Another Plagiarism Question

That would be interesting to find out from the published authors on this board.


I use the same phrases and technologies in three of my books. They share a setting and even some characters.

I would think not. Your words are yours to use as you please.

But I'm also awaiting the response of someone with more experience than me.

Even if it is, how likely are you to sue yourself?

(Note, you may win a large settlement, but the downside is that you will have to pay one too )


JimmyB - also awaiting someone with more experience to give a more sensible answer.

Plagarism is claiming other's work as your own.

So did you write it or not?

There's your answer.

Your publisher, however, might not find it so nice if you are simply recycling your work over and over and over again. Use your judgement, the worst you can be called is a hack.

Copying from one's own works depends on the circumstances.

If you need to quote from a previous incident that has a bearing on the current situation, then put in a reference to it, a footnote number, then at the bottom of the page the footnote with the quote and the name of the work.

If your character is having a flashback involving a repeat of a short line of dialogue then it's ok, just put in it italics so the reader understands you're doing it on purpose. You may need a note to the copy editor to tip them off that the repetition is intentional.

If you think your first working of a phrase, scene, or page was just so great that your fans will love hearing it exactly the same all over again, think again. That can be construed as lazy writing. The reader will go "Huh-wha? Didn't I read that in something else?" and might drop the piece and go look up the work to check.

One thing you never want is to jerk your reader out of the work. They may never go back. Ever.

If they once see that you're repeating yourself, they might think, "What a rip!" then avoid reading anything from you again. Whenever I spot a writer doing this he or she goes off my reading list for good. I don't like paying for leftovers and recyles.

If your circumstances are different I'd have to have more details to give a better reply, but the rule with published pros is "Don't do that."

What about turning an old short story into a novel, or using it as the beginning to one?

Is it your short story?

Was it published before?

If you answered yes for the first one and no for the second, you should have any problem at all. It is an unpublished piece of your work, no legal reason not to expand on it.

popmuze said:

Is it plagiarism if you plagiarize or paraphrase yourself, borrowing sentences or paragraphs from works you've previously published?

Click to expand...

Is masturbation rape? I think not.

At the university where I teach, self-plagiarism is not allowed. This includes not only the student community but the teaching staff as well. We define it as "cheating" and "dishonesty" .

However, in the professional world, where many of us teachers also reside, self-plagiarism is thought of as sensible recycling and we all do it in the open and applaud each other for it.

So it depends where you are when you revisit your pile of works.

MikeAngel said:

Is masturbation rape? I think not.

Click to expand...

It depends. If you do it in the privacy of your own home, no. If you do it on the grounds of a university, yes.

icerose said:

Is it your short story?

Was it published before?

If you answered yes for the first one and no for the second, you should have any problem at all. It is an unpublished piece of your work, no legal reason not to expand on it.

Click to expand...

Of course I mean my own stories, but I'm talking about if one gets published, but then I want to expand on it. Assuming this is AFTER the exclusivity period for the magazine, anthology, whatever ends, how much change to the story would it take to make it acceptable for reuse, in your eyes?

If you are masturbating someone else--it's sex.

i.e. borrowing a lot from works published by A and then selling that manuscript to B may be a problem. It depends on the policies of A and B.

glutton said:

What about turning an old short story into a novel, or using it as the beginning to one?

Click to expand...

Two words: Ender's Game.

Using your own material after it has been published is a problem because even if you hold the copyright to your work, the publisher has the publishing rights.

Nomad said:

Using your own material after it has been published is a problem because even if you hold the copyright to your work, the publisher has the publishing rights.

Click to expand...

It was about time someone stepped in to say this. I write (mostly) puzzles for magazines. The publishers buy all rights. That means I can't use the same material again. You need to look at the agreement to find out what rights remain with you.

Nomad said:

Using your own material after it has been published is a problem because even if you hold the copyright to your work, the publisher has the publishing rights.

Click to expand...

Let's say you have a novel published. There's a phrase in it you really, really love, a paragraph of description of a field of flowers or even a technical description of a fighter jet. You want to use that paragraph verbatim in this book simply because it was so well written the first time, why mess with perfection.

Do you then have to contact your own publisher to ask if you can borrow your own words?

What if in the meantime you've changed publishers and are under new contract?

MadScientistMatt said:

Two words: Ender's Game.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but that didn't get very far.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Let's say you have a novel published. There's a phrase in it you really, really love, a paragraph of description of a field of flowers or even a technical description of a fighter jet. You want to use that paragraph verbatim in this book simply because it was so well written the first time, why mess with perfection.

Click to expand...

But why? It's already been written. It's already been read. Why would you want to use it again? Would Spielberg say, "Oh, that scene in Jurassic Park was so perfect, I'm going to use it again in Minority Report."

That said, people do reuse their old stuff. We always chide musicians for writing the same songs, borrowing from themselves the same musical passage, etc. The reaction is always: the guy is lazy and he runs out of new ideas.

Why become the literary equivalent of that?

Besides, there's no such thing as "perfect." Everything is relative.

reph said:

It was about time someone stepped in to say this. I write (mostly) puzzles for magazines. The publishers buy all rights. That means I can't use the same material again. You need to look at the agreement to find out what rights remain with you.

Click to expand...

Right. I've done writing work-for-hire and have no rights to my own work. If I used it again, I'd be plagarizing myself because I don't own the rights.

glutton said:

Of course I mean my own stories, but I'm talking about if one gets published, but then I want to expand on it. Assuming this is AFTER the exclusivity period for the magazine, anthology, whatever ends, how much change to the story would it take to make it acceptable for reuse, in your eyes?

Click to expand...

Okay--THAT'S a different thing entirely, and I've done it myself. I wrote a short story for an anthology and later used it as chapter one for a novel a few years later. It took that long for me to get around to it.

This is nothing new. The noir writers during the golden age of pulps did it all the time. Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain story evolved into The Big Sleep.

http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/biblio/chandler.html

You might want to check those out at the library as it's fascinating to see how he did it. That might help you to figure out how best to do it for your own works.

Expanding a story is perfect legit and Chandler did rather a lot of recyling, but times were different then. Usually such works saw print once and vanished into pulp heaven never to be read again.


However, it's not the done thing to take portions of one story or book and put them into another just because you think it's a really well-done bit of writing. That to me just reads as being lazy or sloppy, though I've seen it happen. These days something can stay in print forever thanks to websites. etc. and it can come back to haunt you.

I SO agree with the earlier point of why would you even want to repeat yourself? There have been times when I've held an unabashed admiration for my spectacular writing genius, reading the stuff over and over again, fascinated with my awesome talent. My gawd, that's good!

Then a few days go by, I chance to look over that work of genius, and I'm wincing, baby, just plain wincing and doing a full re-write to fix it!

Yup, I might expand on a short story, but that's the limit.

There are some writers who pretty much do the same book over and over, changing the names of the characters and the setting. You don't want to do that, either.

About Ender's Game, Card did an alternate version of the novel as Ender's Shadow, telling much of the same story from Bean's point of view.

Same publisher, so that was fine, but what got me were the parts that didn't match up - where I could go back to the first book and find where he'd goofed on a few details.

Fear not; plenty of examples

Turning published short stories into novels has a long and honorable history, and isn't kmited to genre works. "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Bright Lights, Big City" both came from short stories.

And, of course, the idea for "2001" came from Kubrick reading Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," which Kubrick and Clarke then fleshed out together.

Short story to novel is fine -- Fight Club started off as a published short story as well. I was talking about reusing something from a previous work in a new work. There's just something cheesy about that.