I have to shamefully admit that my story "Changed by Aliens" has some elements in it that I can only see as plagiarism. Over the years, I have read thousands of stories and I had forgotten about the story that bears striking resemblence to mine.
I can only say in my defense that one: my treatment of the setting is done with an intimate level of people relationships; and two: that I have been over medicated these last four years.
As I come out of the fog, I see things that I had not previously.
Gwen Brown
PS, "Captain Brown" will start off with some brief relation with another story, but will sharply diverge from it and be a great deal longer. It is my objective to make "Captain Brown" perhaps as long as 1.5 Gig; full novel length.
Gwen Brown
Comments
Not 1.5 Gig!!
Okay, so I'm a geek. A nerd. An obsessive-compulsive...
A Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes. If each byte represents a letter, and there are 5 letters to an average word (one of the secretarial rules of thumb when you're studying typing), 1.5 GB would be 300 MILLION words, which is a scootch or so longer than your average eight foot high heap of novels. Even allowing a lot of wastage for formatting characters, I'm still pretty certain you must have meant 1.5 MB.
Slight correction
If you're talking file sizes, it's about 6.1 bytes per word because you have to count the spaces and punctuation. A 64k file is right at 9000 words. Still, that's bout 240 million words for 1.5 Gig.:)
Comparison: Chapters of Tuck by Ellen Hayes are roughly 60K each or about 8400 words. Times 133 current chapters = 8 meg or 1,120,000 words. :)
I didn't really intend to come across as geekier than thou, so please excuse me -- numbers, hee, hee, hee! Did I ever tell you that one of my nicknames is The Countess? After the character in Sesame Street. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I don't know, Pippa...
Maybe Gwen's been typing really, really fast. Let's see...300 million words, divide by, oh, let's say 300 words per minute for 16 hours a day is only 1041 days. No. You're probably right.
Wait a minute! How about a million monkeys typing 16 hours a day...
Jamie
I'm not good with numbers. LOL
OK, well, what ever. I meant, about 500 pages, what ever that is.
Gwen
If you're talking 'book' pages...
... that is, formatted to a standard novel-type book, my NaNoWriMo project this year came out to 1057 pages -- if you're shooting for half that, you're looking at 358,001/2 or 179,000 words. The average novel is around 350 pages, so only 70% of that (179,000*0.7) is 125,300 words. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Long, but much more do-able than multiple hundreds of millions of words, eh?
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? Wait, no, that was God. Sorry, common mistake...
not plagiarism, Gwen
Not to my way of thinking anyway. Plagiarism is in INTENT.
But I guess it's better to err on the side of ethics
and disclosure and stuff........:)
~~~hugs, LAIKA
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Writing is writing...
I did a course that quoted L. Ron Hubbard on the topic of writing... (Controversial! I know....) Anyway.... He said 'Paraphrased' A writer writes! When I am in the mood to write I write about 50,000 words a day. People ask why a story is such and such a length, well, it took that much to tell the story! Simple as that!
Back to me.... I say write until the story is finished! Whether it is 1.5 KB or 1.5 GB doesn't matter! That is how long it took to tell the tale! Now sometimes the story takes on a life of it's own and you end up either writing something way-y-y-y longer or way-y-y shorter than you originally figured, but so what? If it told the story, that's all that matters!
Just my opinion,
Lisa Elizabeth
If you are truely concerened
You could include a reference to the work that you feel inspired yours or you could alter your work to remove the aspects you consider too much like the original you think you have plagerized.
That no one noticed it is strong evidence that any plagerisim was accidental. I remember Scott's Genomorph being severely plagerized at FM a while back -- the *author* calling it an re-imagining. FM removed that story at Scotts inistence.
You bringing this to our attention proves your honesty.
I wish you luck with resolving the issue. That you say is is "some elements" suggests a fix can be found that will preserve the story. Even Roots -- the Alex Haley novel that laughed a miniseris had several chapters that were plagerized though I believe accidentally.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
It's a matter of scale
I read this somewhere, don't remember where or who said it: "Copy one author and it's called plagiarism, copy three or more and it's called research." Or something to that effect. So go do some research! ;)
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way."
College Girl - poetheather
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb