a step up from plagiarism?

Factual Questions
1

so i am in this fiction class, and my last story was about this tuna salad that tried to smother a guy in his sleep. murderous food is not by any means a theme unfamiliar to me (one of my favorite things i have written is called “the malevolvent ham sandwich”) - its kind of an old standby, or something.

in this class, we hand out copies of our stories, and then everyone reads them and hands them back with comments. one of the comments was that there was a farside cartoon published very recently called “potato salad gone bad,” or something. i do not get a newspaper and i have never seen this cartoon (unless it is in a farside anthology, in which case i probably have, but the only potato salad far side cartoon i know is when there are all the flies go to heaven and it is a dish of potato salad).

anyway, this person wrote for her comments “i know ideas are hard to come by but this seems one step up from plagiarism.”

since i didnt even see the freaking cartoon she is talking about, i am mightily offended by her accusing me of ripping it off, but that is not the point.

i remember in past fiction classes, the teacher would pass out pictures and the assignment would be to write a story based on the picture which, if what this girl is accusing me of held any water, would be what i did.

what i’m asking is, is it acceptable practice, or normal practice, in the fiction writing world to write a short story based on a picture? a cartoon? is there a name for this kind of writing assignment or prompt? or is it really ‘a step up from plagiarism’?

i would dearly love to be able to say to this girl, “you know what? i <b>didnt</b> see the cartoon, but even if i had seen it, its called {insert name of writing practice here} and you can shove it up your narrow, fictionally challenged ass,” but that’s really a post more for the pitt.

thank you in advance,
sneeze

2

It’s called inspiration. Sting’s song “An Englishman In New York” was inspired by Anne Rice’s books. Star Wars was inspired by Flash Gordon and a Japanes movie called “The Hidden Fortress.” The cartoon series Mutts was inspired by the cartoon series Krazy Kat.

What it usually boils down to is how much was “borrowed” and how similar your “product” is from the source. If you drew a cartoon with a very similar caption, this could legally be considered plagiarism. But since you wrote a story, your “product” is substantially different from your inspiration. If your story described in words what the scene in the cartoon looked like, and then quoted the caption exactly, this might be considered plagiarism. But it would be plagarism of that one scene and that one line. Your entire story would not be plagiarized.

Now I know what you’re saying: “I never saw that cartoon.” Sadly, this will not hold up in the court of law or in the court of public opinion. If by some coincidence you wrote a line in your story that was exactly the same as the cartoon caption, you would have to go the “inspiration” route.

But this doesn’t apply to you, does it? You wrote about a tuna sandwich, but the cartoon is about potato salad. So even if you were inspired by the original cartoon you have adapted it and changed it.

If this doesn’t work with her, tell her it’s a “common theme.” When someone in a soap opera gets amnesia they don’t get sued for plagarism by another soap which already had an amnesiac. That’s because amnesia is a common theme. Just like the turmoils of divorce is a common theme. Or a teenager having trouble at school. Or killer food.

3

I think it’s always best to be polite on these occasions.
After all, your position is that you are a creative writer, who needs little inspiration. You don’t want to become known as rude and over-sensitive.
It also helps to know what she meant exactly. If it’s the Farside cartoon, see below. If she produces a written story, dated earlier than yours, using your exact words, then you need a good lawyer. :slight_smile:

Plagiarise: pass off thoughts or inventions of another as your own

Inspiration: stimulated or aroused; prompted by (e.g. the poem was inspired by the Autumn)

There is a fine line between these two, but I know that editors have produced anthologies by asking authors to work from the same picture, so that’s NOT Plagiarism.
There are only a limited number of plots and human motivations to work with. No doubt Shakespeare and Dickens (insert American writers if you prefer) overlapped with others.

The key points are:

Did you bring something new? (e.g. a plot twist)
Were you using the exact words?

People will interpret a picture in many different ways. I think Farside is funny, one of my friends repeatedly says ‘I don’t get it’.

4

Stephen King, his wife, and children used to use the drawings of Chris Van Allsburg as inspiration for impromptu short stories. They’d find one of Van Allsburg’s books (in the case of the King’s short story The House on Maple Street, a drawing from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was selected) and write a story based on one of the illustrations.

TMoHB is neat-- the whole book consists of a bunch of illustrations, and each is accompanied by a vague, almost cryptic caption. Example: The picture is of a living room. There’s a large, round hump of something under the carpet. There’s also a man, holding a chair in his hands above his head, readying himself to whack whatever it is under the carpet with the chair. The caption reads: “Two weeks passed and it happened again.”

You’re left thinking: Exactly what happened again? Why two weeks? And what the hell is that lump under the rug?!

It’s a fascinating book. It sounds totally weird, but it really gets your mind going. And talk about story ideas! That’s what I think the whole point of the book is-- ideas and creativity. It’s not so much the pictures or captions that are so interesting; it’s what you make of them that’s so cool. Go borrow the book, and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, my point is this: No, basing a short story on a cartoon is probably not plagiarism. IANAL, of course, nor am I a PWJIITKST (person whose job it is to know such things). But, sheesh. If you ask me, that girl sounds like she could use a good thwapping with a Far Side anthology.

5

Okay, I got to thinking about my last post, so I dug out the Stephen King book that has the story I was talking about, The House on Maple Street.

While King’s family wrote short stories based on Van Allsburg’s drawings, they did so as a private, family activity. King actually ended up publishing the story he wrote (obviously, since I read it :)). In the Notes, King mentions that he published it with VA’s permission. Now, for the life of me, I can’t remember the caption that accompanied the illustration King based his story on. (The illustration is of a two-story house, blasting off like a rocket into the night sky.) If the caption was the same as the title of the short story, then that could explain why King obtained VA’s permission. Then again, King could have just needed VA’s permission to include the illustration with the book (which it did). Then yet again, King could have asked VA’s permission as a matter of professional courtesy or something.

Darn, I wish I had VA’s book so I could check that caption.

Okay, well, that was just something to think about. :slight_smile:

6

There’s no reason you can’t use the same idea of another author. Ideas aren’t copyrightable, so if you were to write a story based specifically on the cartoon, there’s no reason why you can’t. It’s not an uncommon practice, and authors generally don’t ask permission except as a courtesy.

Further, your description of the story makes it sound only vaguely comparable to the Far Side cartoon (which appeared quite a few years ago). If you had been dealing with potato salad, the critic may have had a (very weak) case, but since it’s not, it’s not even close to plagiarism.

Ideas can’t be copyrighted. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” uses all sorts of ideas from Bram Stoker, but no one calls that plagiarized.

Evidently the author never actually read Krazy Kat, but only copped the drawing style. There’s actually a long history of that in comics (artists were known for the quality of their “swipes”). It is quite obvious from reading Mutts that the artist hasn’t a clue about what make Krazy Kat the greatest comic strip ever.

7

Really? I thought it was about the late author of The Naked Civil Servant Quentin Crisp.

8

“Moon over Bourbon Street” (I think that’s the title anyway) was inspired by Anne Rice’s work.

9

The cartoon and your short story seem different enough that even if you’d had seen it, the most that could be said is that you were inspired by it.

In the cartoon, the potato salad is pointing a gun at the other foods in the refrigerator. In yours, it’s tuna salad smothering a human. “Salad” is the only common theme. Did you title it, “When Tuna Salad Goes Bad”? Maybe that’s one more step, but still far from plagiarism.

10

There’s a difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. One is defined by law, the other, well, who knows. For example, I understand that Martin Luther King, Jr. copied a couple of paragraphs in his doctoral dissertation from somebody else. I understand that he also used other people’s ideas without giving them credit. This is certainly plagiarism, although I doubt it’s a copyright infringement.

I believe that plagiarism is a concept that is mainly important in academia. In the rest of the world, people are much more relaxed about making use of other people’s words and ideas. For example, if you wanted to start an overnight delivery service, you don’t have to give any kind of credit to FedEx. In law, copying other peoples’ (previously drafted) language in contracts and other documents is commonplace. Far from being frowned upon, this is applauded as avoiding “reinventing the wheel.”