If I were to take a story and cut a part out of it, and replace it with something, and continue this process until I had a story that was roughly 97% different from the original story, what would I be doing?

plagiarism

http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html

it's not a question of what you are doing, but why are you doing it? you crazy lunatic (:D )

You'd be creating a new story.

Originally posted by Neville
You'd be creating a new story.

3% would still belong to someone else and you would have to give proper references to the original.

i agree with Spurious. word of advice: don't.