Guarding against potential accusations of plagiarism.

Joined
Mar 2, 2013
Posts
7
I'm starting to write what amounts to a Roman à clef based on my experiences simultaneously transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, continuing to learn to cope with and adapt to my disability as well as becoming sexually aware and evolving as time went by; all this with little in the way of guidance since it was in the early 80's and even though everyone told me that I was lucky to be functional in that respect, no one could expound on the implications of what I was about to experience.


My story starts at with my and my older (step?)-sister and I relaxing in the summer of 1982 at my mother's backyard pool where I'm becoming aware of just how good she looks in her bikini and it goes from there.


There's a story here that has a very similar setup only the protagonist is a young disabled sexually naive teenaged girl and her brother, and they progress from typical first time awkwardness to sexual acrobats over a few chapters. Mine is more coming of age than stroke story (though hopefully there is plenty of that).

Now, the author hasn't been around for a few years it seems and both the tone and content will differ significantly from the earlier work but I'm considering at least trying to contact her and at least giving her the brief synopsis that I put here and seeing if she cares.

Thoughts? About the concept? The possibility of infringing?
 
High, dude...

You're an author?? Me, too. I used to be. Now, I prefer to go online. God bless you.
 
The truth is, a lot of the stories here have similar themes. A LOT

So if you're worried about the potential possibility that you might get accused of plagiarism, don't worry about, no one will accuse you unless you've copied sentences or plot points verbatim. (which you didn't do)
 
Just write your own story, using your own words. Then it's not plagiarism. And, as noted already, there are a limited number of plotlines. You don't owe anyone a shootout when you both use a similar one.

You might watch how sexually active how fast your protagonist gets, though. For this Web site they best be a nun/monk until their eighteenth birthday.
 
There's a story here that has a very similar setup only the protagonist is a young disabled sexually naive teenaged girl and her brother, and they progress from typical first time awkwardness to sexual acrobats over a few chapters. Mine is more coming of age than stroke story (though hopefully there is plenty of that).

Now, the author hasn't been around for a few years it seems and both the tone and content will differ significantly from the earlier work but I'm considering at least trying to contact her and at least giving her the brief synopsis that I put here and seeing if she cares.

Thoughts? About the concept? The possibility of infringing?

Without having read them, it doesn't sound like you have a lot to worry about. What you've described of the plot isn't enough to make for plagiarism, especially if you're planning to tell a different sort of story.
 
It could only be plagiarism if it lifted blocks of the actual wording from one and plopped it in the other. You can't copyright story concepts. (And there's zero chance that anyone in here actually copyrights anyway. You can only plagiarize copyrighted material.)
 
Back
Top