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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2614 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Just use dead authors. Roughly anything from 1900 to 1960 is modern enough to be readable but old enough that the writer is gone.

But a lot of the examples of bad writing they cited were distinctly modern ones, whether at the stylistic level or in terms of plot construction (e.g. the array of plots that no longer work since the invention of the mobile phone).

Also anything where the badness stems from the author being immersed in therapy culture and/or lefty politics without realising that the rest of the world isn't. Which is about a third of the book.

I think the legal term is "public domain"?

Criticism, review and parody are fair use, so a version of How Not to Write a Novel which used real excerpts would almost certainly be legal even if the books being panned aren't public domain. But that "almost" is probably enough to make it unpublishable.

I fucking wish, but no. With the passage of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, American copyright extends to 95 years from the date of publication. As for other public domains, the US uses trade deals to continually force countries to expand their copyright terms, such that life of the author + 70 years is now the standard.

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