I’ve never had a problem with people writing their own stories based on my characters, or translating my books into other languages on their own Wattpad accounts. So long as they give me attribution, it’s all good.
But when someone simply rips off entire works and scenes and passes them off to their own readers as their own original work, that’s pathetic. It’s plagiarism. And there is no excuse.
Someone writing Richelle Mead fanfic FanFiction.net – I don’t want to give her airtime by linking to her, but you can contact me directly and I’ll provide the link if you’re interested – has taken the central plot as well as scenes from my novel His Model Student (published 2016, well before this fanfic) and passed it off as her own ideas.
Here’s how this plagiarist introduces it:
“This is a small introduction to a new story I might continue. Please tell me if you like it or it seems to have any potential. I really wanted to create a teacher/student story between Rose and Dimitri, with a different twist. “
Except you didn’t create anything, did you? You, plagiarist, copied the central concept, multiple scenes, and even supporting character details from someone else’s work. She even has the gall to disclaimer: “All characters belong to Richelle Mead”. What about the other author you ripped off?
Here are just some of the similarities:
His Model Student |
FanFic plagiarism |
| Central plot: | |
| Girl joins an art class, the teacher mistakes her for a model, he orders her to strip and pose, she does so | Girl joins an art class, the teacher mistakes her for a model, he orders her to strip and pose, she does so |
| The other students: | |
| They included two women and three men. An elderly woman with snow-white hair and twinkling eyes sat on the left in a mauve smock, next to her was a bald man with glasses and a beard. A woman with a lot of frizzy hair, playing rather anxiously with her dangling jewellery, sat in the middle. Two elderly men, one of whom wore a purple silk cravat, were on the right. | There was an older woman with greying hair and dangly, colorful jewelry, an old man with wild, curly hair, a long beard and glasses, and two middle-aged men wearing designer, floral button-downs and leaning comfortably close to one another. |
| Other scenes: | |
| The main character tells her best friend: “Only you, Sera, would deal with some rude idiot by taking your clothes off. For God’s sake don’t try that here.” | The main character tells her best friend: “Rose, only you would try to prove your point to someone by getting actually naked.” |
| The art teacher shows up as her high school class teacher: He swore. “Underage? And you thought you would compromise my class like that?” | The art teacher shows up as her high school class teacher: “You’re underage? Why would you compromise my position like that by getting naked?” He whispered furiously. |
| The art teacher helps Sera with her drawing: “May I?” Without waiting for her to respond he reached for the pastel she was holding. It was his custom to guide students’ hands rather than directly take the chalk or pencil himself.But when his hand closed over Sera’s she felt a jolt and the pastel jerked against the page, smudging the already messy and overworked line. | The art teacher helps Sera with her drawing: “May I?” he asked gently. It was customary and normal to guide your students’ hand rather than to take their art material from them. It was the best way for a student to learn and I had seen him to do it Mitchell and Roger earlier. But when I felt him enclose his large, warm hand over my own, I felt the charcoal jerk against the paper. |
| The students all go to a pub after the art class | The students all go to a pub after the art class |
| He picks her up in his car: “So where do you live? Or do you just want me to drive around in circles all night?” | He picks her up in his car: “So where do you live? Or do you expect me to drive around all night until I finally figure it out?” |
| He needs to paint her: “I need to paint you. I need you to pose for me. I can’t get the image of you in class out of my head, and until I have it down on canvas I can’t concentrate on any other work.” | He needs to paint her: “I need to paint you Rose. I can’t get the image of you out of my head.” |
| Sample dialogue: | |
| “Get undressed and hurry up about it. Immediately. You’ve already kept us waiting.” Steel-dark eyes glowered into hers.
Taken aback, Sera struggled to speak. “But…” “I don’t want any excuses. You’re late enough as it is.” “But I’m not…” “Either get your clothes off and get on that couch, or you can leave and not come back.” “If I could just…” “Now!” |
“You’re late, hurry up and get ready.” The man who spoke barely turned around to look at me. He was tall and built, and completely unlike someone I wasn’t expecting to see in an art studio.
[…] “Take your clothes off and pose, or get out so I can find a new model.” “But I-“ “I don’t care for excuses.” “You don’t understand, I’m not-“ “Now!” |
And so it goes on. On and on and one, repetition after repetition. I have sent a complaint to FanFiction.net.
Absolutely, utterly pathetic.
I would like to give a big shout out of thanks to the author Adeline Myles (HonestPassion13 on Wattpad) for alerting me to the plagiarist. You can read some of her great stories here.
I know what it’s like to plagiarized this happened to me recently, some guy took my one my copyrighted poems
and posted it to Twitter, now I am so nervous about posting my writing online at all.
That’s a horrible thing to happen. It’s still legally your copyright if you’ve written it down somewhere. Did you call him out on it?