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As long as you're not committing flatout plagiarism, it's not strictly unethical to write a story that is inspired entirely or in part by another work. It's no secret that character of Sherlock H...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42299 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
As long as you're not committing flatout plagiarism, it's not strictly unethical to write a story that is inspired entirely or in part by another work. It's no secret that character of Sherlock Holmes was influenced by Edger Allen Poe's C. Auguste Dupin. In fact if you read _Scandal in Bohemia_, you can see the similarities between Doyle's story and _The Purloined Letter_, which was published much earlier. Using your example, Shakespearean works have inspired countless works. Forbidden Planet - The Tempest. The Lion King - Hamlet A major storyline in Gargoyles was based on a reimagining of Macbeth. No one flatout said The Lion King was inspired by Hamlet. But the story is still there and it's not a stretch to see where the inspiration came from.