Let's say, for example, that The Portrait of Dorian Gray is not that famous. There is the painting that ages in place of the protagonist and somehow also underlines his wickedness when the bloodstains appear. Then suppose that another writer changes the basic idea by replacing it with photographs. They take on disturbing details if the protagonist behaves badly, for example the expressions change, even those of other people immortalized (I'm realizing that this idea is the basis of some horror). Let's say that the binomial old age / youth is eliminated and replaced with something else: for example, the protagonist ages normally but it is the reality around him that changes, his affections (present in the photos) begin to disappear or do not recognize him, or the reverse; or again, the protagonist changes in some other physical characteristic, such as the color of the eyes, etc. As a final change we also add that the main character is a woman. In this case, would it be plagiarism? Or is the story to be considered completely different? My question also assumes the contemporaneity between the two authors. Therefore, the end of copyright etc. is not valid.
If the only similarities are the ones underlined, It’s a completely different story, not even close to the same realm as plagiarism. You can not plagiarize an idea, period. You might get some side eye from readers or have difficulties getting a publisher pick up your book if you use the same extremely specific idea as another popular work (ex, if the portrait of Dorian Gray was a modern blockbuster and you used precisely the aging painting with the same ‘rules’ and the bryonic male protagonist) though it wouldn’t be plagiarism. In your example though, you’ve made so many changes to even the initial idea that only a vague underlying similarity of concept remains; many, many modern day books have far more similarities than that. If I had to rate this on a plagiarism scale of 0-10, it would be a negative 1.
Plagiarism is taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own. Having a similar idea is not. Every idea has been done.
Plagiarism is a very broad term - I can't (and I believe the forum's rules prohibit us to) advise on copyright or trademark issues (and I presume this isn't about the specific case of academic plagiarism), but underneath that there is also the creative question of how close one work can be to another. Updating Dorian Gray for new media, or doing a gender swap, seem like bona fide enterprises. Copying the public domain text and doing a Replace All to change 'painting' to 'photograph' would seem like plagiarism to most people. And really anything that lifts text word-for-word from another work is likely to attract that accusation - whether or not the work is in the public domain, and in addition to any copyright breaches that might take place in the process.
Actually the question arises from a column on creative writing that I take care of. The works of some debut writers are analyzed and linked to general writing topics. In particular, we talk about some problems and how they could be solved. Consequently, the examples shown are modified in order to avoid negative publicity for writers (personally, I hate those who blast debut writers). So it is the same column that turns into a huge exercise in creative writing. The fact that by varying these aspects, you get results so different from the originals, has led me to wonder about what plagiarism is.
