Question. Can writers continue an abandoned story?

[TheRedChamber]

BTW, it would be good etiquette to say, "This series was inspired by the work of ...." in the author note.

-Rocco

You need to be careful with exactly how you word this. We had a case recently where a submission was rejected due to it being referred to as 'an adaptation'. See this thread.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

You need to be careful with exactly how you word this. We had a case recently where a submission was rejected due to it being referred to as 'an adaptation'. See this thread.

You're absolutely right. My Writing Group colleague, Annie, had a story bounced because she mentioned a story by another writer in the initial Author Note, and it was interpreted as her rewriting his story. I said "inspired" because that's the language Annie switched to, and that time it got approved.

-Rocco

 

[HaralLuhhan]

Hey I have another followup question,

I came across a story that had the words "inspired by xyz story". They even commented that they were unable to contact the author for permission after a month because they had been gone since 2012.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the story and compared them. The first few interactions with characters were almost word for word. I didnt compare further. But for example, where one might say "he heard her crying as she confessed" the revised one was slightly worded ""he heard her crying intermittently as she confessed" or something like that. So adding or changing one word out of a sentence. To be clear, the beginning of the story had paragraphs to as additional context too. But the original lines matched up pretty closely, but with different names.

I took from all the responses above that I should just follow the premise but write my own actions and dialog. Was I wrong? Or was this authors work too close to the original to be considered ok to do?

I'm thinking the latter but was wondering what the rest of you thought.

If I did take this second approach I'd try to make it quite different in descriptions and such, but it just seems wrong to make a few edits and call it mine.

 

[StillStunned]

I'd say it was definitely too close to be considered original.

 

[HaralLuhhan]

I'd say it was definitely too close to be considered original.

I read and compared a bit more. As it went on, they did add a fair bit of good detail, but the story and dialog from the original was still there.

In your estimation what should they do to make it more original, while preserving the same story beats?

 

[StillStunned]

Story beats can be identified and isolated. It shouldn't be too hard for an author to write their own story to those same beats.

As for how different a story needs to be to count as original: don't quote me on this, but I have a vague recollection about no more than 90% overlap with the original version. Personally, if I saw any story that included several sentences of mine with only one word changed, I wouldn't consider it original, I'd consider it theft. A new coat of paint doesn't make a stolen car any less stolen.

 

[HaralLuhhan]

Story beats can be identified and isolated. It shouldn't be too hard for an author to write their own story to those same beats.

As for how different a story needs to be to count as original: don't quote me on this, but I have a vague recollection about no more than 90% overlap with the original version. Personally, if I saw any story that included several sentences of mine with only one word changed, I wouldn't consider it original, I'd consider it theft. A new coat of paint doesn't make a stolen car any less stolen.

Agreed, although it turned out they did add a fair bit more than that. And the new author has done that with ~20 other stories too, and had them published. Some with permission from the original author and a few where they were unable to reach the author but did it anyway after a month.

I'm tempted to ask someone to look at both stories and see if they think its different enough but that seems too much to ask.

As for me all I had originally wanted to do was continue one. I could try writing a story similar to that one, using it as a reference, and started one, but my characters are hopefully quite different in personality and motives.

 

[CuttingEdge]

EDIT: Hi the OP post has been answered I have a related question on page 2 I'm about to post. Just adding this so people dont continue trying to answer this.

Hi, I'm new here and was wondering the etiquette of referring to and adding to existing stories.

I found a story I liked. 8 parts, entertaining read. It cut short of the (ahem) climax however.

The author abandoned it and the site apparently, 10 years ago.

So I was thinking it might be fun to try to add an ending chapter or two to it.

Author: https://www.literotica.com/authors/wordsinthedust/works/stories

And story is "Unintended Lolita".

Some things about the story:
- It's in the Incest/taboo section
- Despite the odd title, it depicts no underage characters (naturally). No idea what the author was thinking with the title.
- It deals with the budding relationship between a father and daughter. Really, the mother is also heavily involved.
- The story was excellent (imo) but the author used a lot of sudden and unmarked pov and scene changes that seemed jarring.
- It is a nice 'happy' story. No non consent, abuse, manipulation and so on.
- This 'world' oddly has no hangups about this type of relationship, at least not that the author acknowledged.

I figured I could do one or more of the following with it:

1. Clean up and repost each existing chapter under my account, while naturally crediting the original author, maybe giving it new life. As well as continuing it if I can.
2. Attempt to continue the story, while crediting and linking to the original one for reference
3. Mind my own business and write my own dang story
4. Go back to lurking and forget the idea, noob
5. Delete my account and never darken this site again!

Some 'challenges' for me:
I'm not an author. Never wrote anything substantial, never mind erotica. I figure I could follow the original writers lead for this exercise at least.
I'd make a better editor than an author probably.

I don't have a great imagination. I can think about story ideas but getting them on paper (or computer etc, you know what I mean) is another thing.

That all said, I've read a lot of stories on this site and I think I can do better than several of them. lol

I think it is morally wrong because it is not your story, and no story is ever truly done.

As a writer, I can take my story in a thousand directions with each consecutive sentence and just because it is not where YOU might take it, does not mean it's in a wrong direction. It is in a different direction, and often that is a plot twist to make the story unique. The same for endings. You call it "abandoned" but is it? Or did the writer just choose to end the story where you might not have?

I get this from readers all the time and it is one of the greatest compliments a writer can get... "but what about"... they might ask. That is perfect because with this story about completely made up people in made up places doing made up things, people feel a connection and want to know what happened next to the characters. In other words, they are emotionally invested in the story. But that does not mean the story did not end. It did. It is just that my character's life could have marched on, but the story, that ended.

It is perfectly fine to be inspired by a story so that you write your own, but not okay to take someone's hard work and think just because you would have taken it in a different direction, you can steal their creativity and rewrite it.

No story, novel, or screenplay I EVER wrote could not be improved upon, but its mine to do that, not yours.

Please, be inspired to write, not steal.