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This week: How to Avoid Plagiarism Edited by: Joy  
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“If an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after.”
William Hazlitt in 1820
“Ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarism, pure and simple.”
Helen Keller
“Writing is an act of thievery.”
Khalid Hosseini
“You adapt experiences and anecdotes for your own purposes.”
John Cheever
“One of the surest tests is the way in which a poet borrows, Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
T.S. Eliot
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is on plagiarism and the ethical, professional, and legal problems it may create.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Plagiarism can get a person fired from a job, dismissed from a college, or find himself facing even worse consequences due to the recognition that plagiarism is stealing. Since we writers are also big readers, we are always looking over our shoulders to make certain what we write is safe from plagiarism. This is because the brain is a weird organ and it doesn’t tell apart what it stores; that is, if what it stores is from its being thought by the person that brain belongs to or if it is from someone else's speech or written work. From this point of view, most of what we consider plagiarism can be accidental, and common knowledge and original work can become difficult to tell apart.
Then, with time, culture builds and enlarges upon itself, and most of the ideas, thoughts, stories, and plots have been around for millenniums, losing their original creators. Very little of what we write, therefore, can be completely original, if at all. Even Shakespeare lifted his plots from history and many other places; however, he did them in such an artistic fashion that they became his own.
In addition, the characterization of plagiarism has changed over the decades, and in our time, the rules have become stricter. While many ideas are still free, all developed and specifically handled ones aren’t; thus, we can easily say that the idea itself can be free but the way it is presented isn’t. For example, the idea of health care reform can be used by anyone; however, Obama Care is specific.
As to our writing, quoting a short sentence from another publication or using the same phrase common in the language is not plagiarism. Still, it’s a good idea to give credit to the work or person we get the inspiration from, if we know who or what that source is.
True plagiarism means copying exactly whole paragraphs or pages of someone else’s work and offering it as your own. Plagiarism.org defines plagiarism as: “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own // to use (another's production) without crediting the source//to commit literary theft//to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.”
When it comes to fiction, taking ideas from other stories is not considered plagiarism. A case in point is the abundance of Cinderella stories.
James Scott Bell in his book, Plot and Structure, says it isn’t plagiarism to take old plots and re-imagine them. He cautions, however, against lifting exact words and sentences within the same context. His advice is to make the plot your own. You could, maybe, use the plot elements but not all of them at the same time.
I believe the best advice to fiction writers could be, if you are using an old plot, such as from a classic or a fairy tale, think thoroughly first, take notes on your own thinking, then begin writing so your work is an original built upon that old tale and you are never accused of plagiarism or even shoddy writing.
Yet, when it comes to academic and non-fiction writing, the expectations are stricter. Taking ideas or language without crediting its source is unacceptable. Especially verbatim plagiarism can put a writer in deep trouble. The remedy for this is proper source recognition, especially if the writer is using large sections or the entirety of a publication. Even if the writer is not caught, there is that moral issue and the loss of pride that a writer earns from writing his very own piece.
As a personal experience, a while ago, on the newsfeed, I came across a friend’s note voicing his disappointment after he found out that someone else had plagiarized his work. This kind of a behavior is totally unacceptable among serious writers. If you are suspicious of someone offering the whole or part of your work as their own, contact that person and ask them to take that work down, and if the situation has gotten out of hand, seek legal advice.
If you suspect any person plagiarizing, you can also use an online source called Turnitin. Turnitin checks strings of phrases, paragraphs, and pages from its vast database. Most universities and colleges use Turnitin when assessing student work. Other plagiarism checkers to one degree or another are Plagiarisma.org, Grammarly, and Copyscape. You can also run a search on your own by Googling key phrases from your work.
As writers, we need to take pride in what we do, no matter how little we are able to do, and if a work is plagiarized, it is worth the trouble of letting the guilty party know of our disappointment.
Here are some source-quoting resources for writers online.
How to Quote a Source
http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_quoting.html
MLA: Using Sources Correctly
http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/usingsources_mla.html
For Bibliography help:
MLA Works Cited Page: Books
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/
MLA Works Cited: Periodicals
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/7/
MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications)
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/8/
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Online Resources I used for this editorial:
Purdue Online Writing Lab ---Accessed 1/29/17
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/
What Constitutes Plagiarism? § Harvard Guide to Using Sources
What Constitutes Plagiarism? --- Accessed 1/29/17
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page342054
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 This Issue's Tip: Align your characters' attributes to the settings they are in.
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Feedback for "Creating the Story World"
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willwilcox
Good stuff. Thanks for featuring my story "The Golden Door"
Thanks, Will.
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Quick-Quill 
Oh if writing a novel was just that easy. Way back in the 80's there was a writing program that asked questions. When all the questions were answered you hit write my story and Voila! there was a story. It was basically a book report writer, but it was great to practice writing plot. I bought the program. It came with a glitch. When I sent it back, I never got a new one. They went out of business or the program update didn't work. I was sad, it was a great beginning writer's program. The more detailed you were the better the story.
Thanks for the input. We had something like that way back when I was new in Stories.com and it had several versions in genres, but to my knowledge, the person who put those together is not in WdC anymore. It would be a great idea to revive that again. Two or three of the novellas in my port were written through those guidelines.
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Drama: February 08, 2017 Issue [#8112]
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