My Question About Copyright and Plagiarism - My Personal Situation

DamianLake · Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:45 am

Ah, inspiration can really be a blessing! Or a bane...

I am only 2 and 1/2 chapters from finishing a novel I have been working on for quite some time. I admit many of the elements crashed together in my head as the direct result of watching a music video. Most of the elements were already in my head but it was that perfect moment when everything clicked together that finally determined the overall plot and direction this book would take.

Yet it is heavily influenced by multiple sources of inspiration. Now I have no problem citing attribution at the beginning of this novel to give credit where credit is due, but how far can we take inspiration? Here are the specific examples from my own situation.

1.) Stephen King used Robert Browning's poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" as the inspiration for his Dark Tower books, and quotes the poem many times throughout his own novels. He also quotes, "The Waste Land", by TS Eliot, which is how I came to encounter the poem. It inspired me in many ways similar to how King was inspired by Browning. In my novel, there is a mental image that keeps recurring to one of my characters, and I describe this mental fishhook using imagery derived from the poem. Anyone familiar with the poem will recognize this disturbing setting from the images and the words from the poem I use to describe it.

2.) The music video that gave me my ultimate inspiration for this novel was itself a fan-made creation that used the song "The Master of the Wind", by Manowar. Not much of my final novel ended up resembling the original inspiration, but there are two or three scenes where someone who knows the song will recognize certain things. Sometimes a setting is shaped by some of the lyrics from the song, or a character will be talking to others and a phrase that is almost, but not exactly, one of the lines from the song will come out. In fact, the subtitle of this novel comes from the original song. This will be volume one of my "Masters of the Wind" duology. It's not exactly the same as the song title, but arguably that doesn't much mater.

3.) Next, there is a poem I could not resist including in one chapter of the novel. I only use the first third of it, but it is word for word, and delivered as a quote from a minstrel-type character. This is a poem from over a hundred years ago, and the actual author is lost to time, so it is unattributed. I plan to mention that this is a direct usage of this poem up front rather than my own work, but with it unattributed, there should be no problem. Right?

4.) Finally, this minstrel of mine is a master tale teller. He knows a great many old tales, new tales, and fanciful tales. I don't have him actually wasting much time telling them over the novel, but he does make numerous references. Being a hardcore anime fan, and since anime has greatly influenced my own work, I like to have him make a reference that is recognizable to other fellow fans, but which would just seem like some silly thing I made up to non-fans. For instance, he might say something like, "If this were the tale of the Master of the Triple Weapon, I might have a shot at getting us out of this." Most readers would think it simply a fictional tale I invented for the character to refer to, while those in the know would recognize this as a "Trigun" reference, a popular anime series with 26 episodes. In an authors note at the end, I plan to admit the numerous references and list, in no particular order, all the anime series that crept into the novel. It will give some fans reason enough to go back and hunt for the ones they missed. But will that be enough, or will further legal hoops need to be jumped through?

So where do I stand? I've tried looking up the rules and whatnot myself, but most of them seem to start with, "In most cases..." which means it isn't really a rule but a practice. Like I said, I plan to admit all this in forwards and author's notes and so on, but will that be enough?

R. LeBeaux · Mon Oct 31, 2011 1:55 pm


	DamianLake wrote: So where do I stand?

1.) If all you are doing is using “imagery” from the poem, and not quoting it directly, you should be okay. If the poem is not in the public domain and you want to quote directly from it, you should probably get permission from the author or publisher.

2.) If you are not directly quoting from the song, there shouldn’t be any problem.

3.) If you have searched and found that the author of this poem is lost to time, it shouldn’t be a problem. Plus, if the poem is over 100 years old, unless someone has renewed the copyright on it, it would now be in the public domain.

4.) Simply mentioning the title of something does not require permission.

Sorry for the somewhat ambiguous answers, but I am not a literary attorney, and am only going on what my experience tells me. In almost all cases with my work in both non-fiction and fiction, there has been a legal department to double check everything for potential problems, so I really haven’t had to spend much time worrying about them myself.

One thing you might consider when wondering about problems with copyright infringement would be to consult a research librarian. Over the years I have made extensive use of these helpful folks, who are trained in the art of locating older texts, determining the status of copyrights, and understanding the need (or lack of it) for attribution. If you have a university or college library nearby, I would recommend this over your local municipal libraries. In either case, however, you will find research librarians to be not only knowledgeable, but willing to help out with any questions you might have concerning all manifestations of the written word.

DamianLake · Tue Nov 01, 2011 11:16 pm


	R. LeBeaux wrote: One thing you might consider when wondering about problems with copyright infringement would be to consult a research librarian. Over the years I have made extensive use of these helpful folks, who are trained in the art of locating older texts, determining the status of copyrights, and understanding the need (or lack of it) for attribution. If you have a university or college library nearby, I would recommend this over your local municipal libraries. In either case, however, you will find research librarians to be not only knowledgeable, but willing to help out with any questions you might have concerning all manifestations of the written word.

Thanks LeBeaux! I had quite forgotten about those helpful folk! I have only been tangentially involved with them in the past in terms of looking up hard answers to tricky questions, so they didn't come to my mind when wondering on this problem myself.

As far as my own situation goes, I don't THINK that I have crossed any serious lines. But anyone familiar with the poem or song will likely have a moment or two where they think, "Hmm, I can see the influence of said work here, and over here that one line was definitely an allusion." This novel still has a long way to go before it sees other eyes, but I wanted to bounce the problem off fellow literary types and authors before I started my first serious editing pass.

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