is this considered plagiarism?

Kevin1211

Golden Member
Dec 14, 2004
1,582
0
0
i wrote a piece for one of my english classes, and my professor thought it was really good that he is going to publish it. Now my question is. Is my piece plagiarized? My piece is basically like that common sense song "I Used to love her," where i talk about falling in love with this girl, and yada yada yada, and in the end i reveal im really talking about Hip Hop. Will i get in trouble that its pretty similar to the song? its not like i took any words from the song, but i kinda took the ideal of personifying Hip hop to a girl and not revealing who she was until the very end. I really dont wanna ask my professor, cause he thought the piece was really really creative. I just dont want to get kicked out of my school for plagiarism. If it is, ill just write another one.

The assignment was to write about something u love. So i instantly thought of music. And then i began to write. Not even thinking about the song in mind. But i was probaly thinking about the song subconsciously.
 

Safeway

Lifer
Jun 22, 2004
12,075
11
81
You can't copyright an IDEA. So as long as you didn't copy words from the song, you are ok.

Though, if the song you mentioned follows the exact path you wrote about, there is definately room for your creativity to be questioned. I would go through and make sure you didn't copy any portion of it, and possibly go back and rewrite it.
 

blue1friday2

Senior member
Mar 22, 2006
387
0
0
A lot of things are based on the work of others. It may not be plagiarism, but if you don't say that your work is inspired by a song, it's definitely dishonest.

Edit: I cannot spell.