Protecting your Writing from Plagiarism

I've written things that have shown up on other websites. As flattering as it is that a person or company liked my writing enough to put in on their website, it's illegal and hard on a writer who is trying to get paid for their words.

Unfortunately, people tend to look at the web as one big freebee — text there for the taking. That's why it's important that you take time to protect your work.

Protecting yourself

• Copyright. You can copyright your writing. I say that, but at $45 per pop this can be cost prohibitive if you're not  being paid much for your work.

• Educate the offenders. You can contact the company or person posting your work and explain that what they are doing is illegal.

You’ll be surprised how many people/companies don't know this and are willing to take steps to right the situation. You may want them to give you credit, put a blurb about your piece and link back to your site, or just take it off. 

• Diligently Monitor. Keep tabs on your writing. To see if people are using my work, I'll Google some unique excerpts from my text and see if and where they shows up. It's pretty low tech, but it works.

In T. McSpadden’s article, Tips on Protecting Your Writing from Plagiarism, he talks about other monitoring options, like Copyscape, where you type in your domain name and at no cost other sites as searched for identical content. There are other sites like Plagiarism.org that will search for a fee.

When you Find Them

So far (knock on wood) I haven’t run into an issue where someone wouldn’t remove the text or wouldn’t link back to the original text. 

I’ve heard stories though where writers have contacted the hosting company and insisted the offending party’s website be taken down. Or, if you’re the Associated Press, you might even sue.

It's not healthy to walk around completely paranoid, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. 

Developing Characters on the Web

My Webster’s dictionary is getting dusty. I used to love leafing through the pages to find a definition or correct spelling. Now the only times I grab it are to challenge my husband during wicked games of Scrabble. Like everyone else, I’ve turned to the web.

Researching Words

If it were just about the definitions, I might still be using Webster’s, but the beauty of the web is seeing the words used.

When you’re writing fiction this is invaluable. We work hard to give our characters — that can range from local butchers to marine biologists — the right vocabulary. However, it we don't understand the vocabulary is used, when they start speaking on the page they can sound stilted, or worse, mentally challenged.

The web now allows us to see people using our new vocabulary words. For example:

 • I came across the word “meme” with respect to a website. As a techno-dork I didn’t know what one was, but was sure the website designer in my story would be familiar with the term. And even as techno-challenged as I am, I was confident he’d never utter sentences like “I’ve got a bunch of memes in my pocket,” or “Hey, you got some memes for sale.” So I hit to the web.

 • Wikipedia was my first stop, but the definition was too general.

• Next I Googled “What is meme”.

 This time I found out from Chrisg.com that “for bloggers Memes have become synonymous with internet quizzes, surveys, and novelties that people link to and pass around on their blogs, forums and via email, things like the “which superhero are you most like” test…”

 • Finally (and this is cool part) I started reading the comments. Now I could see people using the term in casual conversation. Jackpot!

Could my Webster’s have done that? No. But if I'm going to beat my husband at Scrabble I'm still going to have to keep it close.