Using an idea and a structure [plagiarism?]

[Dr. Drib]

I have a question about plagiarism. First, I would think most writers understand the concept of plagiarism. In my research about the issue, I have come to no definite consensus on the issue I am facing. I am almost finished with a novella-in-flash piece that will be approx. 10,000 words. (Only approx. 2,000 words remaining.)

I take as my inspiration these two mock-biographies:

Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend (Thomas Mann)

Edwin Mullhauser: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright (Steven Millhauser).

My inspiration (for the 'fantastical' element) was inspired by The Strange Case of Benjamin Button (F. Scott Fitzgerald).

As a mock-biography, there is no problem whatsoever. However, I realized early on that I needed to emulate the structure of Millhauser's book, in that my story revolves around two children who are both the same age. One child is the biographer and the other is the writer. This is the same set-up Millhauser uses.

In my novella-in-flash story, their friendship lasts from ages 2-5. At age 5, the 'writer' and his family move away. It becomes increasingly obvious that the 'biographer' is actually the real 'talent' - but he's narcissistic and deranged, and he has no idea what to do with his 'life' as an adult. He is a complete failure.

Millhouser's wonderful novel ends in ambiguity (some would argue); whereas, my novella-in-flash has a definite ending (I would say) and is different than Millhauser's.

Let me make this very clear: What I am using is a conventional way to tell the story that has been used before by Millhauser: a biographer recounting the writing antics of the 'writer'; and, the fact that they are both children, with one of the children telling the story.

My novella-in-flash is a tongue-in-cheek attempt at examining how an artist creates, and it is also about how a narcissistic personality (perhaps 'diseased' is a better word?) copes with his deranged view of himself. And it is also supposed to be funny. Hopefully, very funny.

Tentative, working title: The Biography of Horror Writer Johnny Masturbator By His Childhood Friend Mikey Rakowski

[Ned]

As the Good Book says:
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

If you're happy that you are adding a new slant then I say Good for you, press on.

All the themes in my own poetry have been covered many times before by someone whether I know of it or not, but I'm happy that they have not been covered so well or in the same way.

There are very few topics in life really and no new ones.
I think if we worried too much about plagiarism, we'd never write anything.

[Quoth]

Plagiarism would be not just copying an idea, plot or even style and structure but basically simply copying the work and attempting to disguise that by changing name, sex, occupations of characters, places or even time.

But even that is acceptable if the source is Public Domain and the author credits the source.

Even when it isn't plagiarism it can be appropriate to credit a source. Some versions of Treasure Island have a credit to R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island.

Curiously JK Rowling doesn't credit "The Secret of Platform 13" by Eva Ibbotson, where a boy from a magical Island is treated as a slave by a family and rescued by magical people from the island, who get into London via Platform 13. Nor Jill Murphy's "Worst Witch" series, which even mad it on to TV. But Ibbotson apparently didn't mind.

Ideas, plots and story structure are not copyrightable. Even names can usually be recycled, like a Lawyer called Harry Potter in a book with no magic.
DC Comics have tried to sue people for using the title Supernan, but it's in many books predating the comic.

Wikipedia

The word superhero dates back to 1899.[7] Antecedents of the archetype include such mythologic characters like Gilgamesh, Hanuman, Perseus, Odysseus, David, and demigods like Heracles,[8][9] as well as folkloric heroes as Robin Hood, who adventured in distinctive clothing.[10] Real life inspirations behind costumed superheroes can be traced back to the "masked vigilantes" of the American Old West such as the San Diego Vigilantes[11] and the Bald Knobbers[12] who fought and killed outlaws while wearing masks.[13] The French character L'Oiselle, created in 1909, can be classed as a superheroine.[14]

The 1903 British play The Scarlet Pimpernel and its spinoffs popularized the idea of a masked avenger and the superhero trope of a secret identity.

Of course the US publishers have tried to prevent others using the term.

Plagiarism is deliberate copying of a work and attempting to disguise it as your own. If the work is copyright, then it's a violation of copyright. If it's Public domain it's dishonest unless the original work(s) are credited, such as Clueless by Amy Heckerling loosely based on Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, with a modern-day setting of Beverly Hills. (based on Wikipedia).
The Magnificent Seven is based on The Seven Samurai.
Stars originally seems quite based on Dune with a side serving of "The Hidden Fortress", though a court case against Lucas for Plagiarism failed.
Deep Space Nine was written and commissioned after the Studio had studied and rejected Babylon 5, but however much it's inspired by it it doesn't feel like a copy.
Pop music is problematic as there are a limited number of attractive chord progressions and often simple lyrics. Sometimes there is deliberate copying and sometimes it's a co-incidence. Makes lawyers rich.

Book titles are not copyrighted, though a Trade Mark could be registered, though not all are valid if you have deep pockets to fight.

[gmw]

What Quoth said, but...

Plagiarism and copyright violation is grey and fuzzy enough that only going to court and fighting it out will really determine whether you've gone too far.

Short works can be more at risk than longer, because little pieces of short works can be seen as a more significant proportion. Witness some of the bitter struggles over music riffs and the like.

And, of course, there will be the reputational risk of being thought to have copied too much even when not strictly plagiarism.

Offsetting all of the above is that unless you become very famous, the chances of being held to account for anything except the most blatant plagiarism is pretty close to zero (not least because unless you're famous you won't have enough money to cover the legal costs of suing you).


Given that there seems no convincing legal reason to avoid what you have been planning, I think it comes down how you feel about it. I'd use the old golden-rule thing: how would you feel if the roles were reversed? It's always hard to made that call with sufficient distance, and you can never know how someone else might react, but feeling comfortable about such decisions within yourself is important (or it is to me).

[bookman156]

I like something a writer (I forget who) once said, that to learn to write you should try to copy your favourite writer. You'll fail, of course, but your failure will be your own originality coming through.

So though you may base a story structure on something clever someone else did, it's the merest starting point. You'll write a quite different book.

Sometimes I find I have purloined a few words here and there that I didn't even realise I'd done. Then it becomes an allusion.

Plagiarism is just blatant theft, that's all there is to it.

But art is something else and it may resemble collage, for instance W G Sebald:

He stole ruthlessly, from Kafka, Wittgenstein and countless others, to the extent that some of his books are nearly collages. Like Montaigne, he seemed not to count his borrowings but to weigh them. He put people he knew into his work and infuriated many of them, causing, in just one instance, his mother to lose her friends. More problematically, Sebald pushed past the moral dangers inherent in a German writer appropriating Jewish stories.

To create the character of Jacques Austerlitz, for example, the architectural historian in “Austerlitz” who finds out later in life that he is Jewish, having been delivered to London at age 4 by Kindertransport, Sebald took many key details from a memoir titled “Rosa’s Child,” by Susi Bechhöfer.

She responded by publishing an essay titled “Stripped of My Tragic Past by a Best-Selling Author.” She wanted Sebald to acknowledge his debt to her book. It’s unclear if he would have done so, but he died before the issue could be settled.

Angier, the daughter of Jewish refugees who fled Nazism, walks a tightrope on Sebald’s appropriations. He was, she writes, “the German writer who most deeply took on the burden of German responsibility for the Holocaust.” He transmuted his borrowings into lasting art.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/b...le-angier.html

[ShortNet]

It doesn't hurt to give credit to your influences, although it removes the sense of serendipity. Which was said much better by Sabatini in Scaramouche (from Gutenberg):

“You charge me with plagiarism,” he said at last; “with filching the ideas of Moliere.”

“There is always, of course,” said Andre-Louis, unruffled, “the alternative possibility of two great minds working upon parallel lines.”

M. Binet studied the young man attentively a moment. He found him bland and inscrutable, and decided to pin him down.

“Then you do not imply that I have been stealing from Moliere?”

“I advise you to do so, monsieur,” was the disconcerting reply.

M. Binet was shocked.

“You advise me to do so! You advise me, me, Antoine Binet, to turn thief at my age!”

“He is outrageous,” said mademoiselle, indignantly.

“Outrageous is the word. I thank you for it, my dear. I take you on trust, sir. You sit at my table, you have the honour to be included in my company, and to my face you have the audacity to advise me to become a thief—the worst kind of thief that is conceivable, a thief of spiritual things, a thief of ideas! It is insufferable, intolerable! I have been, I fear, deeply mistaken in you, monsieur; just as you appear to have been mistaken in me. I am not the scoundrel you suppose me, sir, and I will not number in my company a man who dares to suggest that I should become one. Outrageous!”

He was very angry. His voice boomed through the little room, and the company sat hushed and something scared, their eyes upon Andre-Louis, who was the only one entirely unmoved by this outburst of virtuous indignation.

“You realize, monsieur,” he said, very quietly, “that you are insulting the memory of the illustrious dead?”

“Eh?” said Binet.

Andre-Louis developed his sophistries.

“You insult the memory of Moliere, the greatest ornament of our stage, one of the greatest ornaments of our nation, when you suggest that there is vileness in doing that which he never hesitated to do, which no great author yet has hesitated to do. You cannot suppose that Moliere ever troubled himself to be original in the matter of ideas. You cannot suppose that the stories he tells in his plays have never been told before. They were culled, as you very well know—though you seem momentarily to have forgotten it, and it is therefore necessary that I should remind you—they were culled, many of them, from the Italian authors, who themselves had culled them Heaven alone knows where. Moliere took those old stories and retold them in his own language. That is precisely what I am suggesting that you should do. Your company is a company of improvisers. You supply the dialogue as you proceed, which is rather more than Moliere ever attempted. You may, if you prefer it—though it would seem to me to be yielding to an excess of scruple—go straight to Boccaccio or Sacchetti. But even then you cannot be sure that you have reached the sources.”

[Quoth]

Shakespeare maybe did one truly original play. I know nothing about his sonnets. Most are reworkings of folktales, legends, myths and history. Some even his versions of almost contemporary books or plays. Yet he was certainly brilliant.
The post restoration King Lear by Nahum Tate based on Shakespeare's version is closer to the folktales. Shakespeare often made the endings more tragic.
He was actually accused of plagiarism during his career over at least one play by a contemporary playwright.

[Dr. Drib]

Thanks to everyone (so far) for contributing thoughts and ideas on this subject.