[quote]Any advice on how to copyright something? I don't know how one goes about it. I have story that I've been keeping a secret because of that.[/quote] Well you can either actually purchase one, which would be a public record of your publication, as to appease any confusion necessary. Or, if you simply keep your files in order on your computer and date your work, and say that it is copyrighted by you by said date, it should be just as good. If any plagiarism were to be suspected, your file dates will hold up in a civil court dispute over intellectual property. I'm not too scared about this being copied because my files are dated to 2013, and I have had multiple people irl look at it, so any suspected plagiarism wouldn't exactly be hard to prove, and unless the novel I'm working on now actually gets my writing somewhere, I don't plan on selling this story. The one danger from not actually purchasing a public record is that if the situation is not as black and white as I described, you could be in for a bad time. A public record merely makes it undeniably yours. I think the website is copyright.gov or something, it's in the ballpark of $100-$200. Also, I wouldn't recommend officially publishing something meant for monetary purposes without getting this public record. Just to be safe. You can google copyright laws and intellectual property laws if you want reassurance, but with the inclusion of computers and systematic dating, it is easier to own your work in the eyes of the law than it was before. By putting "copyright M.S. 2013" this pretty much saves me from any hassles unless someone stole the file off my computer in 2013, and has the initials "M.S.". The "copyright" is me declaring this as my intellectual property. A public record is always safer, but doing this is fine. Also, if someone else were to open a public record of your work before you have, it would make for a messy time to get your proper copyright, but again file dates are powerful, I save everything I write on my hard drive and on a separate flash drive, and something's I keep in my email, like this story.

Awesome, thank you! I've asked others if there was a way around the costly way, and they suggested that I mail it to myself. O_o I wasn't too sure how that'd work. Your way of going about it seems a lot easier though.