I was reading The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, and was inspired by the book's narrator being death. I came up with a cool short story about a man with a phobia of the dark, but the story is told from the perspective of darkness. I have an idea of a place I want to submit it to, but I don't know if I should, being as the main concept of the story I took from someone else. What are your guys' thoughts on this? Am I plagiarising? Or is this another case of "everything's been written, so it's not a big deal."? P.S. all the characters, setting, etc. are different, it's just the concept of the narrator being an intangible thing, like death or darkness, that is very similar.
My thoughts: Erebus and Nyx are thousands of years old and well within the public domain. No modern story based on the personification of some concept or natural force can claim to be truly 'original'. Did Zusak plagiarize from 'Meet Joe Black' just because the basic premise may be similar? Of course not.
Nobody can copyright ideas, only specific instances of them. You're totally in the clear unless you also mimicked aspects of the story itself or made characters too similar. There have been countless stories with a personified force such as Death, and nobody has sued anybody over it.
How many notes (tones) are there on a piano keyboard? If you write music, it's not plagiarism if you use the same notes that are on the keyboard. It's only plagiarism when you arrange long-ish sequences of the same notes in the same order as what someone else has published previously.
I collect gothic romance and 80s children's series books - it's amazing how similar they can be without plagiarizing one another. There's only one incident where I felt I came across plagiarism whether intentional or accidental and that's with two series - Sleepover Friends #7 Stephanie Strikes Back written in 1987 versus The Party Line #1 Allie's Wild Surprise written in 1990. The similarities were so uncanny it was disturbing. What made it even weirder was the subplot for the Sleepover Friends #7 became the overall premise for The Party Line - a group of girls form a party business after throwing a party for one of the group's little brother when the clowns bow out due to the flu. Ideas can be similar - its the execution and repeated use of similar ideas (from the same source of inspiration) that can get one into trouble.
From "Lobachevsky" by Tom Lehrer: I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize Plagiarize Let no one else's work evade your eyes Remember why the good Lord made your eyes So don't shade your eyes But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize Only be sure always to call it please 'research' Some recent lawsuit decisions have cast this into chaos.
