McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Want To Get 100 Novels Sold And Published? Steal Them!
LizW65:
I'm taking a personal interest in this thread as I have borrowed a single idea from a non-fiction work for my own story (though not the actual wording -- I'm not that ignorant or ethically challenged) and have lately begun to wonder whether what I've done constitutes plagiarism.
So my question is: would one of the professional writers on board be willing to have me PM the two passages to him/her, tell me if it is in fact plagiarism, and offer some suggestions for fixing it if it is?
Noey:
Liz, just follow the link to the Newsweek article. The examples are right there, with passages from the book compared to direct passages from the ferret works. The author didn't just take ideas. She literally copy/pasted reference materials directly into her book as spoken conversation. Hilarity ensues when romance novel characters suddenly start to talk like encyclopedias. That's hawt.
Yeratel:
--- Quote from: LizW65 on April 22, 2008, 01:26:05 PM ---So my question is: would one of the professional writers on board be willing to have me PM the two passages to him/her, tell me if it is in fact plagiarism, and offer some suggestions for fixing it if it is?
--- End quote ---
Ideas aren't copyrightable, just the words. Themes and plots are used over and over again, for example "Young boy with unrecognized talents rises to become King of the land, with some supernatural aid" is a plot idea, and has been used with some success as the core of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera, E.B. White's The Sword In The Stone, and the Biblical stories of King David, among others.
Most genre Romance novels have, basically, the same plots, and the publishers generally supply guidelines to the authors so they don't deviate. Each writer is expected to generate their own characters and situations to flesh them out (so to speak), and the author in question here took a shortcut by wholesale borrowing of entire paragraphs written by other people.
meg_evonne:
--- Quote from: Yeratel on April 22, 2008, 02:13:46 PM ---Most genre Romance novels, the publishers generally supply guidelines to the authors so they don't deviate. Each writer is expected to generate their own characters and situations to flesh them out (so to speak), and the author in question here took a shortcut by wholesale borrowing of entire paragraphs written by other people.
--- End quote ---
I've heard you talk about a book of 'plots' etc like this before and it really bugs me. This is the first time you've mentioned that publishers supply the plot. OOOWWWW, doesn't this bother anyone?
It's one thing to be handed a sequel type preplanned plot for a major franchise and asked to write it (Star Trek/Star Wars) and asked to wirte or rework a plot or novel into script or into graphic, but the idea this is frequent and typical for certain genres (is it?) really makes me uncomfortable. In fact, I'd love the chance to write television scripts to see what I could wring out of an actors performance and skill is exciting, but starting from ground zero with something?
NOT that it would be wrong---it's just that for me, it's personally wrong. Like pimping out the little talent I had or something. For a publisher to regulate an author's characters, plots, ideas--but only if they follow a pre-requested plot development--seems to fight with the author's creativity. Am I being naive? Anyone else have that kind of ---get me out of here type vibe to that concept?
i guess I'd feel bound up and I'm a very claustophobic person.
As I re-read this, I'm thinking---yeah but if they offered you a book contract and a start, I'd be first in line. Yuck, now I'm a whore... oh my, those slippery, slippery slopes.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on April 22, 2008, 04:58:58 PM ---I've heard you talk about a book of 'plots' etc like this before and it really bugs me. This is the first time you've mentioned that publishers supply the plot. OOOWWWW, doesn't this bother anyone?
It's one thing to be handed a sequel type preplanned plot for a major franchise and asked to write it (Star Trek/Star Wars) and asked to wirte or rework a plot or novel into script or into graphic, but the idea this is frequent and typical for certain genres (is it?) really makes me uncomfortable.
--- End quote ---
It is. I have seen some romance-house requirements for authors, and they are drastically specific in all sorts of ways (as for example, no female leads in social positions where they could be the male lead's boss; strict rules about relative income levels, social positions, acceptable sexual histories for male and female leads - the particularly squicky bit there is that the limits on what they can have done seem to matter a sight less than the limits on what they can have enjoyed, because of having to find true fulfilment with each other and so on... )
--- Quote ---NOT that it would be wrong---it's just that for me, it's personally wrong. Like pimping out the little talent I had or something. For a publisher to regulate an author's characters, plots, ideas--but only if they follow a pre-requested plot development--seems to fight with the author's creativity. Am I being naive? Anyone else have that kind of ---get me out of here type vibe to that concept?
--- End quote ---
Well, with my worldview I'm the last person to write something supporting romantic love anyway, as the conventional Western social model of it gives me hives. I'm not sure I could really enjoy writing for an ongoing TV series or spin-off novels thereof, though, just because of the limits involved in keeping it ongoing; a random Star Trek writer is unlikely to get away with killing a major character or doing anything else that has real consequences for the setting, and the rules for what's acceptable in Star Trek spin-off novels twice got tightened when John M. Ford submitted books that stretched their comfort zone. ( The Final Reflection is a "historical" novel set among Klingons with some of the OS Trek characters in as babies; How Much for Just the Planet? is an unabashed Star Trek musical comedy. Both worth reading even if you're not generally a Trek fan, very much because of the ways they are not Trek novels.) I'm kind of attached to things having consequences, in my fiction.
--- Quote ---i guess I'd feel bound up and I'm a very claustophobic person.
As I re-read this, I'm thinking---yeah but if they offered you a book contract and a start, I'd be first in line. Yuck, now I'm a whore... oh my, those slippery, slippery slopes.
--- End quote ---
Yes, it's hard to say whether one would sell out when nobody's actually buying.
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