I'm just wondering what the general consensus is on doing something like a rewrite of another person's story.

There's a story that I really like in regards to its idea, but it's written badly with regards to grammar and flow. It's broken up into large paragraphs that are a bit brutish on the eyes and there are some pretty severe problems with the pacing, as I see it -- certain parts seem way too long while other parts are way too short. With this aside though, it has an original and interesting concept to it.

I'd like to have a crack at rewriting it from scratch, but I feel a little uneasy in doing so. I'd make some sort of contact with the original author if I could, but it's not a simple matter. For one, the story's author is listed with a single first name only, and it's a name that's unfamiliar to me. Second, as far as I'm aware, it's not even available on the internet anymore because the site it was on went down recently (Baby Tali's Website). The only place I know where to find it is in the file that I saved of it and the archive.org back-up available from the internet archive.

So, uh. While I'm pretty sure there's nothing stopping me from writing this from scratch, I don't want to make any bad mojo by doing this. I've got no care whatsoever what people do with my own writing, but I thought I'd be well served by asking.

What do y'all think?

As long as you give proper credit for the idea, it shouldn't be a problem.

Oh, yeah. Crediting the author with the original idea goes without saying.

I look forward to your efforts.

Cow, you are cool.
I'm all for it.

If you don't mind me asking, what is the general idea about the story your writing.

Also, depending on that might depend if people would be angry over you re-writing it. If its one of those more generic ideas, then not a lot of people would be pissed, at least I wouldn't be. But, if its something really out there, something unusual and not your everyday topic, I would probably contact the author first, but in your case, it really doesn't matter x.x

Although, if someone does get really mad over it, you could always take it down =/

MST3k the story.

But yeah I know myself i'd be overjoyed if people took my story and formatted and spelt it properly adding to the original work to improve it.

Like I've mentioned, contact with the original author is impossible. The story is credited to someone's first name only -- 'Lisa'.

The plot's pretty unusual (and interesting I think, too!). I'm going to refrain from going into it with regards to plot, but it's definitely not something that you see every day. It's an interesting idea though and really, the story only really suffers from a shoddy sense of pace, some grammar issues and horrible formatting. At one point, the page on my computer is one solid wall of text.

The general consensus appears to be that this is an okay thing to do, then. I'll have the story up in a couple of days (with proper crediting and a link to the original that's viewable through the web archive).

Edit: It just bugs me that this story that I think is kind of neat and quirky just isn't well-served by its current situation -- a little mangled with bad formatting and not even accessible without going through the internet archive. I don't want to just format it because that's a little too close to stealing, so I'm going to just rewrite from scratch.

I say go for it. You wouldn't be the first to do it. Well, probably the first for that particular story, but not the first to do a re-write like that.

It's done and written, now. Thanks for the advice all y'all.