4 June '08

Doppelganger

Dear Micah-

I’ve asked several authors this question and haven’t yet heard a good answer: How do you come up with your ideas? How do you ensure that the ideas you’ve come up with haven’t been used by someone else?

I’m always afraid that one of my stories has been written by someone else, and I’ll be accused of plagiarism. Since there’s no way to read every short story out there, I wonder if this has already happened.

Thanks for listening,

Shannon
 

You haven’t heard a good answer because there is no good answer. I can’t summon ideas—they arrive on their own schedule. The most persistent ones are put to paper. The rest are filed away for possible future use.

(Sometimes I get an idea that is both persistent and awful, like a lousy song that keeps repeating in my head. Here’s the most recent: owner of heavy metal record store is contacted by a former Nazi scientist, to help retrieve a lost amulet with supposed magical powers. One year that idea has been pestering me. So I’m posting it, and giving you all permission to take that idea and make it into your masterpiece.)

As for the fear of plagiarism…don’t worry. Let’s say that by some wild chance your story bears similarity to a previously published piece by, oh, I don’t know, John Cheever. Let’s say you have similar characters (the disaffected husband and his shrewish wife), a similar setting (cabana in the Florida Keys), and even a similar resolution (disaffected husband realizes his existential futility and goes for a walk on the beach, never to return). Despite all that, your two stories will still be completely different. Why? Because writing is a sum of infinite variables.

I do like your question, though, because it contains a unique idea: the author’s doppelganger, which now that I think about it isn’t so unique. Stephen King did a story like that. The one where Johnny Depp played the author. Right?

But if you’re still worried that somewhere in the world, someone published a story that you’ve already written, use that fear to spur your reading. Tell yourself you’re researching potential doppelgangers, and grab a book of Cheever’s stories.

It’s a gray, rainy day in Boston so I’ll end this post on a pithy note: All art is homage, anyway.