There's been a lot of buzz lately about the fact that Nic Pizzolatto, creator of HBO's hit series "True Detective," plagiarized some of the writing in the show. I realized this would be a good time to discuss this topic, not only because I loved the show, but because I was personally accused of plagiarism (twice!) this year and it's a pretty serious topic for writers in general.
I should start by saying what I always say in moments like these: if you're going to call someone a plagiarist, you better have some pretty definitive proof since that's a bell that can't be unrung once it's been sounded. For a writer, it's not unlike calling someone a child molester or worse. It can be very stigmatizing and, ultimately, polarizing in some seriously negative ways.
My own take on the Pizzolatto fiasco? People have focused pretty narrowly on a couple lines or ideas throughout the course of 8 hours of written television. If a writer is influenced strongly by other writers, there are certain to be some ideas or phrasings that carry over (whether intentionally or unintentionally). Ideas create other ideas; philosophies permeate certain characters and make them who they are on the page. I'm sure there are sections of some of my stories that could be easily shown as influenced by other writers. I'd admit to this pretty readily, but at no point would I lift anything from someone else's work knowingly or intentionally. As a philosophy major during my undergrad, I read Nietzsche, I read Plato, I read John Rawls and Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and St. Augustine...and surely, at some point, some of the ideas that resonated with me from those texts might end up spilling out onto the page. If any writer tells you that they aren't susceptible to this, they're flat out lying. Ideas beget ideas beget ideas. Period.
Hypothetically, let's assume that Pizzolatto completely plagiarized 15 whole minutes of the entire first season of True Detective (I'm being overly generous here). That still leaves 7 hours and 45 minutes of his own original material. I've read plenty of interviews with Pizzolatto about the show over the last year and I've read his press release about the alleged plagiarism. He's wicked smart, crazy educated, and just created one of the most impressive debut shows in the last several years. I simply DO NOT buy into the plagiarism accusation on any level. I think it's complete nonsense.
(I think David Haglund over at Slate.com does a pretty good job of analyzing the whole Nic Pizzolatto situation HERE.)
But then...where's the outrage over the same terrible sitcoms we see on television year after year? The same type of cliched archetypes of characters delivering and acting out the same terrible jokes that we've seen season after season after season? Do sitcoms get a complete pass simply because we all know that the characters are archetypes and because we can pretty much predict the next joke before it ever happens because there's some kind of universal aesthetic to the sitcom? Get outta here with that nonsense.
Earlier this year, I had some random person leave comments on a few of my posts. I don't remember their name (if they'd even stated it) or who they were in general, but they pretty much flat out accused me of plagiarizing the summarized texts beneath the books I plan on reading in the near future. They were pretty hateful about it and I was less than kind in my responses (which is why all of their posts and my replies have been deleted; you won't find them). If I've never read the book, how would I know what it's about? Well...I'll read the summary on Amazon or Goodreads or even the back of the book. These summaries I posted verbatim and within quotes (to show that they were not my words) and had even stated that fact multiple times elsewhere on the site. If you're going to accuse someone of plagiarism, bring proof. And definitely don't be a dick about it if you don't have proof.
Shortly after that, an editor from a journal that published one of my stories came at me with the same accusation, but in a more respectful manner. There was the question over whether or not I could use verbatim legal text (penal codes, laws, etc.) in my story without gaining permission from the particular governing body overseeing those laws. She didn't know the answer and wondered if I knew the answer. Neither of us knew as we'd never had to find out before. She did some research on her own, I did some on mine and we found that legal language can be used verbatim as laws, citations, penal codes, etc., are all under the purview of fair use since the words don't belong to any one person. The difference in this situation? She was nice about it. She understood the gravity of calling someone a plagiarist of another's work and never actually did so. We worked it out together. I have a huge amount of respect for her because of that.
With the extensive reach of the internet, it's not hard to find someone who has faked their way into success in some way, so...don't do it. Don't lift someone else's words and call them your own. Someone will always know. But also...don't be so quick to jump on the accusatory bandwagon until you've got all your facts straight. This goes for most moments in life as well.
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