I guess I don’t see it as a war of personalities, so I don’t see it as “a basic statement of fact.” By saying it is a war of personality or calling it “petty bickering,” I feel as if you are making accusations about other people’s behaviors… while maintaining that you want to talk about the issues. Making those statements while telling your readers to stick to the issues… well, it just gives me a slight feeling of ick.

It’s not a huge deal. I’ll still buy and read your books. And I understand your perspective a bit more now (after your comment). I simply disagree with you.

That’s not incendiary unless someone attempts to be, which I haven’t. That’s a basic statement of fact.

What I will refrain from, is being passive agressive. If I had something incendiary to say, I’d come out and say it. I have no need to because I find the actual issue far more interesting than petty bickering ON EITHER SIDE.

After thinking a bit . . . because it does boggle the mind . . .

I guess it would be so hard to cite resources when all we’ve learned our whole lives has possibly come from a book, no?

I say we should cite when we copy the content, not when we use our own interpretation of the content we learned.

And I don’t think publishers are going to be thrilled about including extra pages for citations, they’ll probably do it, but then we’ll be cutting off pages from our work and that will tick readers off. Less story to read.

As far as what’s plagiarism and what isn’t, it seems like we’re tightening the nooses around our own necks when we make the definition broad enough to include even paraphrasing. Quoting a significant passage directly requires a citation, however. But what’s a significant passage?

There’s also the question of whether the publisher would include a bibliography or even an author’s note. Some are more amenable than others. I would imagine if a bibliography required one more signature in the book, then the answer would be no.

I also don’t recall seeing footnotes in romance novels. I’ve seen them in historical novels, but not romances. I’m not sure I’d want footnotes in a romance, since I’m reading for emotion and not facts.

At any rate, this is apparently a wake-up call for all of us to be careful how we use material, even if we read it two years ago. The words coming out of our fingertips might be a little too close to the source’s for comfort.

I don’t think citing every single instance of research is reasonable or feasible. I write what I know. Personal experience, reading, watching history shows, visiting places…all of this adds up to research. I can’t cite something I don’t know where it came from.

I might verify a fact, but it’s illogical to cite a book that didn’t give me the original information. Every single writer, no matter what their genre, does some type of research. Some of it can definitely be credited to a person or book, and should be noted. However, citing one’s personal growth and knowledge isn’t possible, and in truth it’s ludicrous.

If writers are suddenly required to start citing every thing they research, then I think we’re going to have a real problem. I write fiction, and I believe in meticulous research. When I write my historicals, I give the reader the feel for the era. But I think citing every research book is going to the extreme.

However, I do give credit to the owner of any “borrowed text” I include in my own work. In my upcoming release Dangerous, I put a line of Edgar Allan Poe’s work in the book, and the character references the line of poetry and that EAP wrote it.

What I find really interesting is how this new alleged plagiarism (and I say alleged because I’ve not seen all the evidence and I’m not qualified to make a distinction) has the potential to have every author looking over their shoulder, wondering if someone is going to come after them and accuse them of not citing something or stealing from another author.

It happened to Dan Brown and his DaVinci Code. Some of the things cited in that case were Brown’s use of green eyes for a character just like a character in the work Brown supposedly plagiarized. This could get really hairy.

It’s important to do the right and ethical thing, but I don’t think we need to go to extremes to get there. OMIGOD, I just plagiarized Josh Bernstein!

Monica

I thank people if they give me direct help with a certain topic.

I don’t use specific quotes or data for books, or haven’t up to now. I usually read a bunch of sources, let it stew and see what comes out. Again, I’m not using another authors specific details. If I did, I’d have to cite them.

For mythology, I admit, I make up a lot of my own. Much easier that way. *g*

It is a interesting subject, Lauren. And I’m curious to see how other authors handle it.

I wouldn’t site any book I gleaned information from unless I was using a direct quote…which I wouldn’t do.

For me its cut and dried. :)