STATUS: Calmly nail-biting
What's playing on the iPhone: LONELY BOY by the Black Keys
I hate cliches.
The most insidious thing about them is that they will sneak up on you, pounce, and carve you into a steak before you even smell their breath. Terrible things, cliches. So, recently, I Googled 'cool metaphors' ('cause I needed to avoid a cliche) and came upon a slew of gems, delicious entries of high school students for a contest. The first thing I thought to myself was "mwa ha ha haI have to implement these into my repertoire," but then I thought... would that be plagiarism?
I didn't think of them, I may have given the time, or something equally as cool, but I didn't, and I desired them. If I'd come up with some cool metaphors and somebody starting using them instead of stupid-hack cliches, I'd be flattered. Of course that's just me.
Along the same lines, if you're at the coffee shop and some person at another table says some snappy come-back that you later incorporate into a bit of dialogue... is that plagiarism? I don't think so, writers are influenced from all sorts of things, but I don't know!
What say you?
I think that, if I invented an awesome metaphor, and people started using it, it would be nifty, and I, like yourself, would be flattered. Stealing some awesome phrase that may or may not become hot someday doesn't seem like plagiarism to me, but what do I know?
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