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salve
Single Cell Organism
United Kingdom
32 Posts |
 Posted - 23 July 2006 : 12:09:51 PM
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Hi
I have read Conscience of the King (Cassell Military Paperbacks S.) [Paperback] by Alfred Duggan and the format of this book is almost the same as The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell.
Duggan wrote in the 50s and was one of the first fiction/history writers and this book starts with a list of all of the town names in England during Roman occupation and then you listen to the story of an old man talking about his youth.
Cornwall has done exactly the same as Alfred Duggan (allbeiit 400 years later) and the similarities are far too co-incidental. I have read Cornwall for years but he has gone down in my esteem, but maybe it is co-incidence.....
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Carus Andiae
Small mammal
United Kingdom
667 Posts |
Posted - 23 July 2006 : 6:35:38 PM
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Cornwell used a similar format in his Warlord series. I wouldn't call it plagiarism - it's a standard narrative format used in countless films and novels which are done in the first person - it's never explicitly stated, but it is assumed that the Falco books are written from the point of view of a younger man looking back at his life (Lindsey Davis has no intention of killing off Falco, she says). It's quite possible that Duggan wasn't the first to use it.
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"Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat" - Any man can fly when he rides on the back of an eagle |
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drosdelnoch
Small mammal
United Kingdom
482 Posts |
Posted - 23 July 2006 : 8:29:22 PM
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A copying of style is not a copyrightable thing. For example anything written in a first person may follow a similar structure, however who's going to sue, the anglo saxons who have the oral epics or the scandiavians who loved to tell tales. Plus Id love to see the law suit stretching across the centuries. LOL
Legends Never Die, Druss Lives! |
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Big Dave
Dinosaur
United Kingdom
234 Posts |
Posted - 24 July 2006 : 12:55:43 AM
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1. Where would you like him to put the list of place names? If they went anywhere but the front then they would be pretty much useless.
2. I doubt Duggan was the first auther to come up with the idea of a character telling his life story in this fashion.
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Chuck Norris likes to knit sweaters in his free time. And by "knit", I mean "kick", and by "sweaters", I mean "babies". |
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MartynK
Invertebrate
South Africa
116 Posts |
Posted - 24 July 2006 : 09:00:38 AM
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Plagiarism is unacceptable, but lots of authors borrow ideas from others. I don't know when you step over the boundary, but I suppose it's when you actually hijack the earlier book and dress it up to seem like a new and original piece of work.
I've gone off Cornwell a bit. The novels seem to be getting formulaic, which is always a pitfall for succesful writers. I wonder if writers start getting bored with their own creations and just carry on because of committments to their publishers. Must be tempting to rehash something you wrote years ago and leave it at that.
Simon? I'm certainly not suggesting you've reached this point, but would you like to comment as a writer? |
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Plagarism of style??
