They can’t steal your ideas if you give them away
A lot of screenwriters seem to live in fear that their work is gonna get “stolen”. And, I dunno… maybe it happens… sometimes? I mean, I read news articles about it happening. I also read articles about writers selling their scripts for millions of dollars but I’ve never met any of them either.
No matter how often it actually happens, the fear greatly outweighs the reality. After all, everyone’s afraid of sharks, but your chances of getting killed by one are 1 in 3,748,067 (roughly your chances of selling a script for a million bucks).
On the one hand, you have to realize there are only so many ideas in the world. And most ideas can’t be copyrighted anyways, only the details of your script. The fact that someone else is also doing a “Robots vs. Angels” movie just like your script isn’t something you can take to court anyways. And trust me, this will happen to you over and over and over again in your career. You will come up with a great idea and inevitably will hear about a similar idea in the trades the following week. But you’re not going to worry about it. Why? Because you, my friend, are an idea machine.
“I don’t care that they stole my idea; I care that they don’t have any of their own.”
— Nikola Tesla
Let’s put it this way:
If you had a thousand dollar bill and someone stole that thousand dollar bill, you would be broke. They stole everything you had. You’d be pissed. You’d do everything in your power to find that culprit, make them pay, and get your thousand dollars back.
BUT, if you had 1,000 one dollar bills and someone stole one of them, you wouldn’t even waste your energy on it. In fact, you’d be way more willing to freely give those dollar bills out—to the homeless guy at the street corner, to the charity knocking on your door, or to the kid in the checkout line who didn’t take tax into account when buying a candy bar with her allowance.
“Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.”
—Rod Serling
When you have ONE idea, that idea becomes precious and you have to protect it at all cost. You become a hermit. A hoarder hiding your gold coins in your mattress and yelling for the neighborhood kids to “get off your lawn.” But who wants to live like that? That’s no way to connect with other humans! If your goal is to protect your ideas at all costs, you will remain professionally and creatively stuck exactly where you are.
If you have a THOUSAND ideas, then what does it cost to give one away? You can actually use those ideas to add value to other people—to build them up and invest in them. And the more you give away, the more that comes back to you, like making an investment and getting a return (or how I assume investments work—I’ll let you know after I sell one of those million dollar screenplays).
“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”
—Neil Gaiman
So, what do you do to really protect your work?
- Write more. The more screenplays you write, the less precious you get with your earlier work. The less valuable they become. Those first scripts lose their power as the “winning lottery ticket” and become what they are in reality — “writing school.”
- Recognize where true value lies. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen. It’s the ability to do the work that’s rare. Your unique voice is where your value lies, not your ideas. No one can tell a story exactly like you can.
- Put relationships before ideas. Be generous. Connect with other writers. Give them your best feedback and give it freely. You will be amazed where this gets you. Nothing advances your career more than generosity and kindness. I guarantee you will see a return.
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