Ideas Aren’t Copyrighted
Ideas are not copyrighted, only the way in which an idea is implemented is copyrighted. No two people will write the exact same story using the same idea. By the time they put this idea into a story, many things will have been added and subtracted from the main idea. Their characters and world will be different.
Using the works of others to gather story ideas is perfectly okay. And using the works of others within your story to get a grasp of your characters and story is perfectly fine . . . as long as you cut everything belonging to others out of your work before publishing it. So, UberFic is publishable once you’ve made changes to it. Once you’ve changed the character’s names, and anything else belonging to the other works.
FanFics that live within the worlds of others is harder to make publishable, as you’re using far too much of the original work in your story. And once you cut it all out, you’re going to have very little left. But, you can take what you brought to the party, expand on it, and turn it into original work that can be published. Because the idea that came to you for your FanFic can still be used with what you have left. You just have to rework the content you have left over to be able to fit it into an original story, and without using any of the other person’s work.
How do you do that? Here’s how:
You remove the names of the copyrighted characters, and you replace them with: She, He, Woman, Man, Human, Vampire, Shifter, Werewolf, etc.
You rethink the world you want to put the characters you created into. You rethink how the characters should be in this new world. You rethink how best this idea should be implemented within this new world, and with how these revamped characters should fit within this new world. You keep asking yourself: What If . . . ?
For example:
A Woman Scorned … What If … ?
What if, instead of asking: What if Bella became a woman scorned after Edward and the Cullens left . . . you asked: What if a human teen girl became a woman scorned after her vampire boyfriend dumped her because he didn’t want her to become a vampire like him? How would she get her revenge on him?
What If … Bella’s Paleness Got Her Branded as a Vampire?
What if, instead of asking: What if Bella’s pale skin got her branded as a vampire . . . you asked: What if the new girl in school was so pale that everyone thought she was a vampire? What if they tried to expose her as a vampire by putting her in harms way repeatedly? How would she prove she wasn’t a vampire before they could kill her in their attempts to expose her?