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Is rewriting another author's old story acceptable or not?

Mr. Briggs

Mr. Briggs

Literotica Guru
Joined
Aug 20, 2001
Posts
4,297
Hi! I love Literotica and the stories on here. There are many stories I feel have great ideas but the direction or execution aren't what turn me on. So it got me thinking.... Is rewriting another author's older story acceptable or unacceptable? I'd give full credit of course. Just curious if this would be ok to do.

I don't have time to write stories from scratch. But could probably tweak some existing stories with some interesting changes. Would like to hear your feedback.
 
In brief-NO! It is plagiarism.

If you ask the original writer and they give you permission, then OK. Just remember the original author owns the copyright.

Seems parasitical to me if you can't be assed to write your own stories.
 
If you're lifting text verbatim from the original it will not fly. If you truly rewrite it, it is permissible as homage, parody or derivative fiction. There is very little in the last thousand years of literature that isn't derivative.

But tweaking sounds like a word changed here or there. As much as there are stories here that desperately need it, no, that's not going to work. Consider being an editor here, and cutting off bad word choices at the source.
 
HandsInTheDark said:
If you're lifting text verbatim from the original it will not fly. If you truly rewrite it, it is permissible as homage, parody or derivative fiction. There is very little in the last thousand years of literature that isn't derivative.

But tweaking sounds like a word changed here or there. As much as there are stories here that desperately need it, no, that's not going to work. Consider being an editor here, and cutting off bad word choices at the source.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
Limit it to NAOKO and PILOT and ROBERT REAMS and shouldn't be a problem...no way to go but UP with them.
 
elfin_odalisque said:
In brief-NO! It is plagiarism.

If you ask the original writer and they give you permission, then OK. Just remember the original author owns the copyright.

Seems parasitical to me if you can't be assed to write your own stories.
Click to expand...

Interesting i never thought people felt so highly of their work here. I can see a small handful who take it seriously but that imo would be <10%. Maybe i'm wrong.

My bad obviously
 
If you think the stories could be better why not just write your own in the manner you prefer rather than a rewrite of another persons material?
 
Mr. Briggs said:
Interesting i never thought people felt so highly of their work here. I can see a small handful who take it seriously but that imo would be <10%. Maybe i'm wrong.

My bad obviously
Click to expand...

It's not a matter of thinking so highly of one's work. It's the fact that people don't like their stuff taken and changed without their say so. If you wrote a story, and I didn't like it, and then I took it and left pretty much everything the same except for a few things, are you going to tell me you wouldn't be at least annoyed? I'm betting you would.

If there is something about a story that you don't like, then take lovecraft68's advice -- take that something and write your own story. I've done that, and I'm sure others have too. I often get ideas when I read a story and think, "But what if X had happened instead?" And then I center *my own* story around that change.

It's similar advice to what a prof in college gave us in a SF English class - don't like the story you read? Write the one you want. Yourself.
 
PennLady said:
It's not a matter of thinking so highly of one's work. It's the fact that people don't like their stuff taken and changed without their say so. If you wrote a story, and I didn't like it, and then I took it and left pretty much everything the same except for a few things, are you going to tell me you wouldn't be at least annoyed? I'm betting you would.
Click to expand...

What PL said. My stories may not be up for a Nobel this year but I'm attached to them. In many countries there's a legal concept called moral rights that says that even if an author has sold the copyright, they can still protect the integrity of their work.
 
Mr. Briggs said:
Interesting i never thought people felt so highly of their work here. I can see a small handful who take it seriously but that imo would be <10%. Maybe i'm wrong.

My bad obviously
Click to expand...

Oh you sure are. Most (and I mean MOST) of the authors take their writings seriously enough to try and make an acceptable offering to others of like mind (I might be persuaded to bypass the simple stroker). Most of us try to write coherently and with the idea of entertaining a reader.

Lifting somone else's work is, not to put too fine a word on it, theft.

But if you contact the author and ask, politely, if you can alter his story in line with your thoughts, you might get somewhere, although I don't want to think about what the story would be called, or linked, or even named; then under whose name is the story written and issued (shared authorship, perhaps?)
 
Our work (stories, ideas) is ours - our babies, all faults, inadequacies, idiosyncrasies included. It is our flesh and blood, however flawed.

I am highly attached even to those stories or poems I know could be improved, which would be all of them.
 
Handley_Page said:
Oh you sure are. Most (and I mean MOST) of the authors take their writings seriously enough to try and make an acceptable offering to others of like mind (I might be persuaded to bypass the simple stroker). Most of us try to write coherently and with the idea of entertaining a reader.

Lifting somone else's work is, not to put too fine a word on it, theft.

But if you contact the author and ask, politely, if you can alter his story in line with your thoughts, you might get somewhere, although I don't want to think about what the story would be called, or linked, or even named; then under whose name is the story written and issued (shared authorship, perhaps?)
Click to expand...

I emphatically echo every word in this post.

If someone wants to rewrite another writer's story, the only way to do it ethically is to contact the original author and get their consent. An author's note at the beginning giving credit where it's due would be respectful touch, I think. That said, there's nothing stopping anyone from taking the characters and placing them in a different context (i.e. fan fic). But that's not what the OP wanted to do.

Write your own story or don't write at all.
 
Mr. Briggs said:
I don't have time to write stories from scratch.
Click to expand...

... really?

This even a fucking question. Where the fuck is your pride? What the fuck is your breakfast like? Is your mother still feeding you? Are you the last person to speak in the morning?

If you need to rewrite someone else story, keep it to yourself and for yourself. Every story can be rewritten to your own satisfaction, but if you do that, why the fuck should anyone write anything?
 
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I have taken stories from web sites with the sole intent of performing a rewrite.

I do this in the same way an art student studies/copies a painting. In doing these rewrites I learn how to make my own writing better. This isn't limited to just the words used. Sometimes it's a study of story telling itself, and other times it is about overall structure. Many times I find the story was better left as is. What ever happens, I learn.

The thing about these stories that I take and rewrite is I will never, and I mean NEVER EVER re-post them. Not as my own, not as some pseudonym, not ever.

I have learned a great deal about writing doing this, and lord knows I need to learn as much as I can. This practice of studying someone's creative work is common in all art forms. Just keep it to yourself.
 
Among the more amusing bits of feedback that I have had over the years are the (sometimes quite detailed) accounts of how I should have written the story.

Character A should have been wearing a green hat. Character B should have fucked his mother on the first page. Character C should have bred his grandmother. (Difficult, I would have thought.)

While I sort of appreciate the readers putting pen to paper – or at least fingers to the keyboard or smartphone – I struggle to understand why they don’t simply write their own story of green-hatted heroes enjoying sexual congress with their mothers and fathering their own grandmothers.

I wrote my story the way that I wrote it for my own reasons. If you don’t like it, fine. It’s a big world out there. We all have different tastes. Why not go and pen something more to you own taste. And if you feel that you really can improve on a particular author’s offering, then contact the author. Make your pitch. But if you are making your pitch to me, make sure that you craft your pitch, make sure that you demonstrate a talent for language and grammar. Convince me that you are a craftsman and we can start talking.
 
Also, my version of the story is finished when I submitted it. It's a thread in life, not an "and they all died" epic to the end.
 
Methinks the real problem is when no one wants to steal our wares. You know what they say about real flattery.
 
HandsInTheDark said:
If you're lifting text verbatim from the original it will not fly. If you truly rewrite it, it is permissible as homage, parody or derivative fiction. There is very little in the last thousand years of literature that isn't derivative.

But tweaking sounds like a word changed here or there. As much as there are stories here that desperately need it, no, that's not going to work. Consider being an editor here, and cutting off bad word choices at the source.
Click to expand...


No!! It remains as theft unless you have the OP's agreement. Your rubbish about parody,homage or derivative fiction is banal. Copyright is copyright. Stealing is not permissible, as others here have pointed out.
 
I can't complain because I've done it.

Scarf Shop was based on a translation I did of a much shorter story in German. I tried to just translate it, but I was unsatisfied with the result, so I rewrote and extended it.

Three other stories happened the same way from the same Yahoo Group and the same German author. She was happy with the results even though I wasn't.

https://www.literotica.com/s/friday-evening

https://www.literotica.com/s/sunday-morning-14

https://www.literotica.com/s/wrong-choice

In all four I acknowledge in my copyright statement at the start that these are NOT my original stories.

My incomplete two part story:

https://www.literotica.com/s/christmas-fairy-ch-01

was inspired by Piers Anthony's short story "The Bridge", which I acknowledge. I liked his story and thought 'What if?' the story continues beyond his ending. I have a problem with completing the last episode because I think I have written myself into an impossible situation. Piers Anthony was probably right to finish his story where he did, and I was wrong to try to extend the plot.

As an experiment, trying to extend or retell someone else's story was interesting, but ultimately I think it was unsuccessful. In retrospect I think I would have been better to look at the IDEA, not the actual story, and use the idea as a basis for a story of my own.
 
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I think there are several issues here, as already pointed out by many others:

If we're taking about stories of active LitE members (or authors on other sites), the only way is to ask permission, or do it for your own enjoyment but never post it anywhere. Anything else would be wrong and piss off authors, no matter how much you pointed to the original story.

If the author is not available, it gets tricky, since you can't ask. Then you have to assume the answer is NO, no matter how frustrating. And it can be when you see something potentially great lying around abandoned and unfinished.

I've only been in that situation once, but on my local Danish site, not here. I tried to get in touch with the author, but no reply, and I asked the site admin too. They had no means of contacting the author either, after he left the site a couple of years before. The admin made the decision to allow the rewrite to post since I very clearly stated the source and author's name. They also put a message from the site as a header, saying they had made the decision and asked for readers to comment on it. The rewrite became the first chapter of a 23 ch story ! But I would probably not post it anywhere else (apart from the language barrier) due to how it started, or at least not without discussing it with the site admin.

Of course this approach won't work here, only on smaller sites where admins have time to answer. :)
 
SamScribble said:
Among the more amusing bits of feedback that I have had over the years are the (sometimes quite detailed) accounts of how I should have written the story.

Character A should have been wearing a green hat. Character B should have fucked his mother on the first page. Character C should have bred his grandmother. (Difficult, I would have thought.)

While I sort of appreciate the readers putting pen to paper – or at least fingers to the keyboard or smartphone – I struggle to understand why they don’t simply write their own story of green-hatted heroes enjoying sexual congress with their mothers and fathering their own grandmothers.

I wrote my story the way that I wrote it for my own reasons. If you don’t like it, fine. It’s a big world out there. We all have different tastes. Why not go and pen something more to you own taste. And if you feel that you really can improve on a particular author’s offering, then contact the author. Make your pitch. But if you are making your pitch to me, make sure that you craft your pitch, make sure that you demonstrate a talent for language and grammar. Convince me that you are a craftsman and we can start talking.
Click to expand...

LW is big for that. I have a couple of comments telling me what I should have done that were so long I dropped then into word to get a word count and I have two that are 1500+ words.

At that point why aren't they writing themselves?
 
TimothyM said:
If the author is not available, it gets tricky, since you can't ask. Then you have to assume the answer is NO, no matter how frustrating. And it can be when you see something potentially great lying around abandoned and unfinished.
Click to expand...

It's not the least bit tricky. The answer is No unless you can obtain a Yes from the original author. It's your responsibility to get an active Yes. Pretty simple, really.
 
I just don't understand the concept. I get reading a story and having it influence you to want to write something similar, especially if it disappointed you and its a case of "well I'll do one and do it right"

But taking another story to just add or tweak seems to show a lack of actual creativity.
 
lovecraft68 said:
I just don't understand the concept. I get reading a story and having it influence you to want to write something similar, especially if it disappointed you and its a case of "well I'll do one and do it right"

But taking another story to just add or tweak seems to show a lack of actual creativity.
Click to expand...

Is that a case of, I wonder, sheer laziness?
Perhaps he should write a few paragraphs a time or two, for practice (Ogg would be able to tell hime how to string them together as a story entry).
 
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