#plagiarism

LITERALLY PLAGIARIZING and she’s just “guys… there’s a difference between plagiarism and inspiration 🥺”

First of all— the author enhari and I follow each other on both wattpad and tumblr so you’d think i wouldn’t be so goddamn shameless and copy their thing right in front of them🤦🏻‍♀️

So quickly i wanna say this because i’ve had a good chunk of people call out other creators for apparently “stealing” my work. Im not precious with my plots because I know most of them have probably been used in the past— tropes can overcross. Enemies isn’t a rare trope im sorry, idol x idol isn’t either. Obsessive characters, toxic relationships, murder, psychological horror —none of these belong to one author. Two stories can use the same ingredients and still tell entirely different stories— which begs the question— are there similar scenes/ similar situations, please let me know.

Unhappiness and internal strife: the price we pay for originality

Being creative is hard. What’s worse, is the difficulty doesn’t get easier, because in the process of trying to create, you need to assess if your work is a copy-cat of someone else’s.

As a writer, that is called plagiarism, which is illegal. In business that’s called copyright infringement. Beside that point of legality or at minimum, ethical standards, copying someone’s work would destroy any pride you could take in your own work.

Being inspired by someone’s work and it forming the basis of something transformational, that is unique to your perspective is allowed. I celebrate it. And it’s entirely out of scope when discussing perversions of art.

So you go through numerous weeks at a creative stand-still, unable to trace your current work back to your initial stimulus. You may even refuse to share something new until you can figure out the old.

Next, you begin to see the wood from the trees, and remember why you chose a specific colour palette or what you wanted your end product to look like so you could reverse-engineer your starting point. You’re on a roll and you complete your task and present it to others who are impressed.

They’re impressed with the level of detail you included and how much easier they were able to understand “perspective”.

Then, the next time you revisit the topic, someone else has an uncanny idea, that seems criminally close to yours. What’s worse is, there are parts of “their” idea that are a straight copy and paste exercise. At least in business you can sue. But in creative work it is harder, because while you can see remnants of your work, people can still claim originality.

Maybe they use different words than you when they present, or they work with different products. Either way, you know what they’ve done, they know what they’ve done and soon they’ll know you know they know you know what they’ve done.

The only advice I have for you in a situation like this is outperform them. Drastically. Make it so they never catch-up. Hide any signs of L&D, just execute. If they’re worth their keep, they’ll step it up. If not, the truth will set you free.