When does plagiarism begin?

[AG31]

In my current fiction book from the library I read "his cock was a rod." I quite liked this description. We're always casting about for new ways to describe the same old things. I don't anticipate writing any more stories, but if I did, would it be plagiarism to use that? I could well have thought it up myself. Does plagiarism have to be a whole sentence? Even that doesn't work, as whole sentences have been repeated ad nauseum in the word of erotica.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

His cock was used in angling?

I don't think a single five-word poetic device could be plagiarism, but I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

 

[SimonDoom]

The best guide for this, IMO, is the distinction in copyright law between creative ideas, and the unique original expression of ideas. Nobody has a proprietary right in the former. Copyright only subsists in the latter.

Nobody can reasonably claim a proprietary right in the phrase "his cock was a rod." It's too simple and too basic. Use it with impunity. Have at it.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Well, rod is a fairly standard euphemism for penis, so I think it's fine. I wouldn't copy that sentence word for word as copying without any attempt at paraphrasing is the very textbook definition of plagiarism (though you're probably okay with just five words). I'd avoid copying a more flowery phrase.

 

[StillStunned]

In my current fiction book from the library I read "his cock was a rod." I quite liked this description. We're always casting about for new ways to describe the same old things. I don't anticipate writing any more stories, but if I did, would it be plagiarism to use that? I could well have thought it up myself. Does plagiarism have to be a whole sentence? Even that doesn't work, as whole sentences have been repeated ad nauseum in the word of erotica.

Glib response: change it to "His dick was a rod."

Less glib response: I bet plenty of sentences occur in multiple works, particularly for basic descriptions and actions. And comparing an erection to a rod isn't that unusual. Just make sure that the sentences around it are your own work.

 

[crookedletter]

Are you asking about the letter of the law, or the spirit of it?

No one will accuse you of plagiarism if you lift a fairly common descriptor like "his cock was a rod." As you say, you might have come up with that yourself. And I'm sure that line appears in a million and a half erotic stories.

But the spirit of the rule, maybe, is something else. It's one thing to read a descriptor, internalize it, add it subconsciously to your lexicon, then one day it might bubble up as you're writing and you use something very similar, with no intent to use someone else's words. It's quite another to read a descriptor, think it's a good one, and lift it word for word into your work. Even if it's a simple one.

 

[Areala-chan]

There's nothing inherently plagiaristic about using a description, or a sentence, or even a line or two of dialog you read somewhere else, in your own work. I used a few lines of dialog from Pride and Prejudice in one of my recent stories. But I didn't just drop them into the text, they had the purpose of demonstrating that the characters swapping that dialog were literary nerds, each picking up what the other was putting down. I copied Austin's words, but I didn't claim them as my own; I used them instead as props for my characters to play with.

Where plagiarism begins is when you lean too heavily on how someone else did the job of setting up scenes and characters to interact. As a writer, you should want to put your own unique spin on characters and descriptions. Looking to another for inspiration is fine. Letting someone else do all the work for you and calling it a day is not cool.

 

[AG31]

Are you asking about the letter of the law, or the spirit of it?

No one will accuse you of plagiarism if you lift a fairly common descriptor like "his cock was a rod." As you say, you might have come up with that yourself. And I'm sure that line appears in a million and a half erotic stories.

But the spirit of the rule, maybe, is something else. It's one thing to read a descriptor, internalize it, add it subconsciously to your lexicon, then one day it might bubble up as you're writing and you use something very similar, with no intent to use someone else's words. It's quite another to read a descriptor, think it's a good one, and lift it word for word into your work. Even if it's a simple one.

Yes, what you say is what prompted me to make this OP. I think, if I were to resume writing, I'd avoid these exact 5 words.

 

[JGittes]

Who, in the Bible, was responsible for beating his rod on a rock?

Adam, before Eve came along.

Famous Hollywood Squares question to Paul Lynde.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes, what you say is what prompted me to make this OP. I think, if I were to resume writing, I'd avoid these exact 5 words.

To me, this is like saying you'd feel reluctant to write "it was the best of times" because Dickens wrote it. That's going too far. There are only so many combinations of short strings of words. We shouldn't feel guilty about using a particular 5-word combination just because somebody else did it before us. There's a rule of reason to observe on this issue. Don't go out of your way to feel guilty about things that aren't reasonable to feel guilty about.

 

[crookedletter]

To me, this is like saying you'd feel reluctant to write "it was the best of times" because Dickens wrote it. That's going too far. There are only so many combinations of short strings of words. We shouldn't feel guilty about using a particular 5-word combination just because somebody else did it before us. There's a rule of reason to observe on this issue. Don't go out of your way to feel guilty about things that aren't reasonable to feel guilty about.

I agree that you don't need to actively knock phrases off your tool belt because they've been used before. If "his cock was a rod" or "it was the best of times" comes up organically in your writing, you don't need to mentally catalog where you might have heard that before and strike it if it's been done.

But don't you think it's another matter to crack open A Tale of Two Cities, say "Damn, that's a good opener!" and lift it for yourself? Assuming we're not talking about parody or allusion, that is, which this particular example would probably be seen as.

 

[OddLove]

I'm not convinced anybody can write a coherent story without using hundreds or thousands of previously written statements/phrases/sentences.

In my last story I referred to a big dildo as a 'weapon of ass destruction' which I 'thought' of. It's probably the least common description of a dildo I've ever used, but I'm certain I'm like the ten-thousandth person who's used it.

I don't know the laws, but as far as 'when it becomes plagiarism'

I think it starts to become questionable when elements like plot, progression, characters, events, dialogs, etc all combine into the 'same' story.

It's really hard to pin it down to a specific 'line in the sand' type of way. And it's something I'm definitely going to ponder for awhile. Right now it's just something I haven't put enough thought into.

Although, I can say pretty confidently that chances are, there will even be whole paragraphs that are identical even just here on Literotica. Just by chance. The stories might have completely different premises, characters, conclusions, environments, etc, yet for three sentences worth of narration or dialog, every word lines up.

Especially when you start talking about novel length stories... it's impossible to avoid.

 

[Statius]

In a hole in the ground, there lived a groundhog.


Problematic.

There's a hole in the ground over there, think there's a groundhog living in it.

Just peachy.

 

[AlexBailey]

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

Autocorrect filled it in after “dark”.

 

[AlexBailey]

Experiment:
Begin by typing a single word (I began with “It”) and select the next word from the autofill options:


“It was a great day for me today. I was so happy to see you guys again. You guys are awesome people and I love your work. The best thing about this is that we are all doing great things together.”



Now that’s what using the next most likely word looks like.

I tried: “His cock was a….” (Autofill suggested) “…little nervous.”

 

[crookedletter]

I tried: “His cock was a….” (Autofill suggested) “…little nervous.”

Now that's a writing prompt.

 

[Areala-chan]

I tried: “His cock was a….” (Autofill suggested) “…little nervous.”

... weapon of ass destruction, obviously.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

It is a phrase, and arguably an incomplete phrase at that.

The context in which it could used is endless, so unless you also copied the before and after portions of the section where the phrase originated, I would not consider it plagiarism.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Interesting question.
Is everyone with a female character named Wendy plagiarizing J. M. Barrie?

 

[Baztrachian]

In my current fiction book from the library I read "his cock was a rod." I quite liked this description. We're always casting about for new ways to describe the same old things. I don't anticipate writing any more stories, but if I did, would it be plagiarism to use that? I could well have thought it up myself. Does plagiarism have to be a whole sentence? Even that doesn't work, as whole sentences have been repeated ad nauseum in the word of erotica.

In college I remember my Creative Writing professor talking about plagiarism:

"If you copy one source that's plagiarism, if you copy twenty sources that's research."

 

[SkyBubble]

In my current fiction book from the library I read "his cock was a rod." I quite liked this description. We're always casting about for new ways to describe the same old things. I don't anticipate writing any more stories, but if I did, would it be plagiarism to use that? I could well have thought it up myself. Does plagiarism have to be a whole sentence? Even that doesn't work, as whole sentences have been repeated ad nauseum in the word of erotica.

T.S. Eliot once wrote that "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." The same, I think, holds for all writers, composers, and other creatives. Even copyright law acknowledges "fair use" wherein you take a snippet of something and use it in a new way.

For example, one of my stories quotes three lines of a Billy Joel song because it's relevant to the scene. I would be violating copyright if I used the whole song, but a few lines serve a creative purpose.

All of that is a long way of saying no, using one sentence would not violate copyright if you use it in a new way.

 

[SkyBubble]

To me, this is like saying you'd feel reluctant to write "it was the best of times" because Dickens wrote it. That's going too far. There are only so many combinations of short strings of words. We shouldn't feel guilty about using a particular 5-word combination just because somebody else did it before us. There's a rule of reason to observe on this issue. Don't go out of your way to feel guilty about things that aren't reasonable to feel guilty about.

How many phrases that we commonly use are Shakespeare quotes, for example. One is even a title: All's Well That Ends Well.

 

[SimonDoom]

How many phrases that we commonly use are Shakespeare quotes, for example. One is even a title: All's Well That Ends Well.

Yes, and of course Shakespeare cribbed from sources that came before him. As was his right. If we get too protective in our view about what's proprietary, it inhibits the ability to create.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If I saw two different writers using "his cock was a rod", I wouldn't assume that one of them had taken the words from the other. "Rod" is an obvious descriptor for something hard and vaguely cylindrical, it's widely used as slang for "penis", and the sentence is brief enough that two people could easily have coined it independently. If the construction is complex/unusual enough that it's unlikely to have been invented independently by two different writers, and if somebody is trying to pass it off as their own work, that's where it feels like plagiarism to me.

To me, this is like saying you'd feel reluctant to write "it was the best of times" because Dickens wrote it. That's going too far. There are only so many combinations of short strings of words. We shouldn't feel guilty about using a particular 5-word combination just because somebody else did it before us. There's a rule of reason to observe on this issue. Don't go out of your way to feel guilty about things that aren't reasonable to feel guilty about.

Interesting example.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that people had used that exact phrase before Dickens; it's short and straightforward. But Dickens' use of it has become so famous that it's hard now to use it without it being interpreted as a Dickens allusion. I think that takes it out of the realm of plagiarism, because there's no chance of me hoodwinking my audience into believing that I was the first to come up with that phrase. But using it is likely to have my readers thinking "that's a Dickens allusion" and if I don't want that, I'd better think of something else.

How many phrases that we commonly use are Shakespeare quotes, for example. One is even a title: All's Well That Ends Well.

Many everyday English expressions do come from Shakespeare, but that particular one was in use well before his time.

 

[IWroteThis]

To me, this is like saying you'd feel reluctant to write "it was the best of times" because Dickens wrote it. That's going too far. There are only so many combinations of short strings of words. We shouldn't feel guilty about using a particular 5-word combination just because somebody else did it before us. There's a rule of reason to observe on this issue. Don't go out of your way to feel guilty about things that aren't reasonable to feel guilty about.

I agree that using "It was the best of times," or "It was the worst of times," is fine. However, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," would have me leaning towards not fine. If you use the whole freaking sentence, that's definitely bad, and not just because it's a horrible sentence (in my opinion).

On an interesting side note, Google says it's "grammatically sound within the context of literature," but also says it's actually not grammatically correct and provides a corrected version…