Wow, so much to read in this thread, and so many theories. (And so many comments about to be made by MOI!
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Although I firmly believe that amazing coincidences can be had in books by authors who hadn’t read each other, in this case, with so many random little quirks that are the same (as opposed to one big similar plot), it looks like the author had definitely read the MM books. Whether the plagiarism was deliberate is another story.
1. Jen has a point about the amount of time those quotes would save her. It would probably take her MORE time to write herself into the situation where she could use the quote. So would she do it intentionally? The book got a generally good review in the earlier Crimson article that was linked here so it seems that she has the talent to write 300+ pages, so what would the point be of slowly…painfully going through other books looking for a few cool lines to steal? Or is it more likely that she absorbed those novels and subconsciously added what she thought were brilliant, original ideas to her own manuscript without even a pause in her typing? I do think other YA authors should read her book and see if there is anything that sounds disturbingly familiar. There’s a good chance others will recognize lines as well. (Hey, no fair! That gets her more publicity!)
2. I too wondered whether the book packager might have had something to do with the similarities. I’m not saying I definitely think that’s what happened, but if they admit that this book required more massaging than other books they’ve accepted, I do wonder which parts were written by her and which by the packager. Hmmm.
3. 170 specialty stores? When pulling a random number out of head, the number that appears most often for me isn’t so random after all (42.) Yes, I’m a geek. I know the number well enough to know where I get it from so if it’s for literary use, I change it. (For the non-geeks in the crowd, the number figures prominently in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) I can picture the author writing a scene where the MC gets dragged around to all the stores. It’s not a unique plot point to MM. How many movie montage scenes have there been where the ugly duckling gets transformed into a swan by trying on multiple articles of clothing, all set to cool music? So anyway, she’s writing the scene. How many department stores should the MC go to? Well, there’s 4-5 she can think of so she’ll use one of those numbers. And specialty stores? Let’s generate a completely random, ridiculously high number of stores. 200? No, that just sounds exaggerated and not so funny. Oh! How about 170? It’s so specific, like she actually went to that many and counted. Why 170? She doesn’t know why that number jumped into her head, but somehow, it’s perfect. Of course it seems perfect. The exact phrase is hanging around her subconscious.
(ASIDE: when I first typed this, I accidentally typed 176…twice, which I consider much more random and funny than 170. I think both authors should plagiarize from me. Then again, maybe my random number generator stole 176 from someplace else.
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Food for Thought:
I have wondered in the past whether some of the best authors are simply people who have a superior subconscious memory and can reach into their vast internal library to find the perfect turns of phrase they require to say exactly what they want at the time. How much of what we write is 100% unique? How many times have you had the muse flowing and you just write like crazy. When you’re done, you look at your story with amazement. You didn’t even know you had that idea inside you. Ever consider that maybe it wasn’t originally your idea?
I recently read a book about the power of the subconscious mind. I can’t remember the author or the title – that information is apparently buried in my subconscious mind. Anyway, it states that everything we’ve ever seen, read, or heard is stored up there in your brain someplace. If you have a gut feeling about something that turns out to be right, it isn’t because you’re psychic. It’s because although your conscious mind didn’t know enough to predict the future, your subconscious mind had enough information to logically figure out what would happen and trigger what you think is just a “gut-feeling”. People who can harness their subconscious and allow separate ideas to connect into something new are those who come up with amazing inventions, $$$-creating business ideas, and yes, genius novels.
Regarding non-fiction plagiarism:
You know the old saying: Copy one and it’s plagiarism. Copy many and it’s a research paper. Way back in my day, English papers were 100% out my own fertile mind. (NOTE: The phrase ‘fertile mind’ appears 210,000 times in Google – I’m not very original) I didn’t use Cole’s / Cliff’s notes on principle and it was pre-Internet so other than ‘borrowing’ an older friend’s essay (which we all knew was wrong), there were no other sources available. However, in four years of psychology we only did a few original experiments. All the other papers we wrote were document reviews which involved searching all the relevant journals and summarizing the results. Sure the introduction and conclusion were in our own words, but everything else was either quoted or paraphrased from the original research papers. I can remember attempting to change words in factual sentences. Eventually I’d decide it was stupid to even try and I’d quote it instead. Not all that different than what SBK’s son did with his non-fiction paper. Then again, he broke the first rule by copying one instead of copying many.
Irony:
I went to the plagiarism link that Anne Marie provided. One of the links there sent me to an interesting article on catching plagiarizers. At the bottom of the article? Multiple Google ads for college paper mills.
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