Board Thread:Site Questions/@comment-26155111-20150301141329/@comment-4749112-20150301145926

ShizKoE2 wrote: MrDupin wrote: I think plagiarism is when you copy and take credit for someone else's work. Yeah but what if the plot is only similar, as it is inspired by it but not identical or re-worded? That doesn't necessarily make it plagiarized, although there is an extent to how similar it can become without it being a straight up copy. If its plot is extremely similar, it could be counted as plagiarism.

A good example is The Sweeping, Dubiousdugong's pasta that was a rip-off of "The Disappearance of Ashley, Kansas". Both plots are pretty much the same, only with the location, characters, and settings changed. This is an example of plagiarism. It doesn't matter if the above three are changed: the former has the same plot as the latter, to the point where it's obvious it's a rip-off.

Now, there's a difference between plagiarizing--the act of copying a story and passing it off as your own--and being inspired. A story can have some similarities (like, for say, a disappearing town), but if everything else is different (including plot) and original, then it's not plagiarism.