Once again, plagiarism is rearing its ugly head. This time, it’s the Harvard student who wrote a book and apparently referenced several different books–without attribution.
It makes me wonder about the people in my chosen profession. Who would knowingly swipe something from another person? And how could an author knowingly screw over another author?
Is any resemblence to another’s work wrong? That got me to thinking; how far do you have to go in order to be accused? Would writing a book with the same message qualify? How about writing a few chapters that came to the same conclusion? What about characters that seem the same?
While I do NOT condone any form of plagiarism, I wonder exactly where we draw the line? I’m serious. Suppose I read nothing but Hemingway all my life. If I took up the pen and wrote a book, basing my knowledge of writing on his style, would I be in deep trouble for emulating him?
The answer is no. Good writers are often imitated. The problem arises when the work is lifted, reworded, and packaged as original. And that’s where our young author got into trouble. You can almost hear her in her dorm room at Harvard: “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if I could take the best from all these books and make another story out of it?”
We all need to reread the AP Stylebook’s Copyright section as a refresher. And while new ideas may be tough to come by, we should stick to creating our own realities–fiction ones, that is.