Okay, I think I fixed that zokuto thing (turns out, Jaye, that the other one was *based* on Zokuto and plus, didn’t have the word count I needed. Sucks, huh?) Anyway, there appearered to be an extra table command going on that I’ve taken care of. hee hee hee. I feel so html-savvy now!
42,613 / 70,000
(60.0%)
But I digress. Today, I’d like to talk about horrible things that happen to writers. One writer I know is suffering through an experience with plagiarism right now. I found out about this on the same day that I discovered that my credit card has been stolen. It was a week for thievery. The situation mentioned above was a blatant case of plagiarism, in which the author’s whole book was compromised, stern to aft. But many cases of plagiarism are much more subtle, insidious, and difficult to prove. Take the famous situation that rocked the romance writing world in 1997, when one of its pioneers was found to have lifted passages in over thirteen of another star’s works. It was eventually discovered and the perpetrator forced to pay damages, but that was after seven years of blithe plagiarism. The victim was quoted as calling it “mind rape.” I came to romance after all of that settled down, but I never could bring myself to buy books by the plagarist. I remember reading at the time that people were shocked that the individual thought she she could get away from stealing things from such a famous writer. But here we’ve got an out-of-print category book plagiarized in a small-press, electronically published book. And it was caught. Let that be a lesson, plagiarists. You will be caught. Take it from an obscure source or a bestseller. Take a passage, a whole scene, or a novel. You will be caught. And we won’t read your books anymore.
In other news, I was reading in my university alumni magazine that a professor emeritus of history had published a Yale-set murder mystery. I was very interested in hearing more about this, since the more Yale-set books out there, the better, as far as I’m concerned. So I’m reading the interview with the author, and completely commiserating witht eh poor guy and his dozen rejections. And then, I run across this line:
But after many yeas, one morning my agent called me up and said a new publishing house was soliciting manuscripts. We had to find an old copy and have it retyped.
What a great success story! I think to myself. How lovely that the agent stood by him and tracked down a new house (because it’s a gret way to get in) and then my eyes travel down to the bottom of the page, where it says that the man’s novel is available through Publish America.
Okay, I think. Nice old man, wants his novel published, even through a vanity press. Very sweet, very sweet. But… what about the agent? Did his agent actually send his book to publish America? Even sweeter. Knowing his client wanted to have his book in print, sent it there knowing that it wouldn’t garner him one red cent. Nice agent.
Maybe. Or maybe this “agent” is actually a scam artist who has been charging fees to this poor professor-turned-author so that it doesn’t matter whether or not the book sells to a royalty-paying house or that the author has to lay down thousands of dollars of his own cash to see his book in print.
Man, why do I suspect it’s the latter?
Because of
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pebp.htm
http://www.speculations.com/rumormill/?z=102187
and, let’s not forget
http://www.publishamericasucks.com/
Sigh.
July 18th, 2005 at 8:20 am
how is this diffrent from writers who take stories and under the guise of “high concept” re-write someone else’s story. there’s one woman who’s doing a book about a divorced single mom who goes to hawaii and falls in love with a younger man (anyone heard of how stella got her groove back) and then another one where a rich wwoman ends up as a maid (a la the movie maid to order.) so where do you draw the line between harsh plaigarism and taking someone else’s idea, retoolig it and it’s okay. that’s been worrying me about the women’s fiction writing business of late. there seems to be an incredible lack of originiality. i read a book half way through that was a retelling of the king arthur sotry only with a modern heroine sent back in time. that was just a retelling of someone else’s story. so, where do you draw the line?
i apprecaiate your blog. very informative and helpful to someone new like me who’s still trying to come up with her own original idea.
joanne armstrong
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July 18th, 2005 at 9:41 am
I don’t know, I think ideas are okay. I mean, as a general rule of thumb, there aren’t a lot of fresh ideas out there. And even if you take someone else’s idea (Stella), it’s going to be a different novel when you write it. Could be more funny, or maybe sadder, or just maybe really crappy ….
As long as it’s not a blatant ripoff (i.e. The Five People You Meet in Heaven — hard to redo that one again), and it’s something more general like rich divorced woman falls in love with a younger man, I think you’re safe.
My two cents…
[Reply]
July 18th, 2005 at 9:45 am
Joanne, the diagnosis of plagiarism is rather simple. Plagiarism is stealing someone else’s words. Not in a sitaution where everyone knows that the words are not your own and that you are using them for the effect of their resonance (and thus, the acknowledgement is implicit), such as inserting, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” as a joke line, or starting your novel with, “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” Plagiarism is when you use scenes, lines, and whole passages from another person’s writing and pass it off as your own.
Ideas cannot be copyrighted, and in fact, there is no such thing as a new idea. On some level, all plots are going to be the same, because there are certain universal themes that resonate in the human experience. Every romance is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Terry McMillain was not the first individual to write a book about a sensually deadened woman going away to someplace tropical and having a sensual and emotional reawakening in the arms of a sexy man (Now, Voyager, anyone?), and she will not be the last. The riches-to-rags story is used extensively throughout myths and fairy tales told throughout history all over the world.
When I was a little girl, I loved this movie called “The Worst Witch” starring Fairuza Balk and Tim Curry. It was about a little girl witch in a British witches’ boarding school. Ursula Le Guin also write a series set in a wizard’s school. Does that detract any from JK Rowling’s creation? Is it only a “rip off” if you have read it? Are authors under the impetus to track down and make sure that no plotline or character they create in their head has ever, at any point in time, been told in any permutation or bears any resemblance to anything else that has ever been created? At a certain point, you’re looking at archetypes (tortured hero, repressed spinster/divorcee, spoiled rich girl, spunky free spirit) and overarching plot types.
And regarding modernizing fairy tales (like King Arthur) that pursuit has a long and glorious history. Shakespeare did it. Have you rejected “Clueless” as a retelling of Emma, or “West Side Story” as a retelling of Romeo And Juliet (which was itself a retelling of Pyramus and Thisbe)? Or do you appreciate what the writers of the new versions were able to do to the classic tale, how they were able to update it and make it accesible to the modern audience, to show that no matter how many centuries go by, the human experience remains very much the same. We still have prejudice, snobbery, class divides, romantic angst… isn’t it amazing? I was very impressed by Marianne Mancusi’s creativity. Who would have thought that chick lit and king arthur went together so well?
I recommend that you read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, which has an excellent examination of how and why certain stories are timeless and certain plots and storylines are seen throughout cultures and throughout history.
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July 18th, 2005 at 9:51 am
Diana,
Great comment, worthy of it’s own post actually!
And I totally agree. Two seemingly similar ideas, can produce completely different and original stories, depending on the writing and voice of the author.
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July 18th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Diana, you humble me.
Joanne, your question was heartfelt and I do understand. As a reader, I had periods of despair even as a teenager when everything I read seemed to sound the same, or have the same progression of events.
Don’t let the seeming inability to have a completely and totally original idea slow your creative journey. You may read something, or watch something, and think, “I would have liked it better if…” and be off and running on a new story that’s unique because it’s YOURS.
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July 27th, 2005 at 2:10 am
I know I’m late getting to this as I just found your blog, Diana, but I had to respond. I love what you said about ideas and how they are handled by different writers.
I wanted to say, too, that I know the lady who is writing the Hawaii book and I know her idea was inspired by things that happened in her own life. It’s still her story to tell and her voice is hers. It can’t and won’t be Stella. Also, another story of a lady who is reawakened by a lover in a tropical (sort of) setting? Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I remember a fabulous article by Susan Wiggs in the RWR a couple of years ago where she basically talked about ideas and how no two writers would write the same idea the same way.
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