Opinion on TV series adaptation

[Christos]

Hey, I need your opinion everyone!
SO I grew up watching a greek series which I really loved and I wanted to use it as an inspiration for an NT series. I want to avoid plagiarism obviously, but I am not sure where the line is.

I will obviously change scenes which involve death, technology etc. to meet Neopian standards and those are quite a large portion of the series. Furthermore, all writing will be done by me since I will go over the episodes and get bits and pieces of the plot, translating things in the process. Of course key scenes will need to be there for the plot twists but overall I do not believe anyone can connect the two even if they knew the actual series (it will be used as an inspiration after all).

What are your thoughts? Is it a good idea to have a note in the beginning of the series to say that it is inspired by a real life series? I really want to tell that story in my own way!

I am not sure if I am overthinking it and I could simply use it as an inspiration, but I want to make sure that enough changes in the piece would avoid plagiarism.

[Shinko]

Ah- I got a story rejected for taking inspiration from a song over and over and over again when I was in high school, no matter how far I tried to remove it from the source material to make the inspiration less obvious.I'm not sure how well this would go over, I'm afraid.

[Twillie]

Shinko It might be worth noting though that it sounds like you tried to submit that during the Droplet (or even earlier?) era, when standards were a bit more strict and the editor was much more familiar with old school/traditional Neopets. What can and can't get into the NT has greatly loosened since CQ has taken over, and in turn, since Scrappy has taken her spot (like, there are straight up Pokemon in the comics section. It.... irks me x3;)
Also, did you mention in the comments section or story somewhere that it was inspired by a song? Or did the editor make that connection on their own?

I'd say for this proposed series you're hoping to write, Christos, that unless you plan on following it beat for beat I don't see much point in mentioning that it's inspired by a series (I've read stuff in the NT before that borrow a lot from other tropes and stories). As for if the idea in itself is a good one and you'll be able to avoid plagiarism, I'm... honestly not too sure. I can never really say with these kinds of things until I see the writing itself, as it really is all in the execution. Is this TV series a well known one, or more obscure? How closely are you planning on following it? If you were originally planning on it to be faithful, is it also an option to consider making it a looser inspiration?

[Shinko]

Droplet, Country Queen, or Srappy, I really think there is no way to do what is being proposing without it being plagiarism or at least patently obviously inspired by the original content. Even if you change elements of the story, if you follow the same plot beats and twists it still isn't going to be original. There's a reason people call the Eragon series "Star Wars with dragons" - even if you massively change things and think nobody will notice the similarities, people will. They just will.

I'm not trying to be a debbie downer here, but I really think it's better to write a story based upon your own inspiration and plot ideas rather than adapting an existing series and trying to publish it somewhere else.

[Tiger]

Regardless of whether or not this would be allowed, I have to say it's kind of an uncomfortable idea to me. This is less "I've been inspired by" and more "rewriting the show to fit this universe," which is toeing the line of straight-up copying too closely for me to feel okay recommending you try to publish it.

Like, I think acceptable inspiration might be "I want to write about a character who has similar traits to this one" or "I want to write a plot that has this element to it" - but something else should change, and something fairly big - the setting, the plot, the opposition, the theme, the other characters, etc. Otherwise you're writing an adaptation (...I guess like you said in your thread title), and while adaptations aren't a bad thing, publishing them as your original work is...I dunno, it's really thorny and makes me kind of uncomfortable, to be completely honest X'D; I mean, you're legitimately talking about using scenes and checking episodes, and that implies following it very closely.

I would really, really, really recommend taking looser inspiration from the series if you want to write and publish something honoring it; but if you're set on going this route, I really think it would be kind of disrespectful not to acknowledge the show when you're borrowing so much from it.

[June Scarlet]

That's a good point. There's a huge difference between what the Editor will publish in the Times, and what you should or shouldn't be writing.

Technically, I agree that you *could* probably get away with it. But yeah, I don't know that's really a great idea. It wouldn't help you grow much as a writer, and you'd get sidelong looks from people who know the source material. And that's if you don't acknowledge the source. If you do acknowledge it, I don't think it would get in at all.

But I mean...

Let's put it this way. If you really love this show, you'd probably be a lot better off writing fanfics for it than rewriting it into the Neopets universe and trying to pass it off as your own. There's probably better options than this. What you're proposing sounds like very dangerous territory, and I personally would try to focus my energy on something else.

[Christos]

Thank for your opinion everyone! As I gather you would consider it borderline plagiarism to move through the episodes and rewrite them from a Neopian point of view and I fully understand that.

As I gather from your replies, I could still get the general plot elements and use them as an inspiration. Frankly, that can allow for more liberty on my end which is never a bad thing.

[Breakingchains]

If it helps, one of the better pieces of writing advice I've seen regarding plagiarism (taken from Holly Lisle) is that you should "steal the jewel, not the whole crown". That is, narrow it down to the one thing that really grabbed you about the original work--and there really is usually one main thing--abstract it, and then twist it in knots until you've got an original idea.

For instance, I could always rip off the whole of Star Wars. Lots of people have done it. But if what really made me want to do that in the first place was the glamorously dorky space knaves, well, there's a million and one original ideas I can do with glamorously dorky space knaves without ever stepping on George Lucas's toes. From there it's just a matter of spinning stuff off the basic idea, and if necessary, taking steps to ensure that it doesn't too closely mimic Star Wars (for instance, in this case I would probably forego the classic "hero's journey" story beats entirely, let alone make anybody turn out to be anybody's father.)

[Ian Wolf-Park]

As others have mentioned, good writers know to pick and choose ideas that would best suit the story needs. I don't remember were I heard/read it (it may have been here), but I do remember that written pieces of work are derived from somewhere else.

Judging from the fact that the series that you're mentioning is Greek, it will be relatively obscure to JSN, seeing as they are based in the US, but I still would not recommend adapting the series to Neo as it is still a thorny issue.

[downrightdude]

This talk has intrigued me so!

Would a lovely anime fan please lend me their series? I would like to know if my series-in-working is also at risk of plagiarism.