Original writing is lost when using other people's ideas?
Let's say you have a story about a fictional war on a futuristic world and you already have five chapters going on and you want to keep writing to get to the end but then, you're stuck because you don't really know how to kill the enemies without taking off the credibility of the story(adding something that can happen in real life) and then you ask for help on a forum or on worldbuilding stackexchange, or talking to other people about it. You get answers, and that give you some pretty good ideas, so you continue to write three more chapters, but then you're stuck again and ask for help again, and you get another answers, ideas from other people that fit perfectly with your story so you finish your story.
So, when you reach that point, can you really say it was your original work, or truly yours? and so if there are any legal repercussions about it?
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When we give credit to a designer for an article of clothing, we do not caveat our praise by pointing out that they did not weave the fabric or grow the cotton or design the sewing machine or smelt the metal used to build the sewing machine, or invent the concept of clothing.
All work is enculturated and builds on the work of others. We give creative credit to the person who realizes the whole of the work, not to those who contribute all the elements that go into it. Many voices contribute to the material that goes into a book. The author is the person who weaves it all together.
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The only works that are truly original are by people who've never had any contact with other people. Every work has inspiration from other works, or ideas that are present in other places. Many excellent works don't even have novel plots.
As for legal repercussions, "ideas" are not protected by law. Only the expression of the idea is protected by copyright. "Inventions" that do useful things can be patented, but unless they ARE patented, they are not protected either. So you're probably safe, legally, if you are writing your own work. IANAL.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18703. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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