In the 1980s, I toyed with the idea of trying to get published, and I had some really good storylines. At the time I just couldn't type, and wrote freehand. So, I had intended to pay someone to type/edit. But, as you've seen, if you let good ideas lay around too long, someone else thinks it up. Well, I saw several storylines turned into movies.
This happens in every field. I'm a fairly creative song-writer, and came up with some unique chord progressions. Over time, I'd hear a song, and think, "Bummer, now if I release this, they'll think I copied someone else's song."
However, most things, including books, can be redeemed because you can always take what you have and put a new and fresh spin on it. Some of the most famous songs you've ever heard are a simple formulaic chord progression. Like "Hit me with your best shot" by Pat Benetar. The guitarist just added his own little spin to it to make it interesting.
My problem was that I usually shot for the fences in terms of story ideas. If you saw the recent Batman, the weapon they used was similar to the weapon in one of my storylines. It wasn't about "Batman", but about a mystery of people going insane, and some having their memories wiped. They wound up in a floor of a nursing home, and I had a nurse and someone else at the home suspicious about the rise in number of Alzheimer's patients.
Most were vagrants, or had no "next of kin", people who could slip through the cracks unnoticed. And essentially, they were lab rats for a clandestine international weapons maker, who was designing the perfect interogation tool. And like in the batman movie, you used drugs, and virtual reality to create nightmare scenarios where people would tell you anything you wanted. If someone thought they were literally in hell, what wouldn't they do to get out. So the weapon blurred reality, and of course, eventually overloaded the minds making people virtual vegetables.
I guess now, the window is open again, because of worldwide terror, and the desire to find Bin Laden, or to stop a potential crises. (How do you crack someone who would rather die than tell you what you want to know- being the motivation?) - the spin is how far people would go to get information, which wasn't the origional spin. Initially the spin is, "Is virtual reality a potential danger?" And at the time, it was a quest to look at what would happen if someone designed to use it for mind control?
But initially there were "Virtual Reality" movies, like Lawnmower Man, and I thought I was beat to the punch.
