On Writing : Theft of Ideas in the Writing Industry by Olaojoyegbe Bolarinwa

I never outgrew blogging. However, because my main interest in screenwriting was conflicting the development process of building readership on the blog, I thought to merge them. My tech savvy, or lack thereof, using code to format the tab indentions for a movie script to display properly on a blog motivated me to fallback on a manual typewriter which I could scan hard copies of and upload. The brainchild for developing a blog where members could share scenes and sequences for feedback started when the “meetup” writing groups I participated in couldn’t quite perfect the sharing process writers inherently were expected to meet in distributing their rough draft MS to other group members. one day I heard s.b. comment about plagiarism and his view was simple: if I ever see a scene I wrote in a movie clip, then at least I’ll know I’m on the right track. Keeping this in mind helped enforce the idea of a blog site for screenwriters because it could time stamp intellectual property AND furnish witness account of when something was written (and uploaded). I still blog my screenplay ideas and welcome writers to contribute to the project. My Lj blog is www.blanketsin.com

I think you guys are all right. Ideas can truly be stolen but the harder part is putting it down as you rightly said Kay. There, the scripts will be different though emanating from the same idea. If yours is the same with the person who stole your idea, wont this spoil your chances of having your script bought? Though, I didn't agree with you Owen about ideas being unable to be stolen, but I agree that you should be careful about showing your work to fellow writers. True! Someone needs to know who he or she is about showing his or her work to, because he or she may not only steal your idea but your idea together with your script. What about that?

You are very right Jeff. But, do you know that it can also happen between two writers seeking advice from one another on their scripts. That is the basis of our discussion. What do yo think?