What is a Story?

I've been wondering this probably since the first time either it was suggested or I decided to cut a scene from something I was writing, which was actually only fairly recently (within the last two or three years) that I wrote something longer than 20 pages, making such an option, and it's kind of puzzling.

Okay so technically I wrote a 50-page thing in 2001, but I didn't do much cutting there and eventually trashed the whole thing, so we won't go there.

But seriously, although I knew authors did lots of cutting and re-writing, even in my own limited experience with poems, picture books and short stories, the concept of severe alterations was kind of new. So I'm wondering, when scenes are altered so much that they're really not the same scene at all any more, how is it that the story is still the same? I'm not arguing that such alterations change the heart of the story. In fact, quite the contrary, I think they still are, but how is it possible? What is at the heart of a story that makes such alterations acceptable?

So I'll look at the first and simplest example that comes to mind. For my thesis novel, the first very first scene that I ever wrote involved a BYU woman student (I hate the word "co-ed," so don't try to edit me here), in her apartment kitchen beginning to make some cookies for a guy she had a crush on. She remembered that he would be coming home from campus about then, so rushed to the window to watch him come down the campus stairs and into the apartment complex, and shortly thereafter, watched as he began a conversation with another woman, ward member. She got to feeling jealous and insecure and then pre-occupied in her thoughts as she started doing homework while the cookies baked and so as not to look like she's watching them out her window and the cookies burn.

That scene is no longer in my story. But it still fits the heart of the story, the story really did grow out of that. She still bakes him cookies, but she does so in an apartment other than her own. She doesn't remember he'll be coming home, but she does run into him, her arms full of baking ingredients which he helps to carry, on her way to the other apartment. These cookies don't burn. But, she had also tried making cookies earlier, and they burned. But he was not a distraction in that event, only studying. Additionally, although the woman she was jealous of is not currently involved in either of these two scenes directly, she does play the same role in the story, being an enviable distraction to the man our main character is in interested in.

Similar elements, same story, but pretty different too. What's at the heart of it? What are the similarities? The characters are the same. Actually our main character has undergone a name change, to add another twist. But she's still the same character, a little low in self-confidence, not a great cook, and having to bake cookies that she doesn't want to make. The guy is still the ward icon of perfection, although he is not at all perfect. And the enviable character is still that, a flirt and good at it. But these are fairly common characters. In the sequel, which would not be the same book, these characters would still be there. So what else is the same? The setting--the apartment complex where the cookies are made, the ward and the feeling of the ward in that time, though not directly described in these scenes, play a big role in her reason for making the cookies. The proximity to campus, the feeling about baking cookies in the setting, what it indicates about a woman who does and one who doesn't like to bake them, and what it means to bake them for a certain guy. In short, the premise. Right?

In the sequel, although cookie baking may play a role, there would be certain differences simply because the character has already been through that introduction to the world that revolves around how she feels about baking cookies and specifically for a guy and the particular guy that she's baking them for.

Although I hadn't really intended to do this, it does kind of bring up the question about copyrights, doesn't it? If someone else wrote a story that included the scene I first described, my first scene that isn't in the book, would they be infringing on my story? Would their overall story likely be the same as mine or might it be different? Technically they would be infringing if they had seen my draft that included that scene, because although it wasn't published, it was in a fixed medium, and therefore copyrighted according to current laws. But, aside from that, if it were just an idea that I'd described and not written, being just an idea, it wouldn't be copyrighted.

So the question then is, supposing they legally took that first scene, how likely is that they would actually be writing a different story all together if that were the first or early scene in their book? Or, can the premise of a story be the same in multiple books and they each be unique? I guess I'm still wondering. What do you think?