What does everyone think of this?

I wrote a plot homage once. I used the basic setup and main events from Tiptree's The Women Men Don't See, but I set the story in Edwardian England, not the 1970s, the narrator changed from a confident man to a failed graduate student, and the mother/daughter characters became a pair of scientific sisters. It's not the same story, but the homage is pretty clear.

Plagiarism would be if I had taken Tiptree's story and changed little more than a few names, or some of the dialog.

i assume by homage you mean more "inspired by" as opposed to "a crass ripoff of," which I assume you are thinking of when you say plagiarism.

that said, I think it is a tightrope.....the line for plagiarism is a bit hazy, but fairly distinct. the line between "homage" or "inspired by" and "derivative" or "strip-mined from" or similar epithets is much more hazy. A lot there depends on how well you do the work. Write a very compelling, touching story of forbidden love and warring families in Africa and you get a "great love tragedy". Write a shitty one, and you get "A cheap Ugandan Romeo and Juliet ripoff."

So the question is, if you're gonna "borrow" someone else's work, how close to them, how unique will you be, and how well can you do it? because the closer to the original, the better your story has to be to make sure the comparison doesn't hurt your work.

Morwen Edhelwen said:

What are people's opinions on plot homages? Could someone outline the difference between plot homage and plagiarism? I mean I think plot homages are valid. What does everyone else think?

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A plot homage is when you use a similar plot to one you love and put your own twist on it.

Plagerism is when you lift a story wholesale, word for word copy.

Pretty sure there are a really limited number of plots when you boil it down (so I've heard). I doubt anyone would notice if your characters and situations are unique.

An homage should be so obvious an homage that it doesn't look like a clumsily disguised theft. The best one I can think of is in Preston and Child's Brimstone, in which they lifted the character of Count Fosco whole and kicking from Wilkie Collins' Woman in White.

And if the reader still didn't get it, they made the "lift" explicit in an after-note.

I think the main trick with that sort of writing is to own the material. You can use it, sure. Legally it's no problem, but writing it in such a way that it's not seen as derivative is the trick. You need to put a great spin on it. Find new ways of telling the story and make it unique and original if you're looking to publish.

Phaeal said:

An homage should be so obvious an homage that it doesn't look like a clumsily disguised theft. The best one I can think of is in Preston and Child's Brimstone, in which they lifted the character of Count Fosco whole and kicking from Wilkie Collins' Woman in White.

And if the reader still didn't get it, they made the "lift" explicit in an after-note.

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Since I'm in the Monte Christo frame of mind, I think of Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls, which was The Count of Monte Christo down to every detail (with a twist, like renaming Mercedes Portia), quite consciously. However, Dumas' work is out of copyright which might make it easier.

The Clint Eastwood movie, Pale Rider, is based directly on Shane. I guess you could call it an homage.

Fistful of Dollars is nearly a shot-for-shot theft of Yojimbo, but I guess Americans kind of ignored foreign copyright in those days. For that matter, Star Wars is a plot-theft of The Hidden Fortress. Examples are plentiful.

Tirjasdyn said:

Plagerism is when you lift a story wholesale, word for word copy.

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i am not sure if you are talking about parts of a story or just the whole thing. Plagiarism can be the lifting one sentence, one paragraph, maybe even a few words. It often is not the whole story, and sometimes is portions of several stories put into one novel.

We are all inspired by other's stories. Like ideas, aren't there just enough to where we recycle plots and ideas all the time anyway?

Morwen Edhelwen said:

What are people's opinions on plot homages?

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I'm a Terry Pratchett fan, so I love them when done well. What I especially love are all the little bits that it's hard to get, for instance, today I finally got a little plot point from The Fifth Elephant that was linked to a Chekhov play (later redone by Brian Friel - so how's that for plot homage?) (Uncle Vanya)

Could someone outline the difference between plot homage and plagiarism? I mean I think plot homages are valid. What does everyone else think?

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Plagiarism is when you use someone else's words as your own. It's also when you use someone else's specific treatment as your own. That is to say, I could write a vampire novel about sparkly vampires and that's fine. But if I wrote a novel about sparkly vampires who live on teh Olympic Peninsula, are all adopted and have human girlfriends who happen to be the police chiefs daughter then I might have a problem.

UNLESSSSSSSS

I was writing a parody, in which case the rules are a little different.

My latest was inspired by a novel called Nightclimber.

Nightclimber was written in first person, in a man's POV, set back in the sixties/seventies, which was contemporary at the time. The main character climbed buildings.
Mine's in third, from a woman's POV. The setting is contemporary. The main character does parkour...which includes a lot of climbing buildings.

What really struck me about Nightclimber was three things:
1) it really went into the mindset behind buildering, which is very similar to that of parkour
2) the scene that was ostensibly the climax--the bit that the main character had been working up to, training for and dreading the whole time--was almost beside the point by the time he got there (bigger climaxes followed)
and
3) the big treasure he was after didn't matter to him, personally, once he got there. By then, he'd realized bigger goals.

I was especially fascinated by the fact that the reader never found out what the treasure was. The story was first person, and the MC didn't care.

So in my story, we get into the mindset behind parkour. The big jump she has to make is the first of three climaxes--the second two being far more emotionally important. The item my main character is sent to steal means nothing to her--to the point where she ends up shooting through part of it in the last scene.

I guess my book could be called an homage...but the differences are pretty extreme, and I'm certain there is not a sentence, name, or location in common between the two books.

Ideas for stories are a dime a dozen. Steal as many as you like. Just make it your own when you actually write it.

Morwen Edhelwen said:

I asked this because I've seen a number of usages of the Red Harvest plot. The whole "a stranger comes to a town and starts to pit rival factions against each other." And also because I'm working on something that could be described as Evita meets Blade Runner.

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That story's gotta have been around as long as there have been communities with rival factions within traveling distance of strangers.

Well, a recent story of mine is inspired by "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.

When I wrote it, I considered it in the same vein as an homage.

Turns out to be entirely different. Rather than some shapeshifting, spreading monster, my story ends up being about contagious radiation.

So it won't automatically make it alike, but some of the aspects of the story may appear similar when the comment of their comparison is made.

As mentioned, i suspect it is very difficult to write a completely original plot line. The only question is, has a book with a similar plot line been succesful enough for anyone to notice.

I would guess that most books could be attributed as a homage to several other books at a level that would be believable, even if the author had never read said books.

Nexus said:

Well, a recent story of mine is inspired by "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.

When I wrote it, I considered it in the same vein as an homage.

Turns out to be entirely different. Rather than some shapeshifting, spreading monster, my story ends up being about contagious radiation.

So it won't automatically make it alike, but some of the aspects of the story may appear similar when the comment of their comparison is made.

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Isn't that the story that inspired The Thing?

Liked all versions of The Thing, including the recent one at the first camp. Sounds like a cool story.

To me, The Island was Logan's Run meets Shirley Jackson's "Lottery." You see a lot of rehashed plots these days.

If you did do an homage plot, it might have been taken by the person you're borrowing from, and probably was in some capacity.

Morwen Edhelwen said:

probably... but I haven't found any other examples.

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Here's a few, though not all involve strangers arriving in town.

Morwen Edhelwen said:

I'm confused, wouldn't a homage have to imply that the person doing it has to have read or watched what they're homaging?

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Misunderstanding. I was suggesting that a book written by an author with no other books in mind, no homage etc, could more than likely be passed as a believable homage to some other book, due to the sheer volume of books and plots out there. Writing a completely original plotline that would be commercially acceptable and get published is probably quite rare.