So, this morning I was peacefully working on some things and catching up on some Overwatch League when my roommate drops by my open door and says, "They're making a Harry Styles fanfic I read in high school into a movie."
Not sure if anyone has heard about this already, but the movie is called After. It was originally a fanfic of Harry Styles (and not the other One Direction boys, so far as my roommate as told me) turned book series, published by Simon & Schuster back in 2014. Anna Todd, the author, simply changed the name of Harry Styles to Hardin Scott.
Back in high school I read this book called Fangirl by Rainbow Rodwell and one of the plot points (spoilers) is that the main character, Cath, gets an F in her fiction-writing class because she submits fanfiction because her teacher sees it as plagiarism. Honestly, I don't remember it and it's possible I never finished it, but that concept of plagiarism definitely comes to mind when we talk about this stuff.
How much does an author need to change about a character for it to be their own? Is a switch in names just enough? If the author is a good writer, is that all that matters? It's interesting, to me, how this entire business of fanfiction to book to... Series? To Movie? Seems to have a pretty prominent presence in the publishing industry.
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