Plagiarism vs. Inspiration

Chazemataz · Jan 26, 2014

You often hear a lot around writing forums and in writing circles regarding plagiarism. I never thought I'd be asking this question, either, since I never thought I would plagiarize anybody. However, I recently read the book "The Demon Trapper's Daughter" and noticed that my WIP- about a girl who fights demons in a society that is well aware they exist with a country boy love interest- is somewhat similar, and it is bumming me out big time.

This leads me to a question. What is the difference between plagiarism and inspiration? For example, let's say I read, oh... "Harry Potter" and then thought "what a cool idea!" and promptly started on a novel about a boy who goes to a school for witches and wizards. Sounds like plagiarism, right?

But let's change it up a bit. This boy is actually a 16 year old named Matt. His parents were murdered by an evil witch when he was younger and he is now an orphan, living with his aunt & uncle who are actually quite loving and want to protect him from said evil witch, whom they fear will one day come back to kill him again.

The school he attends is called "St. James Academy" and is in urban Chicago. it is actually a sort of public school, because normal people know that witches & wizards exist. He befriends several people at this school, including a nerdy, intelligent boy and a ditzy girl with pink hair. The evil witch does eventually come back to try to kill him, and he defeats her in the climax... for now. But don't worry, she'll come back as a zombie-witch in the sequel, resurrected by her followers.

Is that still plagiarism? What about the case of "Battle Royale"/"The Hunger Games"? Or the many PNR novels that came out in the wake of Twilight, where the lead girl is caught between two paranormal hunks?

Cybernaught · Jan 26, 2014

Plagiarism is lifting sentences and passages from another author and passing them off as your own. Having similar themes and plots is not.

Kerosene · Jan 26, 2014

Plagiarism: Taking another's work and passing it off as your own.
Inspiration: Taking inspiration from another's work, writing your own.

That's the difference.

In writing, plagiarism mostly means to copy+paste text.
In storytelling--in uncertain circumstances--plagiarism can occur if the stories are as similar as the writer rewrote the book being copied.

What's you're looking at is similarities and trends. It's not like each book that copied off Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Hunger Games had really good lawyers backing them, but because they didn't plagiarize; it was inspiration--possibly.

If broken down to their essentials, every story has similarities.

You're overthinking.

breaking_burgundy · Jan 26, 2014

Chazemataz said:
But let's change it up a bit. This boy is actually a 16 year old named Matt. His parents were murdered by an evil witch when he was younger and he is now an orphan, living with his aunt & uncle who are actually quite loving and want to protect him from said evil witch, whom they fear will one day come back to kill him again.

The school he attends is called "St. James Academy" and is in urban Chicago. it is actually a sort of public school, because normal people know that witches & wizards exist. He befriends several people at this school, including a nerdy, intelligent boy and a ditzy girl with pink hair. The evil witch does eventually come back to try to kill him, and he defeats her in the climax... for now. But don't worry, she'll come back as a zombie-witch in the sequel, resurrected by her followers.

Of course that's not plagiarism. Your character's different upbringing means that your character's personality, values, and relationships with other people will be different than Harry's. And the fact that normal people know that wizards and witches exist means that the worldbuilding will be VERY different. Even the gender-swapping is likely to cause subtle changes in your story.

With that said, even though something might not be plagiarism, if it relies on the same pattern of tropes as a more well-known novel, a lot of people are going to be bored with it. A lot of people complained about Matched because many of the worldbuilding elements were very similar to The Giver, but Matched was not as well-executed.

rwm4768 · Jan 26, 2014

Not plagiarism. You can draw inspiration from stories and be just fine. It depends on the execution.

Becca C. · Jan 26, 2014

Plagiarism isn't just copy-and-pasting text and trying to pass it off as your own. In university, you can be nailed for plagiarism just by paraphrasing something and not attributing it. You could take a paragraph, reword things, and use synonyms and still be technically plagiarizing. If the ideas and the presentation of those ideas are the same, bam, plagiarism.

But what you're describing isn't plagiarism. Inspiration is definitely legit. Most of what I write is inspired by aspects of my favourite stories, aspects that fascinated me that I wanted to explore further.

Liosse de Velishaf · Jan 26, 2014

Not plagiarism.

Academic plagiarism is different from commercial plagiarism. If you're only taking ideas, and not specific points of text, then you're probably in the clear.

Laer Carroll · Jan 26, 2014

It’s almost impossible to write any story without using some of what went before. Especially if you’re widely read.

The important thing is to take inspiration from others and make your story your own, based upon your unique experience and personality and situation. And the more you’ve lived and the more places and people you’ve known the richer your treasure chest of experience.

This is what “write what you know” means. Not that you can’t write fantasy taking place in a universe full of magic, but that your universe of experience must inform that universe and make it real to your readers.

Chazemataz · Jan 27, 2014

Wow, a lot of great insight here. I'm happy I made this thread as I now know much more than I did before and feel way better, too. Thanks, guys!

Wilde_at_heart · Jan 27, 2014

The closest example I can think of is Life of Pi vs Max and the Cats. This might be worth reading...

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/allegories-in-an-emergency-yann-martels-life-of-pi

JustSarah · Jan 27, 2014

I've recently dealt with someone taking specific points in my text (it was a comics hosting site). If your not doing that I guess its not a problem.

What bugs me is when people steal your character names you made up whole cloth, that don't exist in any dictionary. Or copying phrases, and modifying them slightly to read back to you as if it were their own.

But I'm going to assume thats not the case here.

Cyia · Jan 27, 2014

Chazemataz said:
a novel about a boy who goes to a school for witches and wizards. Sounds like plagiarism, right?

But let's change it up a bit. This boy is actually a 16 year old named Matt. His parents were murdered by an evil witch when he was younger and he is now an orphan, living with his aunt & uncle who are actually quite loving and want to protect him from said evil witch, whom they fear will one day come back to kill him again.

What-if scenarios account for most fiction, I'd think. That doesn't make them rip offs, even if they're similar to existing material.

Plagiarism:

Mr and Mrs ~~Dursley~~ Sweet, of number fourteen, ~~Privet~~ Private Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

^ Same words, same structure. Minor changes to make it "original."

Now this version could be plagiarism, maybe parody, maybe derivative -- it depends on what you do with the rest.

Mr and Mrs Sweet who lived at 414 Sour St. were completely normal, thanks for asking. They weren't the sort of people to get involved with strange things or mysteries because they didn't have time for such silliness.

^ Some same words, same basic structure, but more changes. This could be an intentional nod to the source material, or a blatant rip-off. Publish something like this without an attribution in the text (something that announces you know where it came from, and intended to copy it for effect. Maybe a character says "Yes, I've read Harry Potter, what's your point?" or something.) and expect to get a C&D order from the original writer.

And finally, inspired by, but not necessarily lifted from:

The Sweet family lived on on Sour Street. They were as normal as could be for a family that lived in a world with wizards and magic. In fact, it wasn't just the world that lived that way, the Sweets did, too. You see, their nephew was a wizard, and his room was in their basement.

Still fairly close, and if you're seriously considering this, I'd make sure yours is FAR more different, but this is slap dash.

Different sentence structure. Different words. Different names, setting, and set-up.

caose · Jan 27, 2014

There is, in fact, nothing new under the sun.
That Battle Royale v. THG debate? Nonsense. Stephen King has already written that in 1982.
On the other hand, I'd have to say this: if your premise is so similar that fans will immediately accuse you of plagiarism, whether or not their accusation is right, you had best wait a couple years before you decide to publish it. Maybe even a decade.
TRM out in 1982. BR was out in 1999. THG in 2008.
See that distance? Yeah. It's disheartening indeed, but such is life.

Emmet Cameron · Jan 27, 2014

I...have pretty much never written anything that wasn't directly inspired by one or more other pieces of media I was obsessed with, so I sure hope that's not plagiarism, because I don't know how else to write.

ArachnePhobia · Jan 27, 2014

If it makes you feel any better, I'm writing a superhero story where the heroes are color-coded masked cyborgs led by a guy named DJ (in a black costume), and I had a minor freakout when I discovered on a random trip through TV Tropes there was a red Power Ranger named TJ. The leadership and masked roboticized costumes are the only similarity, but I agonized for days over whether or not I should change the only name that's stayed the same since the first draft, which actually has plot significance (he's a reality-warper who can "remix" small parts of the world, make roads lead to different places and such- a line in the story goes something like, "I didn't write the song, I'm just the DJ"). It ended with me reminding myself you can't copyright initials and if there's a problem, I'm sure I could hash that out with potential agents or publishers, but I actually have to finish the darned thing to even get to that point.

(Gliss also turned out to have the same last name as one of the actors on that show

. I guess all this time I was writing a Power Rangers tribute and the only Power Rangers I had ever seen was the movie the kids I was babysitting demanded we go watch. I say "had" because the whole ordeal also made me curious so I'm watching it now!).

breaking_burgundy · Jan 27, 2014

caose said:
There is, in fact, nothing new under the sun.
That Battle Royale v. THG debate? Nonsense. Stephen King has already written that in 1982.
On the other hand, I'd have to say this: if your premise is so similar that fans will immediately accuse you of plagiarism, whether or not their accusation is right, you had best wait a couple years before you decide to publish it. Maybe even a decade.
TRM out in 1982. BR was out in 1999. THG in 2008.
See that distance? Yeah. It's disheartening indeed, but such is life.

Not to mention that Battle Royale and THG were VERY different in execution.

Katrina S. Forest · Jan 27, 2014

breaking_burgundy said:
Not to mention that Battle Royale and THG were VERY different in execution.

I felt the same way. I've seen Battle Royale and honestly, when I read Hunger Games, the similarities barely occurred to me other than a passing, "Huh. Wonder if this gets compared to Battle Royale in reviews..."

Roly · Jan 28, 2014

In terms of being inspired, the most important thing is how you transform the idea. If you're just taking the most popular tropes/plot elements from the most popular works of fiction and dumping them into your book without doing at least one thing different - that's not plagiarism but it's kind of lazy and people will probably call your work derivative.

It's all in the execution, but when I read another boy wizard in a wizard school idea I want to feel this author's perspective, their point of view colouring the work and transforming it. Like Supernatural and Buffy are pretty similar (modern day young people fighting demons) but oh so different and Eric Kripke's life experiences and point of view is all over that work (at least for the first five seasons lol).

So anyway, don't worry too much when that happens. It happens

scifi_boy2002 · Jan 28, 2014

You can't copyright an idea. It does not matter if you were inspired by something. You could write a story about finding dinosaurs in a lost valley and you would not be infringing on Conan Doyle's The Lost World. There are many stories similar to that. Unless you name characters and copy sections directly from another book, you are not plagiarizing.

maybegenius · Jan 28, 2014

I think a lot of writers worry about "unconscious plagiarism." You know, like... what if I read something a long time ago and it's just been waiting in my subconscious, and I accidentally write it and get slammed for plagiarism??? ACK.

In reality, plagiarism is intentional. Cyia illustrated it pretty well above. Everyone else already covered it pretty thoroughly, but yeah, you can't plagiarize an idea, concept, or plot. You can loosely MIMIC it, but it's not the same. It's definitely walking a fine line of respectability, but at its core, it's not technically or legally wrong.

Of course, that's not going to stop readers from calling out similarities, like all of the Sherlock fans who threw absolute hissy fits when Elementary was announced, despite the very clear and marked differences between the shows and the long history of using Sherlock Holmes as source material for reboots. You can't find a modern high fantasy series that isn't accused by someone of being "derivative" of Tolkien. People in general have a very loose understanding of plagiarism and/or are unforgiving of anything they feel hits a little too close to home to something else. See: the absolute explosion of criticism about 50 Shades around it being "based" on Twilight. In reality, the author originally used Twilight's character names and descriptions as a springboard for her own story, which is fine line territory for sure, but it's original work. Perhaps not great or highly original work, but original work.

There's an easy remedy: don't plagiarize. If you feel that you're heavily referencing someone else's work, writing down lines almost-verbatim, or mimicing something down to the nuance, go back and start again. Outside that, you are PROBABLY okay.

If you're still worried, I like this advice: the first ideas you have are the most well-worn paths in your brain; the easiest, most recognizable tropes. Go back and reconsider ideas three, five, ten times. When you start getting to the 15th-20th idea, you're starting to get to truly original territory.

maybegenius · Jan 28, 2014

P.S. - I didn't make up that advice. It's one of those nebulous bits I see floating around the internet that isn't attached to anyone in particular. Although if you know the originator, I'd love to know!

Zoombie · Jan 28, 2014

I am inspired by many things - because I read many awesome things and they give me awesome ideas - and here is how I handle it.

I recognize that every author borrows and steals from one another, and that this brought us many things that we love. If it weren't for, say, Battle Royal, we wouldn't have Hunger Games! And if there hadn't been Flash Gordon, we'd have no Star Wars! No comic book industry? No Watchmen!

And then I steal everything I want...but I remember that I need to DO SOMETHING with it. It is all about where you go with your inspiration, not where you start.

scifi_boy2002 · Jan 28, 2014

maybegenius said:
I think a lot of writers worry about "unconscious plagiarism." You know, like... what if I read something a long time ago and it's just been waiting in my subconscious, and I accidentally write it and get slammed for plagiarism??? ACK.

In reality, plagiarism is intentional. Cyia illustrated it pretty well above. Everyone else already covered it pretty thoroughly, but yeah, you can't plagiarize an idea, concept, or plot. You can loosely MIMIC it, but it's not the same. It's definitely walking a fine line of respectability, but at its core, it's not technically or legally wrong.

Of course, that's not going to stop readers from calling out similarities, like all of the Sherlock fans who threw absolute hissy fits when Elementary was announced, despite the very clear and marked differences between the shows and the long history of using Sherlock Holmes as source material for reboots. You can't find a modern high fantasy series that isn't accused by someone of being "derivative" of Tolkien. People in general have a very loose understanding of plagiarism and/or are unforgiving of anything they feel hits a little too close to home to something else. See: the absolute explosion of criticism about 50 Shades around it being "based" on Twilight. In reality, the author originally used Twilight's character names and descriptions as a springboard for her own story, which is fine line territory for sure, but it's original work. Perhaps not great or highly original work, but original work.

There's an easy remedy: don't plagiarize. If you feel that you're heavily referencing someone else's work, writing down lines almost-verbatim, or mimicing something down to the nuance, go back and start again. Outside that, you are PROBABLY okay.

If you're still worried, I like this advice: the first ideas you have are the most well-worn paths in your brain; the easiest, most recognizable tropes. Go back and reconsider ideas three, five, ten times. When you start getting to the 15th-20th idea, you're starting to get to truly original territory.

Well, George Harrison was sued for subconsciously plagiarizing "He's So Fine" when he wrote "My Sweet Lord" so, no, you don't have to be conscious of it.

Becca C. · Jan 29, 2014

maybegenius said:
P.S. - I didn't make up that advice. It's one of those nebulous bits I see floating around the internet that isn't attached to anyone in particular. Although if you know the originator, I'd love to know!

I feel like it might be Stephen King?? Sounds like one of his brilliant bits of advice from On Writing.

ETA: Or no. Wait. Mary Kole's blog, maybe? I think she might've talked about doing something like that at one point.

Actually never mind I have no idea *move along folks, nothing to see here*

maybegenius · Jan 29, 2014

scifi_boy2002 said:
Well, George Harrison was sued for subconsciously plagiarizing "He's So Fine" when he wrote "My Sweet Lord" so, no, you don't have to be conscious of it.

I don't know that that's really comparable? I mean, I honestly have my doubts about how "subconscious" it is to copy a chord progression so closely, and The Beatles aren't exactly squeaky-clean when it comes to music "inspired" by Black musicians.

If we wanted to use a fiction writing example, this is probably the closest case that makes sense. Like the quote on the Wikipedia article says, this level of "accidental/subconscious" plagiarism stretches credibility to the breaking point.

Plagiarism vs. Inspiration

Chazemataz

I went to sleep a poet

Cybernaught

Decker

Kerosene

Your Pixie Queen

breaking_burgundy

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW

Becca C.

Liosse de Velishaf

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer

Chazemataz

I went to sleep a poet

Wilde_at_heart

υπείκωphobe

JustSarah

Cyia

Rewriting My Destiny

caose

Emmet Cameron

ArachnePhobia

breaking_burgundy

Katrina S. Forest

Roly

silly puppy monster

scifi_boy2002

maybegenius

might be a giant

maybegenius

might be a giant

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse

scifi_boy2002

Becca C.

maybegenius

might be a giant

Plagiarism vs. Inspiration

I went to sleep a poet

Decker

Your Pixie Queen

practical experience, FTW

Aerospace engineer turned writer

I went to sleep a poet

&#965;&#960;&#949;&#943;&#954;&#969;phobe

Rewriting My Destiny

silly puppy monster

might be a giant

might be a giant

Dragon of the Multiverse

might be a giant

υπείκωphobe