Using someone else's story as a model?

[Aqua Buddha]

How do you feel about using a published story by another author as a model? I do not mean plagiarizing words, names or details. What I'm referring to is using the general structure and making it one's own.

Is this ethical?

 

[kjjcarpenter]

Simply put: no.

One of the greatest delights about writing is finding your own style and developing the way you express yourself to the reader. Each writer has a style that varies from one writer to another and they stem from life experiences and lessons learnt. Basing your own story on the style of another writer would jeopardise the integrity and validity of your own work—it wouldn't be yours, merely just another Stephen King book.

Of course, it is my own personal vendetta I'm sure others would disagree with.

 

[Ravana]

Simply put: yes. Depending on what you mean by "general structure."

If all you're doing is changing the names, then you're still plagiarizing. In fact, you would be plagiarizing more if you changed every name in the book but copied the sequence of events exactly than you would be if you used all the same characters for a completely new story (that's not plagiarism, that's being derivative… "fanfic," though you can still get sued over it if whoever owns the copyright on the characters gets annoyed enough). Contrary to popular belief, plagiarism goes well beyond merely using another person's exact words.

On the other hand, to employ the well-known platitude: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. There is absolutely nothing wrong–much less "unethical"–with using other people's works as models; in fact, it's often good exercise, just as a painter will use another artist's work to practice a particular style or theme. It's a very common assignment in writing classes and workshops: you read a given piece, then use it as a basis for something of your own. The assignment could be anything from imitating some aspect of the style in a story of your own, to retelling the story but in your own style, to simply coming up with something that would fit the same genre (write a myth, a fairy tale, a detective story, whatever). Doing this helps you identify and practice various techniques for storytelling, and allows you to develop methods you would not have thought of on your own. You might even go so far as to try to write a piece as near as possible to the way you think another author would have done it–"another Stephen King" story (I'd recommend going for a short, not a book, if it's just an exercise, though). For really good practice, take that same story and then rewrite it the way Dashiell Hammett would have done it… then again as Tom Clancy… then Roger Zelazny… and so on. In the attempt, you will learn more about writing, and, yes, about your own voice, than you will from years of practice "just being yourself." You will discover new techniques for expressing yourself; you will undoubtedly also discover things you don't want to do–possibly becoming aware that you were doing them without realizing it in the process. Of particular utility is to take a favorite author, then try to figure out why you like that author so much through trying to imitate what that author does with the language.

Also, it's very difficult to create a work that is not in some way derivative: there are only so many ways to tell a story. Any story involving a quest to defeat ultimate evil is in some way going to "borrow" from Tolkien–or so it will seem to the reader, at least, whether or not the author even read Tolkien. Any story involving dynastic incest and murder is going to (seem to) borrow from Hamlet. What generally doesn't get mentioned is that Tolkien borrowed heavily from Anglo-Saxon folklore, and Shakespeare outright copied much of his work from earlier Italian plays… which, in turn, lifted much of their material from Greek tragedies (just how different is Hamlet from Oedipus?). Goethe's Faust owes as much to Marlowe's Faustus as it does to the "historical" accounts of the 16th-century German magician… and Thomas Mann refurbished the story again for the 20th century. (As did the musical Damn Yankees, though none of the characters in that were named "Faust.") Throw in a few major operas and other musical works, and innumerable other literary uses.

So much for that. What you do not want to do, if you're writing for publication and not practice at least, is take another story and present basically the same events in basically the same order with basically the same characters with basically the same motivations with basically the same etc. I assume you didn't have this in mind when you said "making it one's own"–were you to do that, you would definitely not be making it your own. You would be plagiarizing; worse, you would be being lazy. So don't write about a conflicted, misunderstood loner with a soul-eating sword who kills himself with it in the end. Don't start out an epic that follows four (or three, or two) innocent, childlike protagonists through war, treachery, tragedy, magical forests, and mushroom patches–or wardrobes, depending on which series you want to rip off: and you'll note that, of all the features I mentioned, only that last one differs, but few people fuss about either being a "copy" of the other, as there are enough other differences.

If, on the other hand, you feel you have something new to contribute to your particular topic, then by all means, go for it. Write a story about four innocent, childlike protagonists who stumble upon a cache of soul-eating swords and go on to rid the world of conflicted, misunderstood mushroom farmers (or talking Christ-figure lions, ditto). Well, actually, please don't: not because I don't think it would sell, rather because I do think it would. But you get the idea. So it really all comes down to what you mean by "general structure" and what you mean by "making it your own." Without more detail, the question can't really be answered.

One final note: much of what I write starts out as a reaction to something I've read, when I reach the end (or, really, any point) and say "That's not how I would have done that.…" What you would have done that the other author didn't–that's making it your own.

 

[Black Dragon]

Shakespeare outright copied much of his work from earlier Italian plays… which, in turn, lifted much of their material from Greek tragedies

Interestingly enough, few people remember the original plays. But the Shakespeare "remixes" are classics.

What's really cool is how Kurt Sutter took Shakespeare's Hamlet, and adapted it into a television series set in a motorcycle gang - Sons of Anarchy.

So the cycle of copying and "remixing" continues.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

I think the story should be your own... BUT no matter what even your own thoughts nine out of ten are nothing but generic copies of a multitude of things you've seen, heard, and read. There's no way to avoid that. Look at everything you've ever read you'll see the similiarities in them, but those are common. To deliberately look at an author's work and use it as the foundation for your own, that's just as bad as theft and it would be seen as being as bad had you written their work word for word and called it your own. My advice, Let your mind and heart guide you in your writing. It's must better and it's how true master pieces are born. After all you want to be remembered as so and so who wrote that great book... Not so and so this guy's plagarist you know

 

[Chilari]

I think Ravana's got it nicely summed up like a box with a ribbon tied in a bow around it for you there. I'd like to add the issue of themes. I, for example, am writing about a group of people who survived a plague which devastated the population. Nothing new there. I've got a princess, quarrelling lovers, political strife, rescue, betrayal, mistrust... you name it. These are themes that crop up time and time again. I even have a few characters who roughly fit into archetypes - the matron, the young charistmatic male leader, the loner with a mysterious past. The point is anyone here could write a story that had these same elements, and it would be a different story to the one I'm telling and different from anything anyone else writes. Hell, I could write the story of an ophaned boy who discovers he's a wizard and goes to wizard school, ultimately defeating an evil dark wizard, and it would be different from Harry Potter. It would be based upon the Harry Potter series, but it would be different.