: I feel like I'm plagiarizing my story? So my fears are kind of taking over my enjoyment of writing my book because I feel I'm doing something wrong. In my story I stole ideas from other

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Originality is not a yes/no, true/false thing. There are degrees of originality.

There are lots of stories about a boy and girl who meet and fall in love. They are not all rip-offs of "Romeo and Juliet". Falling in love is part of the normal human experience.

There are lots of stories about a hero who sets off on a quest and must overcome various obstacles to reach his goal. They are not all rip-offs of "The Odyssey". Having a goal and having to overcome obstacles to achieve that goal is part of the normal human experience.

There are lots of stories out there about a brilliant detective solving crimes, couples falling in love, soldiers going to war, a family going through amusing little problems, etc.

It is very rare for an author to come up with a totally original idea. Most writing is coming up with interesting variations of an existing idea.

If you're worried that your story is just like some other author's story because your story has parallel worlds and this other story has parallel worlds ... that's very general. I wouldn't be worried about copying there at all. At the other extreme, if your story is a word-for-word copy of Harry Potter except that you changed the names of all the people and places, I'd say your originality -- coming up with new names -- is so low that you really should try something else. (Never mind that you would surely lose a copyright suit.)

Without reading your story, I can't say how original or unoriginal it is. (And I've never heard of most of the inspirations you mention, so I couldn't judge the similarity.) But the question to ask yourself is, Did I just steal somebody else's idea, or did I steal his idea and then add my own twist to it?

If -- to take something popular enough that most readers will have at least heard of it -- you too Star Wars and shuffled a few details around but basically kept the same story, boring, unoriginal. But if you changed it so that your Darth Vader character was the good guy and your Luke Skywalker was the villain, that the rebels are a bunch of evil terrorists trying to destroy civilization and the empire is trying to preserve it, you would have an original story. Whether it is good or not would depend on how well you did it.

Lots of science fiction stories take real historical events and re-tell them set in the future. To take a classic example, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is a retelling of the fall of the Roman Empire as the fall of a Galactic Empire. I don't think Asimov was ever shy about admitting that that's exactly what he was doing. He didn't see any reason to be embarrassed about copying historical events. There was a science fiction story I read many years ago (don't remember the title or the author, sorry), about an advanced alien civilization coming to Earth, and the author not only copied many elements of the story from the British colonization of Australia, but throughout the book he pointed out that he was doing this. Characters would say, "This is like when the British did such-and-such with the aborigines".

So ... try to be original. Evaluate how original you think you are being. Don't panic if you are not 100% original.

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I am not a lawyer, but do business with copyright law, and this is my understanding.

First, it IS possible to copyright characters in other works. Here is an excerpt from Protection of Fictional Characters:

Although the decisions in cases involving the protection of fictional characters have not been consistent, the prevailing view has been that fictional characters are copyright protected. However, the general trend with respect to copyright protection must be categorized as one of restrictive protection rather than an all-encompassing scope of protection. Generally in those cases where the fictional character was found to be protected, the character that was copied was "distinctively delineated" (or fully developed) in the original work and that the character's delineation was misappropriated in the copier's work.

Also, even if you do not violate copyright, you may violate trademark law; a trademark can be a "phrase" of just a few words, and no filing is required in the USA: A trademark is established when it is used in trade, so if they sold a book a trade occurred. So, if you stole not just the "bioshock infinite society" idea but the name as well, you may be deemed to have violated a trademark of the original author, since this combination of words is likely unique and used by the original author to make money. This is called, under trademark law,

Misappropriation: defined by one court as the "taking and use of another's property for the sole purpose of capitalizing unfairly on the good will and reputation of the property owner." (See here). The discussion of the link is "literary titles", but I believe it has been contested for other unique elements of a work, including character names ("Marty McFly", "James Bond", "Harry Potter").

If what you are interested in is sales, then regardless of whether your use is legal or not, both editors and readers may reject your work for being too obviously a ripoff of another author's ideas, names, and characters.

Many characters look for the philosopher's stone, but how many are "missing a body part?" If you cannot name another character "missing a body part and looking for the philosopher stone" then you may be in copyright violation, especially if your protagonist is similar in other ways to your "inspiration".

So even if you aren't sued, well-read editors or readers or critics may reject your work as unoriginal, a rip-off, or for a publisher, not worth risking a lawsuit.

You can steal ideas, and portrayals that exist in multiple works: Dragons, elves, trolls, witches, wizards and magicians abound. Time travel, parallel worlds, Artificial Intelligence and robots too. Stealing too specifically might get you in legal trouble, or just rejected.

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I think the best way to make sure you are not lifting something from another work is to "steal" ideas, but not straight-up concepts.

Have parallel worlds--many authors have before--but make it different, even just a little. Some of my favorite books use them. E.g. Howl's Moving Castle and the Shades of Magic books, but both books are VERY different. Though both involve magicians/wizards as well.
Have a city floating in the air (or is Infinite underwater?), but don't make it steampunk.
Have a world in between that lets you travel quickly to the world outside like in Bloodborne, but make it a carnival setting or something instead.
Have your character search for the philosopher's stone. The philosopher stone in is hundreds of books. Or have them search for the fountain of youth. Or search for a flower pot that does exactly what the philosopher's stone does but it's different now. Give it a new name.

None of the things I mentioned above are unique. All of them have been done before, combining them in a way only you can will make your story YOURS. I don't know if you're just worried about being called out or if you're having more of an existential crisis on the nature of being a writer, but I think every writer wonders from time to time if they are a hack. Welcome to the club!

Also, beta readers and critique partners are invaluable and will let you know if they think your book is too similar to something else. Though, again, many books are similar. People like reading about the same kind of things over and over. That's why books and movies and tv shows have a "if you liked these, you'll love this!" pitch.

Though, maybe don't have your MC be missing an arm and a leg that has been replaced by robot armor while he's looking for that stone. ;)

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