Friday Needs... A Poll

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Here we are again at week's end, and Friday seems like a day made for polling.  Let's examine... ourselves.
[Poll #2052208]

Comments

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I once read a story that basically contained all the elements of a story I'd written a couple of years earlier. It was literally as if the two of us had been given a relatively detailed plot outline and had written our two interpretations of it. I was irritated at first, then, on thinking, had to admit that the elements themselves could have been come up with independently (or that the other writer had read my story and the elements were floating in her subconscious, as can happen to anyone). There was no obvious plagiarism.

Besides, mine was better. :-)

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I wrote a story that was something I personally liked a lot, and I thought it was clever. Sometime later I read a story by another writer that had been posted years before mine, had a very similar plot with very similar elements. Had I read it and not remembered? I shot off an email to her and apologized profusely for my unintentional misdeed, to which she replied it's just what happens in the genre.
Whew! And she's right, of course. Nothing new under the sun.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

It's very reasonable to think "Oh, crap, did I read this and not remember?" Because when you write, everything goes into the hopper, including memories of other stories and bits of them that stuck with you. How do you sort the "fanfic I read fairly recently" bits from "lifetime of reading and writing and having experiences" when you're in the zone? If there's a way, I don't know what it is.


Looked at from that angle, it's a wonder cries of plagiarism aren't more common.

I do sometimes see writers cry plagiarism when the other author used the same premise or general plot line (not the sort of step-by-step plotline I saw that made me go "Hm..."). They don't get that no one owns "boy wins girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again."

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I got a round of meanness one year because I had Illya playing guitar at Christmas. It seems one person thought she owned the idea that IK played a guitar, so she left a nasty comment about it. I was very new, so it sparked all kinds of indignation :)

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Ooh, crap, I had Illya play a guitar in two stories! I'm a total plagiarist.


Seriously. He played in the show, for god's sake. It's hardly a wild leap.

People are funny.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Funny... yeah, that's what we'll call it ;)

[alynwa.livejournal.com]

I've read your stories: I know yours was better, LOL!

The oddest thing that happened to me was: I was writing my original "Sugar & Spies" story and was almost finished when I came across a story (don't remember the name or author) who premise was that Illya had found a biracial little girl and wanted to keep her. The rest of the writer's story was very different from mine, but I was blown away that she had a similar premise. I commented on it and mentioned that the story was very much like one I had written, but hadn't published at that point. I think I just wanted to let her know my story had absolutely nothing to do with hers.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

When I first started in HP fandom I was accused of plagiarism because I used, if I remember correctly, three things: the sonorus charm (it's in the books); one character believing another is dead then finding out he isn't (hardly unique, to put it mildly) and one other that escapes me but was the same type of universal trope. Took me completely by surprise as I hadn't read the story in question (it was well-known but I was new to the fandom then) and on reading it all I could say was "WTF?" Fortunately a lot of readers chimed in to say basically "WTF? That's not plagiarism, you moron." That was comforting, because of course a plagiarist (had I been one) is going to deny it, so my denial was fairly meaningless. That could have been the end of my involvement in the fandom, because I would certainly have stepped away had I been branded a plagiarist.

To me it showed how ignorant some people can be about what actually constitutes plagiarism, and that, fortunately, a lot of other readers and writers are willing to speak up and go "Um, no, the general plotline of Romeo and Juliet [e.g.] - boy and girl fall in love, families disapprove, boy and girl fight to be together - is not copyrighted."