How to find a story online when I just have some parts of it.

28 Apr 2012

OK, this is a bit odd, don't know if anyone can help me.

Someone last year sent me a story, in a number of parts that I was to make a recording of. He didn't write it, he found it online, liked it and just wanted me to record it. No one was going to be claiming it as their own work or selling recordings of it or anything. It was just for his enjoyment, and I thought I could add it to my blog site of recordings on a "By request" page I am going to add. There were nearly a dozen parts he sent it to me in, I must have deleted a couple of the emails by mistake and I now only have 9 of the parts.

He too has lost the story since it was nearly a year ago. I am now finally having the time to record this story, and now I do not have all the parts to it. Unless I have them all, obviously I cannot do it. Seeing as I have no title or author to go by, only 9 of the parts, where would I go to find this complete story?

I tried copying and pasting a few lines of text into the search engine and got nowhere. If you have any ideas, please message me. Thanks.

28 Apr 2012

I think first and foremost, you need to track down the author, and ask him / her if they are happy for you to make derivative works out of their story.

It is a matter of courtesy more than anything, and you don't want to end up in legal hot soup.

As for tracking down the story, your best bet is probably putting in entire lines of the story in google, within quotes - pick the most unusual sentences you can find. If you can't find it that way, I doubt you will.