Plagiarism Checking

[MillieDynamite]

Does anyone else run their work through a plagiarism checker? Since I read so many stories across so many genres and watch so many movies and TV shows in various genres, I run my work through a plagiarism checker. Sometimes, a line or two shows from a website. It's usually a ubiquitous phrase or simple sentence.

The reason I do it is that I watched a movie once, and used a phrase from it, and still do. "Yes, yes, you are," Sam Sapde to his partner, Miles Archer. That's a little thing and no big deal. I remember hearing "I'm not in the habit of throwing kerosene on fire," in a John Wayne movie, and seeing it as "kerosene," "gasoline," "coal oil," or "alcohol" in various sundry stories. So some things are acceptable. But if it is enough, fire off a checker, I change it.

Are there others here who inadvertently reuse things they've read or heard in their stories? When you do, do you change them or leave them as is?

No judgment, I'm only curious.

 

[cw5523729]

I ran one of my stories and it flagged "ooh ooh, baby, harder" as plagiarized from 12,137 stories on here.

 

[WittyUserName]

I ran one of my stories and it flagged "ooh ooh, baby, harder" as plagiarized from 12,137 stories on here.

Anyone wanna check how often "Fuck me!" appears on here?

 

[cw5523729]

Anyone wanna check how often "Fuck me!" appears on here?

I did, it said only 3 occurrences.






Wait, hold up, that was how many stories didn't have it.

 

[iwatchus]

I don't check it but I'm sure I have re-appropriated bits from all over the place. That's the way things move forward.

 

[cw5523729]

Being serious - how many completely new erotic lit stories are really released? I think finding a unicorn might be easier.

Ignoring that, for a cliche like: "I'm not in the habit of throwing kerosene on fire" - being a cliche, isn't it, by definition, going to show up many many times everywhere?

Does a single sentence even qualify as plagiarism? If so, how many completely unique sentences does any story of any length actually have?

 

[alohadave]

I don't check it but I'm sure I have re-appropriated bits from all over the place. That's the way things move forward.

I do it consciously.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Works for me.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The issue shouldn't be with individual sentences. A few sentences, here and there, aren't a big deal. But in a paragraph that's the same, or enough the same, to fire underlines would be. Multiple paragraphs would be outright plagiarism. I've never seen that in my work, and don't expect to. However, my book Written in Blood: Book One: A Dark Awakening is inspired by Dracula and is a gender-flipped version of both the count and Harker. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, because let's face it, the innocent don't need protection. But seriously, I was worried that some of what I wrote might be seen as plagiarism. No one has complained (It's a tribute from me to Bram Stoker), and it's different enough that I'm comfortable with it. Now, if I can ever get back to writing the rest of the stories, all will be great.

 

[SimonDoom]

The issue shouldn't be with individual sentences. A few sentences, here and there, aren't a big deal. But in a paragraph that's the same, or enough the same, to fire underlines would be. Multiple paragraphs would be outright plagiarism. I've never seen that in my work, and don't expect to. However, my book Written in Blood: Book One: A Dark Awakening is inspired by Dracula and is a gender-flipped version of both the count and Harker. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, because let's face it, the innocent don't need protection. But seriously, I was worried that some of what I wrote might be seen as plagiarism. No one has complained (It's a tribute from me to Bram Stoker), and it's different enough that I'm comfortable with it. Now, if I can ever get back to writing the rest of the stories, all will be great.

Keep in mind that Dracula has long since fallen into the public domain. Nobody has any proprietary right in it. You're free to write your own version of the Dracula story with impunity. Same thing with a novel by Mark Twain or Jane Austen or Charles Dickens.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I know, but still I want it to be different from what it was. I checked for plagiarism, and it came back with a 0%. But I check everything in case some small thing stuck in my brain, and I wrote it exactly as it was originally.

Keep in mind that Dracula has long since fallen into the public domain. Nobody has any proprietary right in it. You're free to write your own version of the Dracula story with impunity. Same thing with a novel by Mark Twain or Jane Austen or Charles Dickens.

 

[dirk2024]

I have not ever considered the need to do that. I know what I put into the story, the edits and re-edits, and I can't imagine it would pop up in someone else's story. It's not that I think I'm all that, it's just that I doubt two (or more) different people could crunch the same words together.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

I will admit that I have lifted a few lines as an homage to the original, or hoping that the reader will recognize the original and draw the parallel that I was aiming for.
Fan Fiction does it quite deliberately.

 

[Britva415]

I ran one of my stories and it flagged "ooh ooh, baby, harder" as plagiarized from 12,137 stories on here.

I always wondered who all these authors who have a woman "LITERALLY SCREAMING, 'I'm cCuMmInG!1!!!1'" copy from

 

[OralAllOver]

If it begins:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ....

 

[OddLove]

I didn't know you could do that. But if someone wants to plagiarize me, they're gonna have to work for it. Every time I post a story after proof reading it and proof 'listening' to it, I still find 'Sense' instead of 'Since' or 'Except' instead of 'Accept' and There, They're, There, To, Two, Too, type mistakes everywhere.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The issue shouldn't be with individual sentences. A few sentences, here and there, aren't a big deal. But in a paragraph that's the same, or enough the same, to fire underlines would be. Multiple paragraphs would be outright plagiarism. I've never seen that in my work, and don't expect to. However, my book Written in Blood: Book One: A Dark Awakening is inspired by Dracula and is a gender-flipped version of both the count and Harker. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, because let's face it, the innocent don't need protection. But seriously, I was worried that some of what I wrote might be seen as plagiarism. No one has complained (It's a tribute from me to Bram Stoker), and it's different enough that I'm comfortable with it. Now, if I can ever get back to writing the rest of the stories, all will be great.

I have seen sections in stories that inspire me to write something similar, but I have never copied them word-for-word. In most cases they will be in a different POV or tense to fit into one of my stories as-is, if for no other reason.

I would like to think that other writers find parts of my works to be a similar inspiration to them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I would like to think that other writers find parts of my works to be a similar inspiration to them.

I very seriously doubt anyone is ever going to copy my well dressed spider with a top hat and a cane, nor a wasp in a black and yellow striped dress.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I don’t consider this plagiarism. I liberally sprinkle references, often quotes, from books, TV and movies throughout what I write. Usually they’re just little things to amuse me, but I also like to see who gets the reference.

I had one pair of characters, for instance, watch The Godfather on a plane trip, and then recreated a scene from it later in the story. I throw in random Big Lebowski quotes all the time. Music lyrics quite often as well.

This is how people in real life often speak and think, and I’ve got a friend I am pretty sure has never strung an actual sentence together that wasn’t a movie reference.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Keep in mind that Dracula has long since fallen into the public domain. Nobody has any proprietary right in it. You're free to write your own version of the Dracula story with impunity.

Specifically, you're free to write your own version of Bram Stoker's Dracula story. The 1931 movie version (Tod Browning & Bela Lugosi) still has a year to run, so using elements original to that movie (or later versions) could still cause problems.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I very seriously doubt anyone is ever going to copy my well dressed spider with a top hat and a cane, nor a wasp in a black and yellow striped dress.

I hear you.

I can't even get my stuff stolen and placed on Amazon or YouTube.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I found this interesting. My husband told me that map makers put one fake town on every map, so they can tell if someone copies it, but I was skeptical.

What is a Mountweazel?

 

[Lifestyle66]

I sometimes use phrases I've heard from movies or read in a book. I'll attribute it to the original source if the context allows, such as writing in my story the character saying, "It's like in the movie, 'Cool Hand Luke'; 'What we have her is a failure to communicate.'"

But I don't obsess about it. With all of the written works out there now, as each year passes, the number of words you can uniquely kludge together grows longer.

We're all a bunch of monkeys pounding on typewriters, and eventually one of us will again inadvertently hammer out "War and Peace".

 

[SimonDoom]

The appropriate standard with fiction is copyright infringement, not plagiarism, although they can overlap. Copyright infringement is the use of another's copyrighted content without authorization. Plagiarism is the use of another person's writing or ideas without attribution. Plagiarism is an issue in the academic context, but not usually in the fiction context. Generally speaking, you are perfectly free to take things from the writings of other authors so long as the things you take don't rise to the level of being copyright-protected expression.

That's the standard I apply. I don't concern myself with plagiarism with my stories. I feel perfectly free to borrow an idea from another story and write my own story based on that rough idea, so long as I am comfortable and confident that the idea is at a level of generality that copyright would not protect it, because copyright protects only an author's creative expression of an idea rather than the idea itself.

Nobody has a proprietary right in a sentence, or in a small combination of words, so I wouldn't think twice about having one of my characters say "Make my day" or "We're gonna need a bigger boat" without giving an attribution to where I got the phrase from.

I do not wholesale copy text from other authors, so I have no concern about that and wouldn't take the time to put the story through a checker. If it DID find something that corresponded with somebody else's story, then it would be purely by chance, and I'm not concerned about chance correspondence.

I think it's admirable that Millie is concerned about this issue, but personally I think going through this process would be overkill. It's not required by any generally accepted code of authorial ethics.

 

[MrPixel]

Nobody has a proprietary right in a sentence, or in a small combination of words, ...

Think again: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/the-ah-coffee-shop-and-reading-room-09.1574612/post-101929505