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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: gravesbane on April 07, 2008, 12:46:01 AM
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Would you feel in any way responsible for someone pulling a copycat on a plot from your writing? ie simular murder, crime, or terrorist attack.
Your input would be greatly welcomed.
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Er... what do you mean? If you mean doing that to someone else, I have had people jack my characters and what not before, and I went off on them. Pulling inspiration is one thing, copying is another. It's fine to get ideas and inspiration, just twist it to make it yours.
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I think graves meant actually doing the "murder" of your Plot in real life against real people...
Personally I wouldn't feel responsible, but I would be REALLY weirded out by it.
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I think graves meant actually doing the "murder" of your Plot in real life against real people...
Personally I wouldn't feel responsible, but I would be REALLY weirded out by it.
Ahh, see, that's why I shouldn't post on here, I'm an idiot. :-[
But I concur with M.S.D. It's not your fault, just bizarre...
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Responsible? No. No way. No how.
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It happened to Stephen King. He wrote a story back in high school that turned into a novella that got published in the early eighties. Then, Columbine happened, and if I recall, Stephen King had his publisher stop printing copies of the story about a kid who shoots his teacher and takes his classmates hostage in the classroom.
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I looked for that one on snopes, and didn't find it.... though the site does list Stephen King as using three other urban legends in his books, nothing having to do with stopping publication with regard to what happened at Columbine.
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I looked for that one on snopes, and didn't find it.... though the site does list Stephen King as using three other urban legends in his books, nothing having to do with stopping publication with regard to what happened at Columbine.
It was an article I read a long time ago when Columbine first happened. I'll have to do some digging to find it when I get home.
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Well, as Tom Lehrer says in "Lobachevsky"
Who made me the genius I am today
The mathematician that others all quote
Who's the professor that made me that way
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat
One man deserves the credit
One man deserves the blame
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache-
I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics. Plagiarize!
Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"
And ever since I meet this man
My life is not the same
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache-
I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write. It was on analytic and algebraic topology of locally Euclidean metrization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifold. Bozhe moi! This I know from nothing. What I'm going to do? But I think of great Lobachevsky and get idea - ahah!
I have a friend in Minsk, who has a friend in Pinsk
Whose friend in Omsk has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk
His friend in Alexandrovsk has friend in Petropavlovsk
Whose friend somehow is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk
And when his work is done - ha ha! - begins the fun
From Dnepropetrovsk to Petropavlovsk
By way of Iliysk and Novorossiysk
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk to Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run
Yes, to me the news will run
And then I write, by morning, night
And afternoon, and pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed
When he finds out I publish first
And who made me a big success
And brought me wealth and fame
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hi!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache-
I am never forget the day my first book is published. Every chapter I stole from somewhere else. Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory. This book was sensational! Pravda - well, Pravda said: perzhnavisk. It stinks. But Izvestia! Izvestia said: parachnavor. It stinks. Metro-Goldwyn-Moskva buys movie rights for six million rubles, changing title to "The Eternal Triangle," with Ingrid Bergman playing part of hypotenuse.
And who deserves the credit
And who deserves the blame
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hi!
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Would you feel in any way responsible for someone pulling a copycat on a plot from your writing? ie simular murder, crime, or terrorist attack.
Not responsible. Disturbed, probably, but responsible, no. People who can't tell the difference between fiction and reality are not reason enough not to write fiction, and people who mean harm will find a way to do it from whatever they have to hand.
That said, I can entirely sympathise with deliberately making the recipes for explosives in Fight Club (the movie) wrong so that nobody playing with them would blow anyone up.
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Thank you all for your replies. I was having problems with writing a novel about terrorism. I wouldn't want someone to go "hey, that's a good idea". Maybe I save that one for my second book. Thanks again! :)
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You never can tell what's going to inspire some people. In Anchorage recently they convicted a former stripper turned soccer mom of plotting the murder of her wealthy husband based on the movie "The Last Seduction." In "Six Days of the Condor", source of the Robert Redford movie "Three Days of the Condor", the protagonist's job at the C.I.A. was to read the latest pulp fiction looking for new spy technology and viable scenarios that might inspire the Bad Guys, in effect using novelists around the world as unpaid field researchers for the latest ideas in espionage and terrorism.
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Would you feel in any way responsible for someone pulling a copycat on a plot from your writing? ie simular murder, crime, or terrorist attack.
Your input would be greatly welcomed.
Did you make the killer crazy too? Did said crazy person consult with you and did you then either:
A) gave them any sort of feedback that could be deemed positive/neutral?
B) give them the murder weapon?
C) Ridcule them and dared them to actually prove they could do it?
Otherwise no, it not your fault.
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Found it! It was Rage, written as Richard Bachman.
"The Carneal incident was enough for me. I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred."[2]
I was wrong that it was Columbine. It was another incident that spurred him to take it out of print.
The Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(novel) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(novel))
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*reads wiki* Wow.... That's .... frightening.
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Some books that have inspired murder on a large scale: The Holy Bible, The Koran, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, Mein Kampf.
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Dude! Way to put God on a guilt trip! Points for Yeratel! ;) :D
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"That said, I can entirely sympathise with deliberately making the recipes for explosives in Fight Club (the movie) wrong so that nobody playing with them would blow anyone up."
The soap recipie works, though.
*looks innocent*
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"That said, I can entirely sympathise with deliberately making the recipes for explosives in Fight Club (the movie) wrong so that nobody playing with them would blow anyone up."
The soap recipie works, though.
*looks innocent*
Heh! You are not the only one who's ever read something in a novel and thought, "I wonder if that would really work? Let's see what I've got in the kitchen cabinets. . . "
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"That said, I can entirely sympathise with deliberately making the recipes for explosives in Fight Club (the movie) wrong so that nobody playing with them would blow anyone up."
The soap recipie works, though.
*looks innocent*
Well, yes, but isn't making soap one of those things most people do in the chemistry part of high-school science classes anyway ?
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Well, yes, but isn't making soap one of those things most people do in the chemistry part of high-school science classes anyway ?
Play with sodium lye? In a classroom? In the 21st century? Egad, dont you know that's dangerous?
Naw, these days chem class is all about being danger free.
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"That said, I can entirely sympathise with deliberately making the recipes for explosives in Fight Club (the movie) wrong so that nobody playing with them would blow anyone up."
The soap recipie works, though.
*looks innocent*
And thus the new found knowledge that Mickey's been out trying all the recipes? :-)
As to safety in Chem Labs---don't they all still have the little gas spigots? I mean who hasn't thought about moving the bunsen burner a little to the left.... Nah, my self preservation instincts always stopped me in time.
Edited: as usual I got busy reading the replies and forgot the reason to post. I'm not into writing terrorist books etc, but I do have one killer idea that someone should write about. It's up for grabs....
Someone poisons the glue you lick on the back of stamps. Do it fast, As a matter of fact, do they even make stamps that way anymore???? Probably because someone else thought it an unwise practice..
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Edited: as usual I got busy reading the replies and forgot the reason to post. I'm not into writing terrorist books etc, but I do have one killer idea that someone should write about. It's up for grabs....
Someone poisons the glue you lick on the back of stamps. Do it fast, As a matter of fact, do they even make stamps that way anymore???? Probably because someone else thought it an unwise practice..
I haven't seen any USPS lickable stamps for quite a while. In The Name Of The Rose, the murderer put poison on the upper right corner of book pages, so when the reader absent mindedly licked a fingertip to turn the pages, they'd eventually get a fatal dose.
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If you know where to look, you can find "how to" books on nearly everything -- including how to commit crimes. So, those people looking for ideas does not need to look to novels to inspire them.......
Craig
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I would be weirded out if my plot became a reality, but wouldn't feel responsible. Or I hope I wouldn't. The guilt would be on the person who did the actual deed. Some much stuff gets blamed on any media (including the news) that defense lawyers seem to have an easier time of it. I hope this made sense and was of some help.
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I want to thank you all. You've echoed by basic belief. I'm going to put the idea I had away for now, but I plan to return to it someday. Thanks again. :)
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I will give you one warning regarding working on books/stories about terrorists and the like. It's pretty much for people living in the US...watch your research!
People have pretty much gone over the reasons not to feel guilty if someone uses your ideas, plus mentioned books like the Bible (I was going to make comments pretty much the same), but here's something else to worry about. As I recall (could be wrong, it was over a year ago) it came from Rachel Caine's blog.
She had a friend who was writing a book involving unexploded landmines. Said friend did a lot of online research, and also checked a lot of books out of the local library. Hey, it makes sense...we all do research for our stories, right?
So what happened? Well, to make a long story short, the person was raided by Homeland Security! The sort of information they were accessing sent up red flags in someone's database, and they moved in seized all the research and computer equipment involved. When they eventually got it back, it was apparently full of tracking devices/etc. (they took it to a friend to sweep for this stuff).
I'm pretty sure it was Rachel Caine's blog that led me to this story. If it wasn't, my apologies to her.
Anyway, the moral of the story...be careful of what you research. Your government may believe you have a much darker purpose in mind than writing a novel!
Keith
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Supposedly, the NSA has it's own little Web bots that go crawling through emails, Web pages and forums, like this one, looking for keywords like C-4, ammonium nitrate, Al Quaida, Bin Laden, assassinate, etc., and flagging them for Homeland Security. :)
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Supposedly, the NSA has it's own little Web bots that go crawling through emails, Web pages and forums, like this one, looking for keywords like C-4, ammonium nitrate, Al Quaida, Bin Laden, assassinate, etc., and flagging them for Homeland Security. :)
So as a gesture of civil disobedience we should all use them as much as possible or put them in our sigs or something.
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Play with sodium lye? In a classroom? In the 21st century? Egad, dont you know that's dangerous?
Naw, these days chem class is all about being danger free.
Until you get to Organic Chem were you get to play with things that will ignite with atmospheric moisture, like Benzoic Acid. (Bear in mind I'm in Savannah, GA the must humid place EVER!) That's right kiddies, the main ingredient in your zit cream when all by itself is highly flamable and explosive.
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So as a gesture of civil disobedience we should all use them as much as possible or put them in our sigs or something.
Um... fun idea, already been scrapped by one of the mods (Mickey, I think) when one of the teens decided to taunt Big Brother on a thread. You're a day late and a dollar short, darling.
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I wouldn't be upset. I'm mainly a fantasy writer. I'd be surprised and shocked, but not upset.
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I will give you one warning regarding working on books/stories about terrorists and the like. It's pretty much for people living in the US...watch your research!
phew, glad that I live in Europe. But yeah, my own bookshelf can also raise some eyebrows. Does anyone know if someone watches amazon wishlists? I'm not sure about how that coup d'etat guidebook comes across.
Anyways... I wouldn't feel responsible in general, because I do not believe that the media are responsible for bad behavior. I might emotionally feel a bit guilty though. Depends on what happened and how it was connected to a book.
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Supposedly, the NSA has it's own little Web bots that go crawling through emails, Web pages and forums, like this one, looking for keywords like C-4, ammonium nitrate, Al Quaida, Bin Laden, assassinate, etc., and flagging them for Homeland Security. :)
So codewords are all the terrorists need to win?