Quote:
Originally Posted by joyc21
What are your plans for this novel? You may not want to make your works public before you've had them copywrited.
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Written work falls under copywrite as soon as you write the first word. The only advantage to an official copywrite is to provide evidence of who wrote the words first. Making them public actually works in your favor, in this regard.
Only the original, creative parts of the work are copywritable, so someone could in theory copy some of your plot elements, but that's not nearly the problem people assume. You could give 30 writers the same plot, down to character names and specific events, even the ending, and each would write a very different story, and reading one wouldn't necessarily detract from all of the others. The book "Steal this Plot: A Writer's Guide to Story Structure and Plagiarism," by June Noble illustrates this well.
That being said, some editors might be reluctant to publish a work that is essentially available free online, so you might consider leaving only partial excerpts from your chapters rather than the whole chapter, at least after a specific point. I don't think having chapters 1-3 would be a detriment, and could even work in your favor, especially if there's some way to document how many visitors are reading the work, and if your work is getting noticed.
Anyone want to read my fantasy/romance story in process?
