So, if no ideas are truly original, what is plagiarism? My old art teacher used to say, "Bad artists copy; good artists steal." I think the same thing applies to writers. Taking someone else's idea, changing one little thing, and calling it different is plagiarism. Taking someone else's idea and throwing it into a melting pot with everyone else's ideas is what good writers do. If the differences between your work and someone else's outweigh the similarities, it's not plagiarism. Most people that blatantly plagiarize by taking someone else's idea and changing one or two little things are lazy readers. One person actually asked me, "Why does a good writer need to read?" That should be a no-brainer. Reading books is EXTREMELY important to writing. Like I said above, the only way to write a good story is to put a bunch of unoriginal ideas together in a new way. How on earth are you going to gather those ideas if you don't read? If you read only one book and are inspired to write a story based on that book, your story will end up very similar to that book because you haven't gotten ideas from any other sources! Reading books can also help you learn from other writers. I learned a lot from Twilight!
When people tell me they're "inspired" by my writing, instead of being complimented, I get very defensive. I've had more than one instance of plagiarism before. It seems like there are only so many things that you can do with angel stories, so when I put forward something that's more or less entirely new, people want to take it from me. I'm hoping that this guide will help you do what I did and put together a truly original story.
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