I write. My published opus so far includes one book and maybe 10 or so articles, about half in print and half online. All of these are non-fiction and I am continuing to write things of this kind; however, I have also written and am writing some short stories and a novella, which I hope to publish as a collection when I will have written more stories. In fact, I am also writing a novel (I have currently have some 28 manuscripts in various stages of completion, ranging from just a few lines to a near-complete work; however, I am obviously prioritizing work on some of thes ideas over others), and it’s that novel that I want to talk about today.
The thing is, the plot is not my original story. It is an adaptation of a book I had as required reading in my senior year of high school. Adapting earlier fiction is not something of which I want to make a habit (the stories I mentioned above are all, taken as a whole, of my own invention, partly or wholly inspired by my own experiences, or based on other real-life events). This novel, however, is one for which I have been inspired to write an adaptation ever since I read it in school (growing up, I had a tendency to do creative writing that adapted earlier stories, much of which I ended up giving up on). The reason is that the novel struck a chord with me, for its characters were young people engaged in pursuits similar to some of mine and perhaps experiencing similar feelings as I did at that time. The original was published in a foreign country - and not in English - at the beginning of the 20th century and I believe it to be out of copyright; my novel updates the story to the time and place where I grew up and, while much if not most of the plot is to mirror that of the original, I do plan to change certain key details, especially as regards the fate of certain characters, as well as to graft a lot of my own experiences/syntheses of my experiences/old fantasies onto the story. So it won’t be merely a direct modernization.
Having explained my intent, I would be interested in opinions on how to go about this in an ethical way. Obviously, many stories, including novels, are retellings and not straight-out original works; e.g. “A Thousand Acres”, set in 20th-century America but an adaptation of Shakspeare’s “King Lear”. In order not to be considered “plagiarism”, what do you think a writer undertaking such a work should do? Tell the publisher in advance that the book is a retelling or adaptation of an out-of-copyright work? Acknowledge what book inspired the story in the front matter of the new novel? Or just stay silent about the fact, wait for someone to notice, and if someone points out the similarities, admit the fact? Or wait some years and admit the fact in an interview?
As a final note, while the author never stated so herself, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous Canadian novel “Anne of Green Gables” appears to have been crafted in a similar way to what I’m doing; it has been pointed out that there are too many similarities to the earlier American novel “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” to be coincidental. Montgomery could hypothetically have done so unintentionally (see the Wikipedia entry for “cryptomnesia”), or have been inspired by some other formulaic copycat story based on the earlier novel; we don’t know exactly, but the similarities are significant; nonetheless, she gave Anne a very strong personal imprint, giving the novel a clearly Canadian identity and grafting ideas derived from her own childhood onto the story.