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Topic : 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 - selfpublishingguru.com

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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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If you ask for help and someone gives to you an idea, then logically that idea then becomes yours, even if you have to reinvent it. In quantum physics, they say we might all share a portion of the atoms of Albert Einstein at a given point, so to answer with a question or two, who's atoms are they? Do we ever truly own anything, or is it simply a case of passing things on to future generations?

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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.

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