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My writing buddy Annie asked the question for this round of the blog chain:
Do you ever get inspired by a real-life event or news story and fear you're ripping off the story too much? Do you ever get inspired by a song or poem or line from a book and worry you're stealing that original person's idea? What if your research is overtaking your originality?
What popped into my head immediately upon reading this were those old Ecclesiastes verses: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
Like most people, I have been inspired by other people's works, and from time to time I've even used those works as a springboard for my own. For me, the nice thing is that as I find the story's voice and work with the characters, it all becomes uniquely mine.
I just started reading Jessica Verday's upcoming novel The Hollow, and it's set in the town of Sleepy Hollow, and quoted at the beginning of each chapter is a bit of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Jess took a story most of us know and found her own spin on it. That's not plagiarism, that's creativity.
Your question makes me think a bit about fanfiction. Fanfiction is the use of someone else's copyrighted characters and universe in a story. Fanfiction ranges from atrocious to amazing; it also runs the gamut from poorly-retold episodes or stories with an obvious Mary Sue inserted to wildly new and inventive tales that expand the "canonical" story in exciting ways.
Early on, i.e. when the internet was just starting to boom, companies like FOX went after fanfic writers to try to make them stop using copyrighted characters (e.g. The X-Files' Mulder and Scully). Soon, though, even FOX realized that fanfiction was just a way to expand the buzz about a show. These days, writers of shows like Supernatural work inside jokes acknowledging fanfic--and therefore fandom--into their episodes.
None of that is to say that fanfiction can't cross some boundaries that writers need to be wary of. And because the characters are copyrighted, it's rare for fanfiction to find an outlet in the traditional publishing world.
And it's good to be aware that plagiarism is a problem. Certainly Kaavya Viswanathan learned that lesson the hard way. And even Cassie Edwards has been called to the table. But as long as you aren't mimicking entire passages, characters, situations, etc. from someone else's work...that is, as long as you are putting your unique spin on things, really telling the story through a new character's eyes...as long as you're using your inspiring source as nothing more than a springboard...you're on the right track.
What do you think, dear Reader? How do we stay original when we're inspired by someone else's work? And where is the line we must be careful not to cross?
Sandra came before me and Kate is up next!
I wander the article syndication sites frequently, and somehow landed on an outside site that "is a global leader in writing custom essays and dissertations for students." That's right, you too can now buy your dissertation to go with that degree you bought.
"With our help you can quickly and easily get your assignment done by one of over 500...experts."
Why is this legal? And how did we come to a point in which this is such a lucrative business that there are thousands of "buy your paper" sites? (Turns out there's a CYA that says "These papers should not be represented as your own work." Riiiighhht.)
Education and Employment
Education used to be a privilege. Just being able to read and write your name was a privilege. A lot of people fought incredibly hard so those outside the upper class would have access to decent education, have opportunities to rise above the things that oppressed them. And yet so few people seem to appreciate that there is a purpose to education (and not all of the people I'm talking about are students), and that if you don't want the knowledge or you don't want to do the work, you should just not go.
Employers care less about what your degree is in than they do about work ethic, personal responsibility, and commitment to your organization. People who are selling students papers are effectively stripping said students of practice on skills that could have made them competitive employees. And sadly, these students haven't learned enough in school to realize that this "global leader" that hires "experts" to produce papers of "unmatchable quality" is actually putting out garbage.
There's More to Papers than the Grade
I would be insulted if someone suggested I should pay someone to write a paper for me, and not just because I like to write. It would be disempowering. It would be a way of saying to me, "You can't do it yourself." And these Buy-a-Paper mills don't include the fine print: "And now you'll never learn how."
I wrote a lot of papers in my 22 years of school. I hated writing a lot of them. They kept me from doing other things I wanted to do. They stressed me out. Many of them felt like busywork, or were on topics that were of little interest to me.
Yet by doing them I learned how to actually communicate with others, how to research and find information on topics of interest to me, how to parse and evaluate information to make decisions about what's valid and reliable and what's not, and how to deal with and push through challenges it would have been easier to avoid. More importantly, all those papers helped me develop the ability to think for myself, to be able to support my ideas with evidence, to feel secure that information that conflicts with my own beliefs won't destroy who or what I am, and to critically examine new ideas and give worthwhile ones space to expand my own world.
To be the kind of person who can make good money because I have skills other people don't.
Like writing.
And persevering when I get frustrated or confused.
And knowing how to deal with the unexpected problems life hands us all.
I'm sitting here writing and I'm thinking, No wonder so many students have "crises" that completely incapacitate them when said "crises" should be nothing more than bumps (albeit uncomfortable, but still bumps) in the road of life. No wonder they stare blankly at the walls that are thrown up before them rather than looking for a way to go over, under, around, or through.
Here's the best part of this posting, though.
Purchased Papers Don't Mean Quality
After explicitly stating that what they do is not plagiarism on the student's part (it is—in an academic setting, ghostwriters aren't allowed: plagiarism is representing someone else's work as your own, no matter what...and note that the CYA mentioned above does in fact verify this), they go on to talk about how great their writing is...while providing writing samples that few professional writers or editors would find acceptable.
Can the stuff pass in an educational setting as acceptable? Sure, for the most part, if you don't care whether you look like a competent writer. But the internet thrives on the billions of people who want others to read their writing, to be recognized and maybe even professionally published...and buying papers sure as heck isn't going to get them any closer to those goals. A lot of these "writers" don't even know how to spell, let alone how to go back and proofread.
Professional editors say that at least 99% of the unsolicited material that crosses their desks is garbage. It's full of typos, grammatical and punctuation errors, poor sentence structure and flow, and inarticulately expressed thoughts. And 100% of the people in that 99% think they're good enough that an editor is going to invest tens of thousands of dollars and risk her career to support said writing. And then they're angry when their work is rejected!
Or Correct Grammar, Spelling, or Decent Writing
The company's propaganda says:
[We have] the industry's' best writers [and] unmatchable quality. While majority of custom writing companies that have recently emerged on the Internet make money hiring inexperienced students and foreign writers with poor knowledge of English, the team of UK and US professional writers employed with our company consists of experienced and qualified researchers capable of coping with literally any assignment.
Each member of our writing team holds at least Master’s Degree, and some writers hold PhD degree. [We] offer a compelling proposition : a vast academic and personalized service for a relatively insignificant cost. Given that education is of vital importance in today’s world, as a determinant of future success and of access to new social arenas, its importance is great.
This is their best stuff. Their advertising. Their sell.
It has some issues.
Custom rewrite by Yours Truly:
While most online custom writing companies hire inexperienced students and foreign writers with a poor command of English (note that they never actually say they are careful to hire people who do have exceptional or even good writing skills, and based on the writing here, I'm doubtful), each of our writers holds a Master's or Doctorate. (In what? These days you can buy a "graduate degree" online, just like you can papers. Why on earth would you believe that someone who is willing to help you cheat actually got a decent education him- or herself?! And let's face it, if these "academics" are so great, why are they writing papers for lazy middle school, high school, and college students for an "insignificant price"?) We offer personalized (we put your name on it, correct spelling is extra) academic essays at an affordable price. Given the importance of education in professional success, maybe we should get some.
Important note: This material may only be reprinted by MasterPapers at $25 per line. That's with a citation. For you, a bargain price of $49.95 per line if you don't cite me.
I will give them, this, though. Their site is pretty. Maybe they should stick with site design.
In the early days of the internet, everyone gave everyone else credit for the teeniest little thing. Information was still being passed the old fashioned way — by word of mouth, by ink on actual pieces of paper — and each new fact was something to be treasured, along with the person who found it for you. Pages intended to share information were peppered with italicized notes: Thanks to C for this information! W is always an amazing and generous resource. D tracked this down for us.
Now information is so easy to come by — just Google, cut, and paste — that "borrowing" it has become just as easy.
But the fact of the matter really is, you're not saying anything by plagiarising, other than perhaps "I'm not bright enough to dredge up an argument of my own."
Our culture seems to be losing its ability to think. Far too many people are flummoxed by the idea of having to find information when Google or Wikipedia don't provide them with a preformatted answer.
And that scares me. It really scares me.
Because when we forget how to think for ourselves, we're helpless.
There are lots of reasons people plagiarize. They do it because it's easier than writing a paper they don't care about writing. They do it because there's pressure to produce more and better stuff. They do it because they don't know how to say it better than the author.
But no matter what your reason is, you're not a writer if all you're doing is stapling together others' stories. At least, that's what the publishing industry decided during Harvard's Kaavya Viswanathan disaster. Even when uncited material stays on the market, like that in Ann Coulter's book, it reduces your credibility. If you can't make the argument with your own words, maybe you should sit down and let someone else do the arguing.
I really do believe that old adage that nothing under the sun is really new, but at least come up with a new way to talk about it, you know?
Listen, writing is hard work. The Muse is fickle, and sometimes writing stories feels less like magic than punishment, but the willingness — and ability — to ask questions that make other people uncomfortable, to plumb the abyss of the human Shadow, to find meaning in what might otherwise drive one mad...that makes it all worth it.
Fortunately, the Blog explosion and sites that encourage people to post original fiction have reminded people that churning out ideas — original ideas — is fun.
In June of 1993, there were 130 websites online1. By 2000, there were over 7 million2. As of November 2006, over 100 million3. As of this writing, the web is growing at more than 3.5 million sites per year3.