Wench Pat here:
Since I’ve been having an excruciatingly difficult and not particularly creative week, (and my internet just went out--again) I’ve opted to pull a question from the Wenches Question Box (anyone else interested, just e-mail your question to our whipmistress, Sherrie—click on her head down there on the left). RevMel is our questioner today, and she has a recent book of her choice from my website at patriciarice.com coming to her.
“The saying goes, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Have any of the Wenches had the experience of reading a book or a review and thinking "Hey! That writer stole my idea/plot/name/family!"? If so, how did they/do they feel about it? (No names and/or specific instances need be named, LOL!) (Do people in the writing community ever sue each other?) On the other hand, have any of the Wenches read a book and thought, "I could do that better," and then written their own version (even unconsciously?)?”
Can’t name names because my memory is so bad, but very definitely, yes, I’ve opened up RT’s Book Reviews to discover the plot of my current WIP, or similar character and family names, or book titles. I don’t have enough ego to believe anyone is actually imitating me, so I’m not flattered, just annoyed that I’ll have to change what I’m doing. <G>
It’s equally startling to call up the title of a book on Amazon and discover half a dozen of the same title by six different authors. I try to avoid that by checking Amazon before I title a book, but there’s no avoiding the collective unconscious. I’ve seen three books of the same title come out in a single month. Conspiracy theorists may believe editors write down the titles of proposals they’ve rejected and keep a file to use later, but if editor brains operate anything like mine, that title just stuck in their subconscious and came out at the proper moment.
I can go to the bookstore and find recent books using my old titles, which makes me feel old <G> but doesn’t otherwise bother me. We can’t copyright titles. When I read a review that resembles my WIP, I’m annoyed because I prefer to think I’m original and don’t want anyone saying I stole their ideas. But always, if I buy the book and read it to be certain I’m not losing my touch, there is nothing remotely similar between the stories. Reviews are condensed to such basic romance tropes that after a while, it’s a miracle they don’t all sound alike.
As to writers suing writers, it happens enough that it ought to give anyone who plagiarizes nightmares. I know everyone has read about the big lawsuits involving J.K. Rowlings and the author of Da Vinci Code. In those cases, plagiarism wasn’t proved since all the plaintiffs had were similar character names and a vague idea. You can’t plagiarize ideas or character names. But I have known cases where even big name authors have copied entire passages, word for word, out of other people’s books and included them in their own. When that’s discovered—and if the book is at all well read, it will be discovered—it’s a nasty stomach-churning ordeal for everyone involved. No one comes out the winner. There isn’t enough money in suing over copyright for the victim to feel at all compensated for being ground through a mill. Usually, there isn’t any money at all, just the vindication of proving the other person a thief. The authors I’ve known have sued out of principle—to prevent the plagiarist from repeating the crime, but they still feel personally violated.
As to the “I could do better” line, I suspect many of us started writing because we thought that. <G> 
I’ve rewritten endings many a time (in my head only!), and I’ve heard others say the same. But what finally forced me into attempting to write a romance was falling head over heels in love with the genre. I totally respected the ladies who produced such sigh-inspiring stories, and when I paid hard-earned money for the copycats who jumped on the bandwagon later with poorly-thought-out, hastily scribbled garbage, I threw their books against the wall and muttered that fateful line. And because I couldn’t find enough of the books I loved at the time, I started writing my own, propelled by the confidence that if the copycats could get published, then surely I could. Does that make me a copycat?
Has anyone else noticed similarities between books, ideas, characters? Do you think the similarities are related to Jung’s “collective unconscious”? Or can we more directly relate the similarities to media—TV, movies, other books?