Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Story

Plagiarism and Copyright

If you think way back to the beginning section of this book, I wrote a chapter that was called "Originality". Within that chapter I touched on both plagiarism and copyright but it's important enough that I believed I should write a chapter about it. I'm going to help you understand what qualifies as plagiarism and how to avoid it. I highly recommend reading my chapter on originality because it will help you differentiate between copying someone else's idea and being original. To start off, I will give you some definitions.

Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as your own.

Copyright is the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.

Every single piece of work that you have created, said, or written, is protected under copyright. Now, just because you say "cool" that doesn't mean no one else can say that word anymore. A quote that might be protected under copyright is a famous quote that you try to pass off as your own. That is illegal. 

I'm going to start off by talking about plagiarism, however. For the sake of the purpose of this chapter, I'm going to solely focus on literature. You can't take a direct quote, character, or plot idea from any other story besides your own. You cannot steal the world. If you want to do that, try fanfiction instead. Realize that you can't publish fanfiction, though, unless you make changes to it.

Don't confuse yourself by my words. Just because "The Maze Runner" has a maze and "Harry Potter" deals with wizards, that doesn't mean you can't write a story that also has a maze or wizards. It's acceptable to take elements from another story so long as no one can point it back to someone else. J.K. Rowling doesn't own the idea of witches and wizards. However, she does own Harry Potter and, therefore, you can't write another story with the main character by the name of Harry Potter without receiving some scepticism. Do you see the difference? 

Moving on, let's talk about copyright. What qualifies as copyright? Even if you aren't plagiarizing, you still face the risk of a lawsuit. If you include a real person in your story (excluding fanfiction), a real book, movie, play, show, song, poem, artwork, company name, or anything that doesn't technically belong to you, you hold that risk. Because books are a wonderful thing that have a knack for twisting the ordinary. If you include any of the things I have listed, you could inadvertently say something untrue or even advertise against them. This could anger people and they might take the matter into their hands.

Let me tell you, that isn't a good situation to be in. You are in luck, though! It's easy to avoid. For one, you are probably writing fiction. In fiction, you can make things up. Think of fake people, fake companies, to replace the ones that are real. If you have read "Fangirl" by Rainbow Rowel, I have an example for you. In "Fangirl", Cath is a very popular fanfiction writer based off of the mega-famous fantasy book series about a young wizard called Simon Snow. Many people have speculated that so-called "Simon Snow" is supposed to be Harry Potter. Why might she make up a new character to replace good ol' Harry, huh? Well, for starters, Simon is gay in her fanfiction. That might not sit so well with J.K. Rowling if she finds out that a published book is spawning ideas that her beloved character is gay. Being gay isn't a bad thing; the problem is that Harry just isn't. 

Another example of copyright being carefully avoided is in movies or even commercials. You might have noticed that people drinking a can of pop cover the label a lot of the time. Usually you can infer that they are drinking Coke, or whatever, but they cover the label anyway. Why would they do this? Well, think about it. What if a character is drinking Pepsi and another character is drinking Coke. Say the first person gets mad at the coke-drinker and crushes their drink. That inadvertently advertises Pepsi. Companies notice these kinds of things.

Let's look at another situation. Imagine two girls in a cafeteria. One buys a Nestea and the other says, "That has way too many calories in it." Now think of all the people who may have watched this very scene and thought, Huh, maybe I shouldn't buy Nestea anymore. Copyright is subtle.

Not to get you in a scramble to rewrite your story, but I wanted to make sure you were aware of these things. If you ever do publish a story, your editor will probably help you rework your story around these things if it is necessary anyway (such as in Anna Todd's case, with "After"), but it is good to know. 

That's all! I only have a few more chapters left. . . . Unless you give me chapter ideas! It is not too late so don't hesitate (I feel like that needs to be a slogan). Anyway, thanks as always for your support and I hope to hear from some of you soon.

(P.S. To those of you reading this chapter at this point, the story is now complete so I will not be accepting any more chapter suggestions. I just kept it there because of my crappy slogan. . . . However, if you have an questions, I will happy to answer them.)