Has anyone every asked you if you’re afraid of having someone steal your story? I have been asked this very question. Several times.

At first, I used to laugh and say, “Good luck to them. I sure as hell couldn’t sell it.”

Now, I just explain that I could be hit by lightning TWICE before I could steal and idea and have it turn out even remotely similar to the way the same story would evolve by the hand of a different writer. And vice verse.

Reality check: Even if a writer WANTED to steal another writer’s idea (which is unfathomable when every writer knows–a.k.a. hopes–in their heart of hearts that their own ideas are superior–jiganormous eye roll), the end result would never be the same, not even if the thief had every last anal note of a character’s personality and each and every well-calculated plot thread.

I recently picked up the hobby of reading tarot cards as a creative writing device. (No, I have not wandered off on a tangent. Yes, I swear this relates.) To make a very long story short (which means skipping the entire explanation of the intro sentence), I finished a few private lessons and started with a group of women new to the, um, er, craft for lack of a better word.

Our teacher had us do an excercise to get to know the cards better. We each took one card from the deck and shared various activities with the others at the table: described the card, imagined emotions of a person in the picture, told a mini story of the scene. After we had all done it with different cards, one of the students said, “I wonder what would happen if we all switched cards and did the same thing to see how different people interpret the same card.”

We loved the idea and played along.

To start out with, we already knew the “formal” interpretation of the card and also knew how the other student had interpreted that card.

The result: a completely different and very personal interpretation of each card by each person. Even more wildly varied than I had expected.

This incident reaffirmed my belief that story and all it’s components is shaped drastically and uniquely by the filter through which the writer (or in the tarot case, the reader) saw the information (or in the writer’s case, the story idea).

In a blog post I wrote some time ago, one I may revisit for a fresh 3-part post here, I spoke of filters in developing deep character.

“Each of us sees our world differently based on our personality, our past, our peers, our experiences, our hopes, our dreams, our fears. The reasons for our unique perspectives are as endless as the quirks of our likes and dislikes. When developing your characters, knowing where they’ve been and how it has shaped them into individuals is imperative in creating a unique and believable cast.”  You can read the entire post at my website.

Using the example thread of tarot, another woman and I studied the same card: the Queen of Cups. She saw a Queen surrounded in all her glory, reveling in all she’d attained as she stared at a golden chalice with reverence, contentment and bliss.

In the same card, I saw a woman who had worked and worked to attain everything she had ever wanted, the symbol of which was the golden chalise in her hands. I saw the Queen as contemplating, almost disappointed as she held the symbol of all she’d worked so hard for and wondered, “Is this it? Is this all there is?”

IMHUO (In my humble unpublished opinion) anyone worried about idea or story thievery needs to cultivate security in their unique voice, what only they can bring to the page. Because when it’s all said and done, we all know there are only so many original plots. Making your story unique has everything to do with who you are, where you’ve been, what you need or want to say. It’s all in your own unique perception of the possibilities of a story or character.

Throw your thoughts into the mix. Have you ever had someone steal a story idea? Did it ever amount to anything? Did it ever turn out even close to the way you had (or would have) written it? Have you had experiences where two different people see the exact same thing, but visualize it uniquely based on their own personal experiences?