Am I plagiarizing J.K. Rowling?

It can be difficult to come up with the Most Original Idea ever. Everything we read and see influences our writing, and sometimes, it can be difficult to tell the difference between plagiarism and inspiration.

Orson Scott Card, sci fi author, has a very revealing article called On Plagiarism, Borrowing, Resemblance, and Influence. It's okay to be influenced, and ideas are not copyrightable.

Use this thread to discuss whether or not your idea, characters, or stories fall in the realm of "plagiarism" or just plain influence.

I'll get started! I first got the idea for this year's NaNo when I fell in LOVE with a character created by my favorite webcomic author (Tessa Stone, if you must know). In the beginning my male character, Dr. O, was a complete ripoff of Miss Stone's Macsen Lander; they're both brilliant, well-dressed scientist-[removed] living in futuristic-fantasy worlds, both have dark hair and light eyes and the same stocky body structure, both are unhappily divorced---I even copied her character's glasses and freckles. At that point the plagiarism was obvious and my character had absolutely no depth. He just wasn't interesting.

Thankfully I left the story to stew a while (IN MY BRAIN) and, over the summer, Dr. O has developed a set of personality traits and background bits that have set him apart from his initial inspiration. He's less 'intentional [removed]' and more 'intensely shy and awkward', unique motives and influences pushing his life forward, different reasons for his past personal choices, and he lives in a slightly Wild West-flavored world, to name a few differences. I think that, at this point, I've crawled out of the pits of blatant thievery and onto the plains of inspiration and influence.

Any thoughts from other authors? How far do you think a 'stolen' character or concept has to evolve before it's no longer plagiarism? Is all of this dependent on how an author handles a character or idea?

I think this is an interesting one for me this year because most of my characters came from a fanfiction at one point. A Zelda fanfiction, at that. Most of them were OCs in the fanfiction, but one was actually Sheik. This was back when I was bad at video games and had no internet access, and so I thought Sheik was a guy (turned out, "he" was a girl). Somehow, a blonde ninja with a mask over the bottom of his face became a black-haired goth named Sharr with a nasty scar on his face.

I'm not really sure how any of that happened, because it all occured between sixth and seventh grade, which was a long time ago. But yes, you'd never know who he used to be if you look at him now. In my opinion, a character has to evolve pretty far to no longer be plagiarized, so much so that if someone read about them, they would never think "oh, he/she is just like so-and-so."

I think as far as Sharr goes, he's pretty unrecognizable.

...I would say more, but I honestly can't think of anything. Yup. Make sure people can't easily compare your characters to someone else's.

I get like this every time I get an idea in my head.

My story this year is about a boy who's an heir to the literal "Animal Kingdom"; that, for reasons gone into in the story, there is a human prince that will inherit the Kingdom, and what that means should the King go missing. Which he does. So he is brought to the animals' world to find the king, or failing that, take the throne.

I've never heard of a story like that, and yet, Where the Wild Things Are and the Lion King pop into my head and it makes me sadface.

My Regency Romance is influenced by Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park... etc. But the story is all mine.

I have a story-world that'd probably just slot into the world of Warhammer 40K with the military type structure, central government that isn't as powerful as it thinks etc. But I think I've also drawn stuff from a tabletop game called Traveller as well as stuff from sci-fi tv shows. I think some of the stuff that'd make my novel Sci-fi just gets recycled and repackaged depending on the setting so I don't think I have that much to worry about ... but I still worry that someone will read my novel and go "hey, isn't this from Warhammer 40k?"

The majority of my characters started out in a Digimon fanfiction. Then I realized how full of fail it was and scrapped it, but the characters wouldn't let me go. Unfortunately for me, names tend to stick in my head, so the five who got transferred over have very similar names (every single one has the same starting letter as their fan counterpart) in their current incarnation. Other than that, they're quite different. I changed their personalities, backgrounds, part in the plot... Even how they looked in my head. I'm hoping I can keep them that way, though.

I guess I'll have to see. ^^

My two main characters are heavily inspired by characters from the webcomic Homestuck!

My stories in line for this ears NaNo and the following years are influenced by alot of factors especially games like Persona and Ar Tonelico. It's hard to be original with one of the three though.

I can't really speak to the whole fanfic thing, with the obvious plagiarism implications even though it's obviously a sincere effort at honoring/celebrating something that really rocked your world, but for those who think they have something Truly Orgininal (tm), try doing a google search of the keywords to your idea. You may be surprised to find that the idea exists and has existed in some form all along. I tried this a couple days ago on my NaNo idea (keywords being "dinosaur civilization", thinking I had something fairly original, and was dismayed to find not only that the general idea has been kicked around for decades (which I kinda expected), but the vast majority of specific plot points that I thought were genuinely creative were showing up all over the place, in forum archives, blogs, out-of-print book excerpts....

As far as characters, if you can base a character more or less entirely on an living breathing person (changed just enough to avoid libel suits), then why wouldn't the same leeway be allowed for basing your character on another (fictional) character?

I mean, face it: after several thousand years of story-telling, it's going to be REAALLLY hard to be truly original about anything. Just don't repeat me word for word on that, alright?

I'm a little bit worried about originality this year. It's my first time ever writing fantasy, after a lifetime of adorning the genre. I'm worried that my overall plot has a very strong Golden Compass (His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman) influence.
I have a very rough outline of my plot on my page, and if anyone (preferably someone who has read at least The Golden Compass) would like to tell me if it sounds too strongly influenced, that would be very much appreciated.. I will love you forever and give you cookies.

My plot is essentially about an angel and a demon trying to stop the apocalypse. This really doesn't sound good when I mention that one of my favorite novels is Good Omens (which, funnily enough, I didn't read until very recently and a long way after I'd come up with my concept.)

Recently, I heard someone mention that Good Omens is very similar to the show Supernatural (which I started watching recently as well, lol), and felt my blood boil. There really aren't any similarities between the two other than that they involve supernatural beings and the apocalypse. Still, it's making me paranoid.

I'm trying to figure out if my story could be considered plagiarization. I'm pretty sure it could be. It's a story based on Jimmy Buffett songs. And as a giant Jimmy Buffett fan, I would never want to get in trouble with him for copyright infringement. So I think I'll just write it and get the word count but then keep it to myself.

I wrote my second book just after reading about every Dystopian under the sun. Now that I am editing I see a lot of influences from Matched that I just wrote without ever thinking of the book itself. While I am going back and changing those very minor details in the story, I never felt like I was plagiarizing. I think it's because those of us who write tend to read a lot and then we write down ideas that just flow the knowledge we already have including those books we read when we were ten or last week.

I think more people in this thread need to read the page linked to in the original post. :)

Hmm, I have to say since being introduced to Michael Moorcock's darling stories about the character Elric of Melnibone my Nanowrimo story is heavily influenced by his style of writing and tone. This is partly because I fell in love with the Elric stories. The characters, plots, imagery, tone , it's like I finally found my long lost love in book form. (My boyfriend is also practically a living form of Elric, both physically, and mentally - he even talks like him! Which probably exacerbates my affection for the character. My boyfriend is the one who introduced me to the stories, in fact.)

That said, I also read the first Earthsea novel by Ursula Le Guin and found that quite enjoyable as well. It's good to read good fiction. :)

I think you should also link or recommend the Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/) WRT plagiarism and fair use. Orson Scott Card has spoken out against fan fiction, and so is not an unbiased source.

Quoting the OTW website's legal section:

"There is a distinction between plagiarism (the unacknowledged use of someone else's words claimed as one's own), fanfiction (the acknowledged or obvious borrowing of story elements to tell a new story in the fanfiction writer's words), and quotation (the acknowledged or obvious use of small excerpts of another's work).

By "obvious" we mean that even if a fan writer didn't put a disclaimer on her story, readers know that she did not invent Wonder Woman or Voldemort, or the phrase "Use the Force, Luke."

Plagiarism is deceitful and prevents the original author from receiving credit for her own original work. Fanfiction and quotation are important fair uses which acknowledge the original author and her work. The OTW does not support plagiarism; we do support fanfiction and quotation."

So, according to the OTW, writing a novel about Harry Potter isn't plagiarism. It's just unpublishable, as JK owns the copyright. But it's perfectly acceptible to write it and distribute it on places like LJ or on websites like Archive of Our Own or Fanfiction.net, as long as you acknowledge the copyright holder and make no money off your work.

Is it ok for me to have Balrogs in my fantasy? I don't really think so, but I want to see what others think before I throw the idea away. I just love the epicness of Balrogs, but if I have to, I can do my best to make up some epic monsters (and I will even if I can have Balrogs too, the more the scarier!).

Anyone else ever find them self 'subconciously' plagiarising other people? According to one of my friends, a character of mine is just like the personified version of France from the Hetalia anime. They're kind of similar, I guess. They're both slightly perverted, wine-drinking, French-speaking romantics with the typical shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes and with little bird companions. I didn't even realise until she pointed it out. I'm still working on changing my guy before next month. :/

Oh, but I have purposefully ripped off characters before! One time I played far too much Legend of Zelda, so I wanted a sort of girly princess character (as I had none). She ended up being just like Zelda, and now she's somehow turned into an ass kicking pyromaniac bandit lady who isn't even of any royalty. I still lack nice or girly females, though...

There is a line between inspiration and copying. It can just be hard knowing where to cross sometimes!

Believe me or not.

About 15 or so years ago I was told my idea of werewolves vs vampires would never work :D Could I do the Underworld people for psychically nicking my idea :D