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Hi! I'm Garrison_Bell (I guess you can call me Gary if you want). Sorry it's taken me a while to introduce myself. I'm not particularly consistent when it comes to using social media or creative sites such as these (but I am reliable and do keep my promises! Let me know if you ever want me to read anything and I will check it out when life isn't hitting me like a truck). 

As for my question: I have this idea to make a choose-your-own-adventure version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I want to put it under Love & Dating, but is it actually fan fiction? More importantly, I'd love to directly quote from the novel because it is so iconic, but can I do this without plagiarizing? Technically her work is in the public domain, but I'm not sure how much freedom that allows me. If anyone can give me insight into how to do this (or let me know if you think this is a cool idea!), it would be much appreciated. :) Hope you are enjoying the holidays!

This person will write the darkest of fantasies for the contest, I can sense it.

I suppose we shall see...

There's intentionally some grey area in the other categories, but fanfic is the one that supercedes all others, so if it's recognizeably a Jane Austen story it will count as fanfic.

Now if you changed all the names and made it just an 'inspired by' thing instead, there wouldn't be any issue.

Ok. Thank you very much!

Interestingly Amazon lists ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ as Historical Fiction (?). P & P & Z is also a Pride and Prejudice adaptation and remarkably well done. In particular the addition of Zombies fixes all the plot holes of vanilla P&P.

My favourite review I've ever read is still a review on a CoG Pride and Prejudice adaptation where someone accuses the game of being a rip off of the movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but without the zombies. ^_^

If it's in the public domain then feel free to plagiarize away! There really is no problem. (Even if it wasn't in the public domain, there wouldn't be a problem with plagiairizing since this is a non profit site.) ^_^

As long as "quotes" don't turn up uncredited as half the actual game content. Although I doubt that would survive the ratings process, the school projects sure never do.

Thanks for your input, Avery. You and Mizal both have good points. I've decided to tweak my idea a bit. I'm going to combine aspects of all the novels and make a new story! I think this will be even more fun and make it easier for me to put my own spin on things. Thank you both for helping me work through this. :)

Don't confuse plagiarism with copyright or trademark violations, they are not the same.

Good point! It becomes plagiarism if I try to pass off as Jane Austen's work as my own. What I'm trying to ask is where does the line between fan fiction and plagiarism begin and end? Can a person use dialogue or quotes from another story and how do they give credit to the orginal creators/authors? As far as my use of this site goes, it seems as long as I credit Jane Austen and her works in my fan fiction description and avoid excessive quoting, I should be good. I want to emulate her style while still making my own creation. 

Side note: I noticed you mentioned Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies earlier. I've never read it! What did you think of it? I've been debating whether or not to check it out.

Not really. I mean, with a famous piece of literature like Pride and Prejudice people are going to recognise a lot of her writing. I think that using quotes from the book in your game should be fine. Infact some fans of the book might prefer it if you stayed as close as possible to the source material.

As from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, from what I understand it is just 90% Pride and Prejudice, but they alter the book here and there to throw in zombies. Basically shows how anything is fair game if it's in the public domain. :p

OK first: Plagiarism itself is bad style but it is actually not illegal in itself. As you say plagiarism is trying to pass of somebody else's work as your own, so the concern here is primarily about fame and only to a lesser extent about money. So if you make clear that you are quoting from P and P you should be fine. I would consider putting all passages that are direct quotes in italics to mark them, then it should be obvious.

Violating usage rights is much more serious as you can be sued. Unfortunatley fair use is a legal defense, not a free ticket (which makes this really massively unfair). Fortunately the usage right for P and P have long expired. So that's likely not a problem here.

Honestly my main worry I would have with a project like this is that my writing would end up next to Austen, which could turn out not to be a favorable comparison.

Plagiarism is the unforgivable sin on a writing site, but someone literally trying to pass off Austen's work as their own and expecting no one to notice would be pretty freaking stupid.

From a standpoint of what's allowed, all it needs is to be credited if direct passages are used, and in the fanfic category if it uses the characters and setting. (And not have a rating below 3/8 and not be a reimagining where everyone is a cat that lives in a forest.)

As long as that's the case, whether too much of the material is used or whether it's bad form to do that in the first place is up to the individual readers.

Ok, I think I understand. And yeah, I know better than to ever try to pass off Austen's work as my own hahaha. I'm just looking to make something fun inspired by this work I enjoy by an author I deeply admire and respect. Thanks for helping me out!

And yeah, I know better than to ever try to pass off Austen's work as my own hahaha.

And yet I still get essays handed in to me with full paragraphs, unattributed, from articles that *I wrote*.

Lesson One: Clauses

Let me begin by stressing that we can write in simple sentences all day and we won’t be technically incorrect.

^What this guy said!