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Non-fanfic :O

The Omskivar

The Omskivar

chah, dude
I'm thinking I want to post some of my work on here, but I've strayed from fanfic stuff and I've started serious (I mean hope-for-publish) works. My biggest fear is plaigiarism. As much as I trust this place, there's guest viewing, and possibilities, and just too many risks for me to be comfortable just jumping in and posting one (or both!) of two works that hasn't been lost on some flash drive somewhere in teh cosmos. But i feel like the Internet is the best place to meet a variety of reviewers, and while I'm at it to get some mindless praise, which while nonconstructive, is very helpful to an author. Plus i need the motivation to keep writing.

What do you guys think? Should I chance it? I mean, anyone who could plaigiarise and finish the story would have to have an incredible imagination and above-par writing skills (toot toot tooting my own horn like an asshole >_>), and enough of my friends know I'm writing it to be able to prove that it's mine...

Halp!
 
*TOOT TOOT*

I think you should post part of it, so that you can still get reveiws but not plaigiarism.

Good idea, Y/Y?
 
The number of people who would steal fiction from this forum is small if not nonexistent. If they did, then what's really the problem? You've got loads of proof it's yours, and us, and this thread.
 
That's what I was thinking. I'll get a thread going tomorrow when I can nab my flash drive, I'm too tired and it's too late at night/early in the morning now.

Come to think of it it makes a lot more sense to post it here rather than serebii why did I not think of this sooner. Not that I did post it on serebii, I just asked the same question.
 
If someone does try to plagiarize it, there are loads of ways you could prove your case. The post date, for one.
 
I don't think your biggest problem with posting it online is actually plagiarism; as Blastoise said, the chances of that happening are relatively small. The biggest problem is going to be the fact that publishers enjoy their exclusive rights to a story, and if they search for your work and realize that it has been posted on some forum somewhere (and thus can be read for free), most of them are not going to be very interested in picking it up. So unless you were planning on using a self-publishing route like Lulu, in which case it's entirely your decision, I would advise against sharing work you hope to publish where it's publicly viewable. There's at least one waaay old thread here in which this was discussed; I'll dig it up and edit the link in in a bit.

EDIT: Here's that thread, then. There are some helpful suggestions in there, though I think I ended up touching on all the main points in this post anyway.

If you'd like to get some internet peers to review your work without risking publisher problems, your best bet is actually to get it reviewed in private, sort of like you'd do with a beta reader. Send a PM to someone you think might be interested in reading it and who you'd trust to give fair criticism, and ask them if they'd like to help you out by reading your story. Then you can email them, or PM it to them, or whatever other way you work out to show them the actual material. You can also just post a general thread asking for interested reviewers (you should probably try this before asking an individual directly), maybe explain the premise so people will know whether it's something they'd like/feel like they can assist you with, and then PM the story to whoever responds.

If I recall correctly the old thread also said you might be able to get away with posting just a few chapters of the work; the publishers might not mind so much if it's only bits and pieces that can be seen for free as opposed to the entire thing.
 
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Well damn, I didn't even think about that. Well, then it'll only be parts i have problems with and need help on, and with my perfectionist writing style it shouldn't be that much that i can't somehow make work. I try to write linear stories, instead of jumping around, because I can never tie things together, so I usually end up really liking what I have before I move on.

And, I guess, if anyone really wants to read any more of it they can PM me and i can send them parts of it.

Thanks a million, Kratos!
 
It is notoriously difficult to really delete things from the internet; I wouldn't rely on that as an option.

No problem, Omskivar. Good luck with your writing.
 
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