RUSSIAN BALLET NYC
Is This Plagarism Or Not?
OK, I’ve been writing forever, and one of my favorite plots involves my main character, a dancing expert from a big city, moving to a tiny middle of no where town and attending a tiny community dance class where everyone else sucks. But recently I read a book with a very similar plot-the main character, a ballet expert in NYC moves to a tiny town in upstate NY and goes to a community dance school where everyone sucks. Also in my story, the main character’s mother is like German, or Austrian and an amazing dance instructor. In the books’, the mother is Russian and a former ballet star herself. The only real diff is the fact that my character does hip hop, and my writing style is way different. Could I go on with that plot, even though I had it planned out before I had ever read this book, or would that be plagarism?
Technically speaking, it’s not plagiarism, but if you were to publish the story, or submit it in a creative writing class, you might have trouble proving the priority of your idea in the event someone suggested that you had borrowed it.
Writers do come up with similar themes and plots, however, and as long as your prose and your specific situations are markedly different, then you would probably be in the clear.
But I have a much-published friend who feels strongly that when he discovers that someone else has already used an idea he has had, he must abandon it. Originality is important to him, and he doesn’t ever want to be accused of lacking it.
BBT/School of Russian Ballet presents: “Jive”
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