Those that love writing - does anyone else do this?

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Sometimes I like to buy an existing book and write my own version of it. At the moment I'm writing a similar story to "Room" (by Emma Donoghue), but my version is about a woman who was abducted and raped by pirates who then abandoned her on a tiny tropical island far away from any civilisation, and she raises her baby girl on the island. The baby grows into an adventurous 4-year-old, only thinking that this island is the only place in the whole world.

Next I want to write my own version of "Wonder" (the one about the deformed boy), but in my version the boy is severely autistic (and I might make the character a girl instead).

I love doing this. Is it OK to do this?

Isnt that what's called 'fanfiction'?

It IS a "thing" these days in some quarters.

In fact I think that Shades of Gray started out as fanfiction of Twilight (or something like that).


Some serious highbrow authors will take a classic story and riff on it. Tom Stoppard's play "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead!?!?!?" is Shakespeare's "Hamlet" rewritten from the point of view of two extremely minor characters in the Shakespeare original.

IMHO the Godfather movies are just one long overextended version of Shakespeare's "Macbeth".

I don't think there's such a thing as absolute originality. Even the bible happened to "borrow" a little from Gilgamesh, and that's the damned thing telling us to not steal.

When you consider that there are only six basic conflicts to all stories, there are bound to be stories that resemble each other in one form or another. The six conflicts:
Man vs Man
Man vs Society
Man vs Nature
Man vs Himself
Man vs Machine
Man vs Supernatural

If you were to look at any movie or novel, they would fit into one or more of the above categories.