The Dan Brown Ruling

From Andy Wheeler and Chris Roberson and Sci Fi Wire. Thankfully, the case was thrown out of court. As the judge says:

"'It would be quite wrong if fictional writers were to have their writings pored over in the way The Da Vinci Code has been pored over in this case by authors of pretend historical books to make an allegation of infringement of copyright,' Smith said in his 71-page ruling, the trade paper reported. "

Why is this important? Well, often when writers work, they need to do research. This leads the writer to work that is already published, for instance, newspapers, or magazines. Sometimes, the writer reads a book on his or her own and gets inspired to write a story about it.

Like what, you ask?

Like any piece of writing that Howard Waldrop has ever done. Haven't read Howard? Why not?

OK, how about...Hamlet, or King Lear, or Julius Caesar, or Othello, or Macbeth, or...ok, I'm beating Shakespeare up a little. But, the only original play that Shakespeare ever wrote was The Tempest. All the other plays were based on historical figures or events. Of course, Shakespeare wrote a lot of original dialogue, but the major events and plot points that happen in the play come from real events.

For a more modern example, you can look at Scott Westerfeld's novel PEEPS. Scott had read a number of books and articles about viruses and this lead him to the concept of the book PEEPS.

This is a phenomenal piece of writing, based on nonfiction work that someone else did. However, Scott did all the work of taking that research and putting it into a fictional world. That process of creating the world that the novel PEEPS lives in was unique to Scott's brain when he wrote it, and therefore, none of the people who wrote a book or an article about viruses that Scott used for his novel have any claim to money/fame that Scott earned/earns from PEEPS.

To be completely clear, I'm not trying to give any sort of props to Dan Brown. This was a case that was bigger than Dan Brown. The last thing we need is for some yahoo who is upset that someone made a lot of money writing a book by expanding/working with an idea that the yahoo put forth initially and that yahoo getting a court to say, yes, they stole your idea.

There are virtually no completely original ideas. Most writers take pieces of the world around them and weave them into stories. This is how readers relate to the writing of an author. If an author created a wholly original piece of work not tied into any piece of reality, it would be very tough for an audience to get behind the story. They would have no touchstones for the piece. However, if the story is set in the reader's hometown, or somewhere the reader visitied, or read about, or is about an event the reader has heard of...the reader can use that connection as an in-road into the writer's world.

This is a good thing. Trust me.