Let's Talk Plagiarism
by Thamiris and Mythdefied
This was originally hosted solely on
Thamiris' site, but since her death, I decided it was safer to keep a
copy here, just in case her site is lost anytime in the future.
Let's talk
plagiarism. It's time. And this is a talk: we want
to
raise questions, provoke discussion, and not point fingers. We
also
want to hold up a mirror. Don't look away. Don't say,
"That's
not me! How dare they...I'd never...My stuff's not..."What, after
all, is plagiarism? Aren't we all plagiarists? We borrow
our
characters, our settings, our plots from HTLJ and XWP, and the writers
there borrow from mythology. And certainly not all
writers
care if others blatantly copy them. But some of us do. Ever
open an email and start reading what you soon realize is essentially
your
own story, except someone else's name is on it?
We recognize
that, as writers, we all experiment. We see an interesting
feature
in a fic, and wonder how we'd do it, then try it out ourselves. Fic,
after
all, is always about influences. Did you know the plot of
Hamlet
wasn't original with Shakespeare, that he borrowed this and other plots
from earlier writers? That's how authors worked in the
Renaissance.
True greatness, it was felt, came from the clever twists and turns you
imposed on your sources. A strong writer would work within the
confines
of canon (does this sound familiar?), and then play with those
boundaries,
expanding or even breaking them, until the fic bore only a tenuous
resemblance
to the original. Re-creation, not regurgitation.
Before you
start screaming that we're not Shakespeare, let's face it: we are
his sisters, in theory if not in practice. Borrowing is
inevitable,
but the essence of good fanfic is to borrow, then to play with
that
basic material, to push and pull and scrape and cut and amputate and
polish
until the final product is original. Until it's yours.
So there's
the theory. What about the practice? How do we avoid
crossing
the line between plagiarism and borrowing?
- We ask ourselves
who our sources are in the fandom. We all have them, but
sometimes
we don't stop to consider who they are.
- We take a good,
long, hard look at our fic and ask ourselves how heavily we're relying
on others for our plot, dialogue, characterization, structure.
- We consider if
we've worked as hard as we could to make our borrowings unique.
- We find beta-readers
ready to point out that,while imitation might be the highest form of
flattery,
direct borrowing diminishes our fic.
- As beta-readers,
if we recognize that someone has imitated elements of a fic, we point
that
out and offer suggestions to change/improve it.
Something to think
about.
Thamiris is one of the moderators
of the Ksares mailing list. Erin is the former keeper of The
Ares/Joxer
index.