Afraid of committing plagiarism?

You can't steal ideas, only words. Plagiarism doesn't apply. Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's what you do with them that counts.

celticroots, this is particularly true in the romance genre. I think there are about five professions/businesses that ALL romance heroines are engaged in. Like baker, jewelry maker, innkeeper, etc. They all fall in love with really hot guys who are usually cops, Navy SEALs, firefighters, etc. Amazingly, even with these things being similar, the stories told are vastly different. VASTLY.

Suzanne Collins hasn't gotten sued yet over Battle Royale. You'll be fine.

Oh and I forgot to say that there are about a dozen tropes that are used. So you intersect say a female jewelry maker with a male firefighter, they have a secret baby or it's a marriage of convenience and you get story. Or you have baker and cop who are best friends turned lovers or enemies turned lovers and viola, another story. The combos are finite. But the stories told from the combos are infinite and not at all alike, even if they started out that way.

I hope I'm making some sense here.

So even if you have the same type of people engaged in the same type of profession, your story will be different from anyone else's story. Well, unless you copy text verbatim. But then that's plagiarism. lol

As someone else stated, plagiarism covers the words on the page, not the idea behind it. If that were true, Terry Brooks would've been sued for everything his family's worth for generations by the Tolkien estate.

Further examples: Back in the 80's (?), there was a vogue of anthologies in SF/F where the editor came up with an idea and handed it off to various different authors and then published all the stories in a volume. Never once did any of those stories more than vaguely resembled each other.

Another true story, I won an author's crit of my first chapter in a charity auction, back in the late 90's. Sent it off. It was a time travel romance where the heroine is the manager of a medieval festival and, bear with me, participating in the jousting. As it turns out, the author who was critiquing it had a time travel romance book coming out within a few months where--wait for it--the heroine was working at a medieval festival and involved in a joust. She immediately contacted me with a "So sorry, conflict of interest" because she was afraid I'd accuse her of plagiarism because of the similar first chapters. (I proved to her that I wasn't that stupid, and she did a marvelous crit of my chapter, FWIW.) When her book came out, I bought a copy and read it and it was totally different, despite the similar circumstances in the first chapter.

There are no new ideas. There's only original, new ways to mix together those ideas that makes it original and interesting to read.

So stop coming up with excuses not to write, and get to writing.

DeleyanLee said:

As someone else stated, plagiarism covers the words on the page, not the idea behind it. If that were true, Terry Brooks would've been sued for everything his family's worth for generations by the Tolkien estate.

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I came here to post exactly this, lol. If you could sue over similar ideas, Tolkien's estate would own half the fantasy genre. And most of the romance genre, as well as every themed anthology in history, would be in violation of the law.

Looking at my favorite books a while back, I realized ideas really don't matter at all. Many of them were created around very traditional and frequently-used ideas, but they're also full of compelling characters and well-written action. And it's those things that matter.

celticroots said:

This post ties into my last one entitled Frustrated. The reason it was such a big deal is because, I am always afraid I'll have a novel published, then get sued for plagarism because my idea was too similar to someone else's.

Yet I know that it's not uncommon for different stories to have similar themes.

All the answer to my last post have helped, and have given me renewed energy to continue with my book.

Has anyone else had this fear?

If this is in the wrong section, the mods can move it if they want.

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Celtic,

Ideas cannot be plagiarized, but another person's words can. Based on what you said, I doubt you have a thing to worry about.

Years ago, I saw a fan-fic writer ostracized and forced to remove their story under accusations of plagiarism. The author had borrowed a similar theme (I believe it was the MC getting stung by a scorpion) and the fans of the first, more well-known, story got up in arms over it. I was one of the few people who pointed out that plagiarism is not "similar plot ideas," but rather, "stolen words." The words were not the same, even the plot was not the same, they only shared the same basic premise. Nobody listened and the author of the second story had her reputation smeared for life.

So yes, if you're dealing with ignorant fan-fic writers, you might worry that someone will accuse you of plagiarism. Professional writers know the difference and will not accuse you of anything unless they find a passage that's lifted word for word from their novel. They might grumble about the similarities if your plot happens to be identical, but hey, it happens. Great minds think alike, and all that.

No.

caw

Google Cassie Edwards and her black-footed ferrets.

Any chance these fears are a cover for procrastination?

I reckon so, seun...

Maybe you should spend some time reading up on the basics of intellectual property law, CelticRoots. To put it as simply as possible: You can't be sued unless you steal the words someone else uses. Concepts are not protected, for the reasons others have stated (ie, the same idea will be executed in very different ways by different writers).

ETA: But don't use this research as an excuse to put off writing!

angeliz2k said:

Maybe you should spend some time reading up on the basics of intellectual property law, CelticRoots. To put it as simply as possible: You can't be sued unless you steal the words someone else uses. Concepts are not protected, for the reasons others have stated (ie, the same idea will be executed in very different ways by different writers).

ETA: But don't use this research as an excuse to put off writing!

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Yes, otherwise 90% of the YA Paranormal Romance authors would be sued by S. Meyer. Same concept <> plagiarism.

Though a writer will naturally be attached to their ideas, they are really not the most important part. Brilliant books have been made out of 'generic' ideas and bad books have been made out of 'original' ideas. The best ideas are always simple

If you want to see what constitutes actual plagiarism, check out the saga of Opal Mehta:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Opal_Mehta_Got_Kissed,_Got_Wild,_and_Got_a_Life

dawinsor said:

If you want to see what constitutes actual plagiarism, check out the saga of Opal Mehta:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Opal_Mehta_Got_Kissed,_Got_Wild,_and_Got_a_Life

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I remember this. I was in college, studying writing and publishing, when this happened. As you can imagine, it was a huge topic of discussion.

As a writing professor once said to me, "Ideas are great, but they don't get read. Words get read." Applies to plagiarism as well.

The idea of plagarism applies only to academia, where you can't borrow other people's ideas. So its not a crime.
Copyright infringement however is a crime. In order to commit the crime, you have to copy the actual text of the work, or use the same characters as the original. Tropes however are not copyrightable.

Evan Henry said:

Suzanne Collins hasn't gotten sued yet over Battle Royale. You'll be fine.

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Heh. And JK Rowling hasn't been sued over Worst Witch.

I don't believe there's such a thing as accidental plagiarism. You can certainly conincidentally come up with an eerily similar storyline to another book you never read. You can be influenced by something enough that you imitate the style of it, and explore similar ideas and themes. You might even inadventently use a one liner or some other phrase that's buried so deep in your mind you forgot it came from somewhere else.

You can call all of these various things - coincidence, being derivative etc, but they aren't plagiarism. The last one is tricky. If you're suspicious, you've just got to examine your brain (and the Internet) and try to figure out if you really came up with that great line, or was it someone else?

But nobody can accidentally write a long passage that's only a slightly tweaked version of a passage in another book. That's got the same stucture, the various sentences different, but coming in the same order in the paragraph, that kind of thing. And have this happen several times in the same book? Not an accident.

Plagiarism is always a conscious act. So don't be scared of accidentally committing it. Do, well not worry, but be conscious of being derivative. Of course you can explore the same ideas and themes as other writers, even similar situations. Clearly they are ideas people find interesting to write and read about. But you've got to have something new to do with them, to say about them. Your own twist.

That's my take on it anyway.

I have a worry close to this one, although it involves originality rather than plagiarizing. You come up with what you think is an original concept, and then someone quickly points out that so and so has done it before, and you think, "Oh, yeah, right! I'd forgotten that" (and then, if you're me, you get depressed).

So if I write a high school PNR about a werewolf who sparkles in the sunlight and is soooo in love with this high school girl who has just moved to town, it's not plagiarizing. It's definitely going to have my own take on it. But I don't think agents and the like would be interested in it, because it's not original enough.

So say I have an idea for a sparkly werewolf. Should I still go ahead with it?

Arianne said:

You come up with what you think is an original concept, and then someone quickly points out that so and so has done it before, and you think, "Oh, yeah, right! I'd forgotten that"

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Sometimes I really wonder whether it is even possible at all to avoid plagiarism. I mean, aren't concepts and ideas finite? sooner or later, ideas have to repeat themselves, no matter if in films, books, music or something else... it's all about using them in different contexts and with slight variations, wouldn't you agree?

But as has been said, reusing an idea isn't plagiarism.