terrib

Unintentional plagiarism? I would think a writer knows if they plagiarize of not. Unintentional plagiarism? Don't know if it exists. We as writers sometimes ride the line, but we all know if we plagiarize or not. The one thing I fine true with myself is sometimes my ideas coincide with another authors. I think I have come up with this wonderful quote and guess what? You got it. I read it (or something close) in another book.This mostly happens during the... shall I say, the intimate scenes. I mean, there are just so many ways to decribe that. Now just because he/she was published before me would that be unintentional plagiarism? I understand emulation is the greatest form of flattery, but not for a writer. At least not for me.

Terri

crankgear

I once thought of a fantastic idea, I had never heard of this and I was very proud of the fact that I had created something of my very own. Almost 4 months later I read the same idea in a magazine.

I was crushed.

Then I got some common sense.

There are over six billion people in the world. Three hundred million of those are in the United States. The chances of two or MORE people thinking of the same thing while wholeheartedly believing they are the sole ones.

There are THOUSANDS of books I haven't read. Who knows if the idea I have right now hasn't already been done?

I might be completely off with this- but hey thats the best I can think of.

lol

Cefor

What i tend to do is read something i really enjoy and write something of the same topic, but not the same characters, plot, or other ideas.
For example, i read a story a while ago that was FanFic for a pc game called Freelancer.... now i really enjoyed this story so i decided to write my own story in that setting, i.e the game. But i wouldn't have thought of it unless i read the story on the fansite first... I don't class this as plagiarism... but maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

Btw all of my other stories are entirely my own

Cefor

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GeekGoddessAjax

In my writer's group, someone had suggested I read "Jolene" by EL Doctorow, because the character in my novel had reminded her of the lead character. Recently, I finally read the short story, and although I wouldn't say the character Jolene is much like mine, the story seems relatively similar.

As I had never read the story, or anything by Doctorow (and after reading several of the stories in that book, plan to not read anything of his ever again) I would say it is very possible that several people have the same idea and put it out in similar ways.

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mammamaia

not only possible, but happens all the time... in the film world, for instance, there will often be more than one movie written, produced, and/or released at nearly the same time, with near identical plots...

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Merforga

happens alot of the time. People do it unintentially and most even think their idea is original. Most of the time it turns out it's not.

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