I have a small question, I posted around a quarter (or less) of a story in the review room. But now I wanted to enter a dutch writing competition. The rules state the story can't be published anywhere even in another language. Can or can't I use this story? Thanks for the help!
I'm assuming this is to avoid the "this is one I prepared earlier" issue - universities state as part of their plagiarism policy that any materials submitted must not have been written for any other purpose, including by you for another assessment. This prevents people from essentially reducing their workload by writing one essay for several subjects. In the same way, you are expected to write a unique story for the competition, not just hand in one you've already made. You might be able to get away with erasing all evidence of the story existing, but you'd have to wait until Google removed it from the cache before even considering submitting it - one whiff of a pre-prepared entry and you'll be disqualified.
There are plagiarism checkers online; therefore I wouldn’t risk it if I were you. I think you should just email the competition administrator, explain the background, and ask if it’s O.K.
And as far as I know, the site doesn't state that the story has to be written for the contest per se. That's a good idea, I'll email them to be sure. Thanks a lot! edit I can't find an email adress for questions.. What if I just write the story from scratch again in dutch, then it would hardly have anything in common besides the storyline (which isn't evident on here yet) and the style of the main character.. What do you think?
Yes, it is going to be impossible to know their definition of published if you can’t contact them! Is there a phone number? If you write it in Dutch, I can’t see how anyone would ever know that you posted a small extract in English on the internet.
True, and I also saw a dutch forum that actually has a review room for entire stories for the competition, so I doubt this would do harm.
if all you posted was a small excerpt that doesn't count... it could be a problem only if you had posted the entire story...
As Maia pointed out, you only posted a portion, not the entire piece. This is different from a submission to a publisher. There is no contract that can be jeopardized, no business relationship to be poisoned. It's a competition. You'll either win, or you won't.
