Lesbian Fiction ForumPlagiarism (n)
- A piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work
- The act of plagiarizing; taking someones words or ideas as if they were your own
copyright infringement
infringement of copyright
piece of writing
writing
written material
(source: WordWeb)
It is easy to imagine (but far from condone) nonfiction writers doing this. But fiction writers are doing it as well. This really pisses me off.
A person is writing fiction because they are creative (or consider themselves to be). Why go through the effort of entering in someone else's text then editing it slightly to fit the new story?
Sure, there are 'formula' fictions such as romance. And isn't most fantasy good vs evil?
Someone named Georges Polti came up with 36 dramatic situations. Every fiction book fits into one of them. So it is conceivable that eventually a story line is going to be repeated.
But to sit down with someone else's book, copy their words into your book, and then say those words are yours, that's plagiarism.
We writers have websites dedicated to revealing scam agents and scam publishers. But there is no list of scam writers. Should there be? As a reader of fiction, wouldn't you want to know if the book you are reading is a re-run?
Several years back, Lorna and I went to see an animated flick called "Return to Atlantis" or something like that. It was alright, but it was so like another movie (the title of which escapes me right now, dammit) that we could predict what was going to happen next.
So imagine sitting down with a new romance book you just paid $6 - $12 for. You start reading. At first you think, "This is familiar but all romance is the same thing anyway." and you shrug it off. Then you get to a scene that just jumps out at you. You have read this before in another book by another writer. If you have all your books in one place, it probably wouldn't be too difficult, although an effort, to find the other book.
Plagiarism is lying and I don't like liars.
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Keywords: Rant, Other Writers, Book Sub/Pub, Ethics
last modified: 05/04/06 11:58
