For the record, I was no longer asking about copying from
self. I was just asking if work for hire applied to writing
as well as to other areas of creation. It seems from your
reply that there is.
On a tangent, how much of a work for hire is programmed for
the hired writer? Do they really get a plot outline or just
required character traits of the main characters? For
instance, does the writer plot the Mike Shayne story he
writes or does he simply script someone else's story? It's
just a guess, but I'd guess that it's sometimes one,
sometimes the other.
Which returns to the self-plagiarizing question. If they did
come up with the plot themselves, why wouldn't they be
tempted to employ that plot as part of a story about their
own creation? For instance, McBain's recycled plot started as
a PI story featuring drunk ex-PI Curt Cannon, but was used in
an 87th Precinct police procedural novel featuring rookie cop
Bert Kling. So why wouldn't Dennis Lynd (just hypothetical, I
know of no such case) be tempted to use something he wrote
about Mike Shayne in a novel of his own about Dan Fortune (as
Michael Collins) or Paul Shaw (as Mark Sadler). In this case
it'd even be the same sub-genre.
However, in this case the first was a work for hire. So this
raises the legal question of the definition of copyright
infringement -- is it the exact words or the plot? As is
often noted, there are only a few plots, the art is in making
one of those stock plots seem new. So how close would it have
to be to be an infringement?
If you've read Gat's Nevsky novels, you know those plots were
nearly identical to two McGees (Dreadful Lemon Sky and Green
Ripper, if I remember correctly), even though the location
was moved to Pittsburgh and the character was very different.
Last Good Kiss by Crumley, for instance, owes a lot to Long
Goodbye (basically an exploration of the subplot of Marlowe
searching for Roger Wade), but I don't think anyone would
argue this was plagiarism, but his nod to tradition before
pushing it forward.
Of course, that's one of the fun things we do here, debating
how original these books are.
And as I stated in an earlier note, beyond a slight abstract
interest, I'm not much concerned with the legality of any of
this. Instead, I am curious about what it reveals about a
writer's development and writing practices.
Mark
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