Thanks Jim. Don't worry, nobody can spell him. His fault for having a Russian name, I think.

<Added>

I still don't see HJTC in the ww bookshop. Get your act together, mon.

Ah yes, you're right I should do something about it. I'll get on the case soon.

Jim

I sat down and counted poetic lifts, steals, quotes, allusions, whatever, in High John the Conqueror, and they were legion.

Well you're in good company. I'm pretty sure that just about every other line in the Jeeves And Wooster novels is something along those lines. (Reaches for nearest exhibit - Aunts Aren't Gentlemen).

Wow. In the very first paragraph we have quotations from or references to:
- The Toreador song from Carmen
- Lamia by John Keats
- Taboo To Boot by Ogden Nash
- How Gilbert Died by Banjo Paterson

And for no good reason, except that I've found an excuse to talk about Wodehouse who is nothing to do with this thread, can I recommend this amazing interview with the old codger in the Paris Review, given not long before he died. I have rarely seen as much sensible advice about writing gathered in one place (WW excepted of course..!.)

Some great points being made here, and very enlightening. Thank you.

JB

<Added>

In terms of Rowling though, I'd say that whatever happened with her and her control over her story was jsut karma, seeing as she stole all her ideas in the first place.

<Added>

Ok Ok, sorry, I'm not going to kick off another round of Rowling bashing, fun as it is. :)

Hi, JB. With my tongue somewhat in my cheek (it's Sunday morning and the church bells are driving me crazy), can I suggest pleading cryptomnesia? It's known as 'innocent plagiarism' and it's what Nabakov claimed when accused of stealing the idea for Lolita from a story he'd read years before but claimed to have forgotten. It's a recognised medical condition; a prior episode may influence future behaviour even if the episode is not recalled. My rule of thumb tends to be 'if it's good enough for Nabakov, it's good enough for me'.

Tiger

Wasn't it George Harrison who said 'All ideas come from God' when defending himself from the charge of plagiary. (My Sweet Lord was supposedly ripped off from - anyone remember????)

<Added>

Plagiary? wtf - I think I mean plagiarism.

Thanks Griff - good to know that!

As for wee Georgie, it was the Chiffons 'He's So Fine' - but GH (RIP) should never have been fingered for that. The slippery guitar riff with the Dm6 chord (B bass) - G9 analysed another way, assuming it's in Gmajor - takes it into another dimension. Now someone will tell me there was a Dm6 in He's So Fine ...

But there you go. That's showbiz.

Jim

I knew I could count on you Jim!

This terrifies me because in a black mood I sometimes feel I could trace the source of every sentence I ever write - but that is probably just me

My young daughter is currently writing the 8th Harry Potter book starring Hermione Granger's brighter younger sister(!) but has read the Warner Brothers copyright notice and is terrified. Keeps glancing up from her notebook to make sure men in black from WB aren't about to pounce and cart her off to prison.

I keep telling her she'll be OK - probably...

Actually it's quite good - HP doesn't really feature much.

Sarah

Actually it's quite good - HP doesn't really feature much.

I think your daughter may have uncovered the secret to a good HP book, Sarah!

My line about JKR being no less immune to accusations of plagiarism than the average writer of HP fanfic was edited out by Mslexia when they published my letter on the subject. Obviously no-one at Mslexia has ever read any Alan Garner...

Tiger

On the question of copyright of characters:
In one of my stories, I have a character telling a boy tall tales of his travels, and mentions going to darkest Peru and meeting Paddington's Aunty.
Of course, Paddington is still copyrighted, but I was loath to cut this passage out. So I found the official website for Paddington Bear and sent off an email with the 'offending' passage, asking permission to use it.
I recieved a lovely reply from Michael Bond himself, saying he was touched that someone would wish to mention the character in a story, and giving permission. He also corrected some of the details: e.g. it is always Darkest Peru with a capital D; Paddington's aunt Lucy, not aunty; etc, etc.

The moral of the story is, if you don't ask, you don't get. Oh, and I love Michael Bond & Paddington Bear!

- Naomi

It's true, too - it's not always a horror story. I woke up and realised I had a quotation from Robert Capa's memoirs embedded in TMOL, long after I'd had a near-mess (and I do mean mess) with all the epigraphs, which was all much later than it should been anyway, though my publishers were very nice about my idiocy. But I tracked down the Capa estate online, emailed, and got a friendly email back by return granting me world rights gratis.

Emma

I am surprised to find authors on the WW forum uploading their complete novels. I am on another forum where the moderators will ask a member to delete their work if all, or a substantial part of it is left on the site - purely as a precaution against plagerism.

I agree. There are lots of good story ideas uploaded on the site which could be pinched without much chance of come-back. It's hard to fight a copyright action without a bit of cash so without the back-up of publisher muscle I doubt that just putting up a copyright symbol at the end does much good to protect work, especially ideas.

You can't copyright ideas anyway, only their expression - i.e. the words you write them in. And the copyright symbol is neither here nor there in the UK: your work is copyright as soon as you write it.

It's worth remembering that you can always make work visible to members only.

And also, it cuts both ways, because having work up here is excellent proof of when you wrote it - or at least when you uploaded it - and a plagiariser would have to prove that they wrote it earlier.

I have to say that this is something that the more experience a writer gets, the less they worry about. In fact, I've heard agents say that when they see a MS with solemn copyright symbols and First British Serial Rights and so on, they know they're dealing with a rank amateur, and read the pages with appropriate cynicism. Not fair, I know, but true.

Emma