When Someone Gets There First

I just googled Willy the Wizard and it was only a 36 page long book. Why would she even go to court just because she got her ideas from a non-popular book, heck it even seemed forgotten. I didn't even know what is was until I googled it.

 

Are you suggesting it's ok to plagiarise as long as you're not doing it from something popular?

 

Well as long as you don't get caught, kidding! But no don't plagiarize.

 

Nor is anything else. There is nothing new under the sun, just combinations of things that have been done time and time again.

 

Honestly I think writers have the ability to invent entirely fictional problems inside their heads that they likely won't encounter.

i hate it when that happens, i remember my book being compared to x men (i don't like x men, even when i have enjoyed it, it never sold me on the premise with maybe the expectation of new mutants) by a writer group and felt insulted because while they share the same BASIC premise. there's a much more fleshed out and differnt reason behind why everything is happening. and i felt kind of insulted.

 

That one goes way back. It's a well-used mythological trope—double parentage where the real parents are not only good people but usually gods or royalty, and the MC, who should be on a throne in the magical Other World, is stuck toiling in ignominy with sinister or lowly step-parents, prohibited from using whatever special abilities they have.

Both Jesus and Moses fit this type, as does Pan's Labyrinth.

 

How's this for some late-to-the-partyism?

I'm going to try to write something original in the most done-to-death genre in existence. Zombie Apocalypse.

(pun intended)

 

With vampires who keep contracting food poisoning.

 

From what I understand it was proven that Potter came first. The woman was trying to pull a scam.

 

That reminds me of how the Soviets tried to be "first" in the space race, but they kept going after the most meaningless things: first man in space, first woman in space, first satellite in space, etc. They didn't get much use out of their satellites, and America's scientific approach changed the way we do things here on Earth.

Oh yeah, the Soviets also got "first people to die in space." Poor guys.

 

Why would your writing be influenced by an awful show? Other than in a positive way, I mean. Truly bad stories are useful because they teach you what you don't want to do.

I actually find them strangely inspiring. Some of my favorite ideas were directly born out of an intense desire to write the exact opposite of a story I hated.

 

I remember I wrote this zombie story way back when (a long time ago!) and set it in a prison. Then twd basically did it in their comics before I put mine out and I was like, "welp, that was fun - DELETE".

 

So technically, you got there first. That always feels good.

 

Eh...

First satellite.
First probe to the moon.
First probe to Venus.
First probe to Mars.
First space station.
Etc, etc, etc.

The Soviets have at least as much claim as the USA and other Western Nations to being the "firsts" in essential aspects of early Space Exploration. They "lost" the Space Race because they lost the Cold War. History books, winners.

 

I did that to one of my stories. I don't remember what I did it to or why, but I regretted it for the rest of my life, because in hindsight it seemed to stand up pretty well on its own accord.

 

Don't forget the first dog in space, which was also the first living creature in space, not counting any bacteria that might have hitched a ride.

The US got the first chimp in space, and also the first corned-beef sandwich in space.

There's that old joke. The US spent millions of dollars developing a space pen that would work in zero gravity. The Soviets used pencils.

 

An old joke, indeed, but not a true one.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/

 

Hence why it's a joke, not a fact.

 

Uh, no, they lost the space race because their economy wouldn't support the budget they needed for research. Also, my point was that even though the Soviets did some things first, they did not do things better. For example, it doesn't really matter if they had the first satellite, if all their satellite does is transmit a message. First woman in space? Meaningless. It can be first, but it doesn't mean that it matters.

 

What pushed the Soviets ahead of the US in the early days of the space race was their development of two things: large rockets to lift big payloads and a reasonable life-support system. Hence the first man in space, the first woman, the first spacewalk, the most orbits, and so on. There was no real need for on-board computing.

But meanwhile, the US was developing the technology for maneuvering in space, docking with other objects, and using multiple spacecraft for particular operations (the Command Module and Lunar Module), which required a lot of independent computing power and programming. That's what was ultimately needed for a moon shot, and the Soviets had nothing like that until a decade later.