, here I go.

I’ve read multiple craft books, but what made all I’d learned coalesce into an a-ha moment was a series of podcasts about character VS plot all the way through a story: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/write-character-arcs/

KMW’s podcasts come across like mainline story theory ideas pondered, understood, and re-told in her own words.

I borrowed a slew of NYT best selling YA books to see if they followed “story theory according to KMW” with plot VS character. I also borrowed “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” which won some award in 1958.

I have fond memories of WoBP as it was part of our 8th grade curriculum, so it’ll fall between MG and YA. Does anyone read it anymore? The real question is: was story theory taught to mid-20th century authors? Obviously, WoBP was published long before KMW released her podcasts.

Since WoBP was 206 pages, it was easy to identify the where the first plot point was to appear (about 25% or 50 pages) the midpoint (50% or 100 pages), the third PP (75% and 150 pages), climax et al.

Sure enough, like clockwork, and without fail, the plot and character arcs turned like ballroom dancers at or very near the precise marks where KMW said they should. Elizabeth George Speare, the author of WoBP, made it look simple, but sure as anything the formula for structuring the story was there… the lie, the ghost, everything, it was there!

I’ve tried looking for plot points with books aimed at more mature audiences, but in some the plot points weren’t as obvious. Maybe for YA/ MG books (and movies!) a more simpler plot structure is in order, and older people are expected to be disciplined and less coddled.

The only really obvious plot point in “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole was the third plot point, which appeared on page 300 of a 400 page novel: “All signs were pointing upward, and his wheel was revolving skyward.” This summed up the second half / second act where all plot threads looked like they were to be resolved in Ignatius’ favor. The third act demolished Ignatius’s plans in a delightfully funny way.

My kid is eating his breakfast and I need to go pay attention to him. I hope to post something again soon.

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I’m not sure if subscribers will be flocking to this, ha ha. I hope it isn’t too ghastly, boring, or amateurish. A good grade in college level technical writing does not a novelist make. I hope that long forgotten achievement can count towards the mountain of work to become a novelist / blogger. We’ve all got to start somewhere!