Plagarism

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Close Hauled On the Edge of the Winds of Plagiarism

Gwen Brown
5/21/2016

As I have said enough times before that it is likely getting tiresome, I have been working on a story for years, perhaps fifteen of them. It’s been an off and on project and I’m not sure why I didn’t just sit down and finish it. Perhaps the answer is that the fates had not completed parts of it.

I hadn’t set out to copy anyone, and believe that when I have become aware that scenes in the story are similar to something I’ve read, I’ve changed it. However, there is that old saw, “there is nothing new under the Sun”, and I have considerable fallibilities.

Further, I have found myself having lapses in my memory and in my writing ability and must face that dementia might be setting in because, after all, I am 69. Disturbingly, I have been taking two drugs that studies now show may contribute to the premature onset of dementia, Trazadone, and Omeprazole. Accordingly, I have stopped or greatly reduced the dosages of said remedies and decided to try to live with the symptoms of sleeplessness with nightmares, and acid reflux.

So, in talking about this much touted story, it does have tg characters, one of them involuntary, and gay and lesbian and some, several gender aliens. In the story, I am imitating David Weber’s management of race, meaning that it does not matter one iota, nor does it matter if one is male, or female. All of that is a non-issue. I am trying to decide if the characters live past the 120 year Biblical model; methinks they do.

There is one set of chapters in the story where our protagonist makes friends with a large ape like character and he becomes her protector, but not like Honor Harrington’s Treecat. I do remember reading a book perhaps 50 years ago where something similar happened to the protagonist, but cannot remember the story, or author to see if I am too close to his work. I also remember a story, perhaps a Poul Anderson one, where the male members of the Space Navy wore skirts to official functions, and the women wore elaborate gowns. The reason for this was the skirts were simply easier to get on and off quickly. In some parts of the world neither men nor women wear pants, so this obsession with males wearing pants has been an abnormal obsession. For several years after my own transition, I did not wear nor own pants and became very angry if forced to wear them. I am sure that many t folk can understand that.

I’ll continue to think about the ways to avoid copying the work of others in a wrongful or illegal way, though in my reading over the years when I was young, I often noticed that various writers shared their devices quite often.

Comments

Plagiarism

waif's picture

"the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own."

There is nothing illegal, immoral, or disreputable about using elements of another author's work within your own. If I have a character drive a car called a Filmore, I am not plagiarizing Frank Zappa. If my character lives in a universe with treecats I am not plagiarizing David Weber. If my space army has the men wearing kilts I am not plagiarizing, I am borrowing background.

If I write a chapter in which my main character is a female cadet who has a treecat familiar and beats up an academy upperclassman from a noble family who tries to rape her in the shower I am plagiarizing.

Be kind to those who are unkind, tolerant toward those who treat you with intolerance, loving to those who withhold their love, and always smile through the pains of life.

Treecats

By gosh Jen, you;re a fan of the Honor series!

Karen

Navy

waif's picture

My daddy was career Navy and he had all the Hornblower books of sailing ships. He bought me every book in Honor's series. I still go back and read them, as she is such a strong, yet feminine role model.

Unfortunately, Honor is tall and statuesque. I am short and skinny.

:(

Be kind to those who are unkind, tolerant toward those who treat you with intolerance, loving to those who withhold their love, and always smile through the pains of life.

Treecats

Yes, I am reading the Honor Harrington series for the third time and am on book 4 right now.

Gwen

I've often had the same fears myself

Ragtime Rachel's picture

There are a couple of lines of dialogue in a flash fiction story I wrote for the Mixed Tape ("Creative Avoidance") that I'm sure I cribbed from another story, however unintentionally. Though it's impossible to say which one.

I have a good memory for stories--perhaps too good, and it's all too easy for me to take a premise or a line or two of text from somewhere else and think it came from me.

Livin' A Ragtime Life,
aufder.jpg

Rachel

Alzheimer's

If you're worried you may have Alzheimer's, there's a health food you can buy on Amazon called Resveratrol. In a trial lasting one year with just 100 people with mild and moderate symptoms of Alzheimer's, half were given a placebo, half took 1gm Resveratrol a day. The half on the placebo continued to decline, the half on Resveratrol did not.

It's a small trial and needs lots more work doing, but it's the only thing available at the moment. I take mine daily.

Not to worry

Plagiarism is a very specific situation: where you copy a chunk of text, word for word, from someone else's work. If you take large enough chunks of someone else's background to be recognizable, that's called a derivative work, also fan-fic. Some authors, such as the already-mentioned David Weber, have a very hard-line stance against fan-fics. Others don't care and some welcome it - I've got a series of ten fan-fics set in the Whateleyverse, for example.

A large ape-like creature who befriends one of your characters isn't a riff on Weber's treecats. Those are weasel-like arboreals who are telepathic among themselves and one-way empathic with humans. A sentient species that's telepathic and gets along well with humans is a pretty common trope; to copy a treecat you'd have to be fairly specific.

Ditto with Weber's approach to gender. I'm not sure anyone else has taken the exact technique of having the characters use their own gender when talking about an unspecified someone else, but it's hardly specific enough to be recognizable. If I ever start a new series, I'm going to take the bull by the horns and use a real epicine (gender-neutral) pronoun, since I regard "singular they" as a contradiction, and will continue to do so until "they" begins to take a singular verb.

Where the line gets drawn depends on a lot of factors, however the rule of thumb I use is whether the average reader would think it's a riff on someone else's work.

Happy writing!

Xaltatun

David Weber's universe has

David Weber's universe has been used by many. Why recreate the wheel. To try to create a perfect universe and write isn't necessary, and it makes the reader now have to grasp yet another fantasy universe. I remember the Naval male dress uniform having a white beret and a white, pleated(?) skirt, but can't remember the series.One of David Weber's universes?
My mother took omeprazole for 40 years, when she passed at 87, she was still sharp, and bossy!
I think the first wearers of trousers were women.
Stay Strong!

Karen

I think you misread the published facts about Trazodone.

Trazadone is recommended as an alternative for those drugs (usually sleep aids) that are linked to dementia.

In none of the published articles (in my amateur searches) does it say Trazadone is linked to dementia, rather that it was recommended to replace other drugs that are linked.

Dayna.

Plagarism

Plagarism is the deliberate theft of intellectual property. Having said that we are all shaped by our past and that includes the literature we have read. I have read thousands of books in my lifetime, and it is inevitable that these are going to influence my writing, some accidentally, and some intentionally. These intentional influences are still not plagarism, not unless I were to copy word for word sections of those works, WITHOUT citing the source and giving credit to the original author.

Now I still worry about it. I often won't read stories on this site that may be related to my stories, but I still occasionally find similarities to things I have already written. This is still not plagarism. Plagarism requires intent.

In short, you are worrying to much. We are inevitably the sum of our experiences, and any accidental similarities are really just a reflection of the influence that author had upon us, and should be seen as complement to that author and the impact he or she had on our thinking.

Waterdog

Halo

Dawnfyre's picture

The video game Halo, the design of the "weapon" the ancients built to combat the flood is a direct rip off of Niven's Ringworld.

Yet there has been no legal issues between the game developers and Larry Niven over it. Using elements of another persons work is not considered plagiarism, I would think it is seen more s a compliment.


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.