Ripoff Character

Question

I've been writing a story, and recently someone came to me and said the characters are very similar to a couple of the ones in Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows, I myself read the series which inspired me to write this particular story, but the characters have formed their own storylines and have their own pasts, how do I know if I unintentionally made a ripoff of the characters?

The characters are Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghaffa (believe I spelled it right), mine are named Kassidy 'Kaz' Morgan and Violet (her real name is Natalie but Kaz had her change it). What makes the person think it is a ripoff is the fact my Kaz has a crows head cane (as does Leigh Bardugo's) and has a dark nickname (Reaper instead of Dirtyhands) but they earned them through different means (I think, been a few months since I read the duology). What makes Violet and Inej similar is the fact they both worked at a pleasure house (difference is, Violet actually does, Inej's debt was bought by Brekker and she owed her debt to him, Violet has no debt and only owe's Morgan for protecting her by helping him when he needs it).

Also, both Violet and Inej are love interests to their respective Kaz.

This really put a damper on me and now I am unsure whether I should leave things or just completely rewrite my characters and rewrite the rewritten characters into the scenes.

Have I really ripped them off from this other author? Or am I fine?

The issue isn't the story itself, just a couple of characters, one of them in particular which is Kassidy.

Answer 1

It's perfectly reasonable to say, "Hey, I think it was interesting the way this character was so calm under pressure, I'd like to use that in a story of my own." But if you write a story with a character named "Larry Skywalker" who fights an evil galactic empire using a mysterious power you call "the Energy", that's either a rip-off or an astounding coincidence.

In this case, to say that your story, like someone else's story, has two characters who are in love, no problem, lots of stories have characters who are in love. To say the heroine works in a "pleasure house", common enough to not be a big deal.

But giving your character the same name as someone else's character, and an unusual name like "Kaz", bad idea. Sounds like a copy. (If they were both named "John", different story."

The crow's head cane is also distinctive enough to sound like a copy. If you want some object to be his symbol, just make it something else. Make it a lion's head dagger, or alligator skin boots, or whatever.

I've never read "Six of Crows" or your story so I can't say if the personalities are too similar. I'd suggest you try to write a brief description of the character from "Six of Crows", maybe 5 or so bullet points of his major personality attributes. Then see if this describes your character also. If so, you have a problem. "My character is strong and brave and so is this other character" is no big deal. Lots of fictional characters meet that description. Similarly for many other things you could say about a character. "He's a black belt in karate", "he's an orphan", "he has a scar on his left hand", "he won an Olympic medal in swimming". But if ALL those things are true of both your character and this other character, that sounds like a problem. You need to vary it up. Change at least half of them. Instead of being an Olympic medal winner, make him a pro-basketball player or some such. Etc.

Answer 2

Yea, the similarities are there and they are evident.

There's nothing wrong about being impressed with another author work. The point is that sometime some concepts and ideas influence us so deeply that we need an external output to point them out.

As Wetcircuit and Thomo already said in the comments, the problem here is that while you believe those characters are different, the audience may not and they'll probably find that fastidious. As you stated:

• Both the main characters share the fancy name "Kaz"
• Both share an imposing nickname with dark overtones
• Both have the same simbolic crow-headed cane
• Both have a close connection with a female (lead ?) character who owes them
• Both those female characters have a romantic interest in the respective "Kaz"
• Both those female characters work in a pleasure house

It doesn't really matter if those things came to be in a different way (e.g., you mentioning the difference between the Inej owing an actual debt, while Violet a debt of gratitude). Probably your character are meant to be different, but either:

1. You are being influenced by Six of Crows more than you think you are, and you're making your character similar, without almost being aware of it.

2. Your character are different, but it's difficult to see through all the similar situations and imagery they have in common with the other couple.

It's as simple as that. In the end, only you can give an answer to this question, since you have the full scope of the story in mind. One similarity is pure chance, two might be a coincidence, three are homage ... four is a copy.

Think deeply who those characters are. What's their purpose, what they mean, what's their role to play in the story. Then compare your findings with your understanding of Bardugo's characters. Do they share the same role? Ambitions? Mannerism? Goal? Personality? Backstory in general (avoid the specific details)? It's fine if the answer of some of those questions is yes; it's not fine if they all are. If there is some major problem of imitation, you should be able to rule that out here and do some serious character redesign.

If you surpass that phase, you'll hopefully have a core set of differences. Ask yourself how those should come into play in the story. Maybe the differences didn't impress your reader. Maybe they aren't so evident. You don't have to struggle to show that your Kaz is not Bardugo's Kaz: if some core difference is there, from the previous step, it should be self-evident. So maybe there's something about your characters that you didn't write about enough, something that you've omitted. Maybe you've focused on the wrong concepts. Your characterization may be different, but the reader is led astray by the fact that there are some many visual cues reminiscent of Six of Crows.

So, the last phase would be rework on those visual cues. I'm suggesting doing this last because you don't want to turn your crow-headed cane into a raven-headed cane and leave everything else as is. It wouldn't solve a thing, if there is a problem in the previous two stages. But, if you are confident you've passed those, it's time to consider why you have to keep all those superficial similarities; yea, they are superficial, but then again, since they are not core concepts, why bother with keeping them? There should be some that you can change, exploring some other concept instead.

Answer 3

Inspired by is fine. What you might want to do is distance them a bit. The ‘Kaz’ is probably the stronger link, might ‘Kaz’ become ‘Sid’?

The cane, if it is significant in the other work, might be best changed a bit. It could be a wolf or lion head instead of a crow.

We strive for originality, but every story has been told, we just put a different twist, a flavour of our own and make our story a shade different, but completely original concepts will not happen.

If you see strong parallels between those two pairs of characters, try changing something about yours and make them truly your own characters.

Answer 4

It's not uncommon for people to start off writing works that are either straight up fan fiction or so strongly "inspired" by someone else's work that they might as well be. And that's okay. What's not okay is publishing it and calling it your original work. But if you're writing for practice or for friends, then what's important is you're writing.

I'll give you an example. My spouse was super into writing stories for online role playing. All older superhero stories. He'd do loads of research on setting and other things not in the original, then bring out the already created characters. He and the group he worked with had tons of fun doing this.

He also wrote fan fiction. In particular, he had two characters he'd based off a lesser known superhero series. He changed them just enough that maybe he could have gotten away with it had it been published. He worked on this for years.

I'd been telling him for years that he should take all his research and side stories and original secondary characters and put them on to a totally original story with brand new main characters. I wasn't the only one. Over time, those two characters he had worked on became truly original characters.

Finally, he got enough practice and confidence in his writing and something shifted. He took those original characters and stories and created full scripts, took on a cowriter and artistic team and, after another year or more, landed a publishing contract. Issue two will be out in a couple weeks.

You probably don't want to hear that this story you're pouring your heart and soul into is for practice. (And who knows, sometimes straight up fan fic gets published as such.) But yeah, it's too much like the work that inspired it. There's no getting around it. Even if you change the name and couple other details, it's really just a retelling (or new adventures) of a story you read and loved.

And that's okay. You love what you're doing? Keep doing it. Just do it knowing what the reality is. You will grow as a writer and come up with worlds of your own to write about.