Today I want to talk about fan fiction.
For those of you who don't know what that is, fan fiction, also known as fanfic or just fic, is where writers take established works like the Twilight Saga, the Star Trek franchise and the Dragon Age franchise and create their own works using the world of the work they are fans of. Many times the writer will create their own character from that universe, called an Original Character or OC, and take events from either a film, book, or video game and stick that character in it. The Copyright laws generally overlook fan fiction as long as you put a disclaimer that you do not own the original work.
For example:
Jethro Gibbs, Ziva David, Tony DiNozzo and NCIS in general belongs to CBS.
Agent Jessica Jackson belongs to me.
The first have lets people know that the Chacters of Gibbs, Ziva and Tony and the TV show they appear on, NCIS, are copyrighted to CBS Television and do not belong to you in anyway. The second line tells the reader that Agent Jackson is your OC.
Now this doesn't mean you can go and publish your NCIS fanfic and make royalties off of it. Then you will end up in court being sued by CBS and NCIS' creators for copyright infringement.
Personally, as a writer, I think writing a fan fiction is great practice and a great way to pass the time when you either have writer's block or you're just stuck on what comes next in your original story. I have a whole series of stories based on Bioware's Dragon Age franchise: One very long novel length one with its sequel in the works and several shorter ones.
And for those of you who don't know, Dragon Age is a role play game video game where you take a character that the creators give you and personalize him or her. The player has the choice of choosing the gender, race, class and origin of the protagonist (referred to as Personal Character or PC here). The surnames are given but you have the choice of either going with the first name the game offers or create your own.
Now in the case of Dragon Age fanfic, many fans will write tales about their PC and their adventures in the games. I have seen a few that will create their own characters and stick them in there.
Now, yall know I am one of those fanfic writers. When I first started writing, I broke in with fanfics. My first being based of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film. As the film had been open ended, I wrote a "sequel". Looking back on it now, it was horrible. I also did one for Hellboy (which was never finished) and, don't laugh, a Twilight fic (It was never published and only one person other person read it)
Wait. You said you couldn't publish fanfic...
You can't publish it where you'll get paid for it. There are plenty of sites out there where fanfiction can be read by others. fanfiction.net is the most popular, but other sites like deviantART and Archive of our Own (AO3) host fanfic, the former has art to go along with it.
Now, not all authors like fanfiction are there are some who do not want their works to be made into fanfiction and will take steps to prevent it. Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles) Anne McCaffrey (Dragonriders of Pern) and Raymond Feist (The Riftwar Cycle) do not allow fanfic to be written with any of their characters. George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire) is strongly opposed to fanfic and believes it's copyright infringment and not something aspiring authors should do
But there are some authors who love the fanfic based off their works. J.K Rawling (The Harry Potter Series) has been noted as saying she is "flattered" by people writing harry Potter fics. Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight Saga, The Host) even posts links on her website to her favorite fics.
In fact, the popular Fifty Shades trilogy was born as a Twilight fanfiction originally titled Master of the Universe. E.L James renamed the characters and obviously did some heavy edits before publishing them.
But don't get me started on that series...
But the whole point of this week's ramble was to talk about the little known "genre" of fan fiction. What do you think?
Until next time, Friends
Happy Writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction
deviantart.com
http://archiveofourown.org/
http://stepheniemeyer.com/ts_fansites.html
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Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Plagiarism
You spends countless hours, days, weeks, months even years fleshing out your story. You share it with folks. You get feedback and rave reviews. And then someone takes that which you have shed ink, sweat and tears over and passes it off as their own.
Plagiarism isn't new. It's been around as long as the written word. It's a fight that we writers, artists etc. deal with.
What inspired this topic today?
About 2-3 years ago now, I started playing the first game in the Dragon Age franchise. I loved the story so much I recommended it to one of my sisters. I made the offhand comment that my character's story would make a great book. She then asked if I would write one for her. Of course I agreed, since I didn't have any active writing projects at the time. A year later I gave her the finished project. Since then, I've written several short stories based on the Dragon Age universe and connected with the fan fiction community. After playing the second game of the franchise, I was inspired to write a short story from one of the character's point of view. The character, Fenris, is a romance option for the player character and let me tell you, it's one complected romance. The story, Broken, also inspired by a song of the same name, turned out to be one of my best ones and told Fenris' version of his relationship with Alexandria, what I named my character, from their first meeting to the final battle and beyond.
I finally had the courage to post it on deviantART in January. On Friday, a wonderful young woman on the site informed me that Broken was on Bioware Social being passed off as being written by a girl calling herself Emma Shepard. It had been posted 10 days after I published it. Of course, I was livid and immediately asked her to remove it before I reported the plagiarism to the administrator. Within 24 hours the post, along with every other story she'd stolen, was taken down
Of course I was mad. I had spent the good part of the previous month fleshing it out. Only to have Emma Shepard take less than 5 minutes to copy and paste it to another site and claim that she wrote it.
Plagiarism isn't new. It's been around as long as the written word. It's a fight that we writers, artists etc. deal with.
What inspired this topic today?
About 2-3 years ago now, I started playing the first game in the Dragon Age franchise. I loved the story so much I recommended it to one of my sisters. I made the offhand comment that my character's story would make a great book. She then asked if I would write one for her. Of course I agreed, since I didn't have any active writing projects at the time. A year later I gave her the finished project. Since then, I've written several short stories based on the Dragon Age universe and connected with the fan fiction community. After playing the second game of the franchise, I was inspired to write a short story from one of the character's point of view. The character, Fenris, is a romance option for the player character and let me tell you, it's one complected romance. The story, Broken, also inspired by a song of the same name, turned out to be one of my best ones and told Fenris' version of his relationship with Alexandria, what I named my character, from their first meeting to the final battle and beyond.
I finally had the courage to post it on deviantART in January. On Friday, a wonderful young woman on the site informed me that Broken was on Bioware Social being passed off as being written by a girl calling herself Emma Shepard. It had been posted 10 days after I published it. Of course, I was livid and immediately asked her to remove it before I reported the plagiarism to the administrator. Within 24 hours the post, along with every other story she'd stolen, was taken down
Of course I was mad. I had spent the good part of the previous month fleshing it out. Only to have Emma Shepard take less than 5 minutes to copy and paste it to another site and claim that she wrote it.
Photo by MLauba
I think what pissed me off the most was the fact that she didn't credit me as the author. Yes, I was mad that she didn't ask first. I may have even allowed it then as long as she credited me. But to pass it off as her own. That is intolerable.
I hope and pray that any of you writers out there that read this never have to deal with the stress of being plagiarized. Trust me, it's no fun
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Holy Mother of Pearl!
I have disappoint you guys, I'm afraid. My weekly blog seemed to have died for 5 months... I'm a horrible blogger apparently
Well to give you some up dates:
October: I prepared for National Novel Writing Month and did a lot of drawing.
November: I participated in my first NaNoWriMo and not only made the "50,000 words in 30 days" goal, I did an extra 18,000 words. I also made a ton of friends locally who are writers as well.
December: Christmas. 'nuff said. And I had to recover from the writing binge lol
January: I focused a lot on a fan fiction and wrote a lot of fan fiction stories :/ Although I did gather some ideas on how to add more drama into a love triangle in The Rangers of Aleera.
Febuary: More edits on both the Fanfiction and The Rangers of Aleera
And here we are again. I will do my best to update once a week.
Until next time, friends
Happy Writing
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Well to give you some up dates:
October: I prepared for National Novel Writing Month and did a lot of drawing.
November: I participated in my first NaNoWriMo and not only made the "50,000 words in 30 days" goal, I did an extra 18,000 words. I also made a ton of friends locally who are writers as well.
December: Christmas. 'nuff said. And I had to recover from the writing binge lol
January: I focused a lot on a fan fiction and wrote a lot of fan fiction stories :/ Although I did gather some ideas on how to add more drama into a love triangle in The Rangers of Aleera.
Febuary: More edits on both the Fanfiction and The Rangers of Aleera
And here we are again. I will do my best to update once a week.
Until next time, friends
Happy Writing
Like me on Facebook
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Sunday, September 9, 2012
Inspiration
What inspires your stories?
This is a question I get asked a lot. And the answer isn't a simple one. Some times the story will just pop into my head, like The Rangers of Aleera. Or a English assignment involving writing a ballad plants the seed, like Asagai. And I do have one inspired by a video game that is currently title less. But many more are inspired by dreams. And I have the craziest dreams. My first novel attempt, The Cause, was born after I had a dream that I was in the Revolutionary War, fighting side by side with a couple of people I had never seen in my life. I started the outline the next morning. While I replaced myself with a male character, the story followed the dream. While it's only half finished and in desperate need of a re write to make the four different writing styles in it as one, it may eventually see the light of day. Of course that was back when I still used outlines.
Inspiration can come from anything. Your friends may start spouting off some random crap and you have an idea for a character. Your co worker may be talking about a movie and get the lead character's name wrong and now you have a name for a character of your own. You may be doing a random writing exercise and it turns into a full blown novel.
What inspires my stories?
Life itself.
Until next time, friends
Happy Writing
This is a question I get asked a lot. And the answer isn't a simple one. Some times the story will just pop into my head, like The Rangers of Aleera. Or a English assignment involving writing a ballad plants the seed, like Asagai. And I do have one inspired by a video game that is currently title less. But many more are inspired by dreams. And I have the craziest dreams. My first novel attempt, The Cause, was born after I had a dream that I was in the Revolutionary War, fighting side by side with a couple of people I had never seen in my life. I started the outline the next morning. While I replaced myself with a male character, the story followed the dream. While it's only half finished and in desperate need of a re write to make the four different writing styles in it as one, it may eventually see the light of day. Of course that was back when I still used outlines.
Inspiration can come from anything. Your friends may start spouting off some random crap and you have an idea for a character. Your co worker may be talking about a movie and get the lead character's name wrong and now you have a name for a character of your own. You may be doing a random writing exercise and it turns into a full blown novel.
What inspires my stories?
Life itself.
Until next time, friends
Happy Writing
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Snacking and Writing
I don't know about you, but when I'm writing a lot of times I'll get the munchies. I have have certain elements around me when I write, snacks are one of them.
When I write, I always have my MP3 player (I either have it hooked to a speaker or I have my headphones) and a Dr. Pepper. Now I don't go overboard when it comes to snacks. Just a candy or granola bar or a cracker pack and I've even had string cheese and grapes nearby.
Why not eat a big meal before you start?
Because then I'll want to take a nap instead of writing. Now don't skip a meal in favor of writing, but you really can't do your story justice if your stomach is saying "feed me" and sounding like a dying whale. It's annoying even with headphones in.
Now, I have also wrote as I am eating a meal. The second and third books of the Asagai of Mitera trilogy were written during my lunch break when I worked for a retailer. The Rangers of Aleera was writen while I was eating breakfast at McDonald's and during my lunch at my current job.
How can you eat around your computer?
I don't really. Everything I write, I write "old school". I have a wonderful collection of spiral notebooks (A little trivia for you: It took me three regular ruled one subject notebooks before I completed the rough draft of The Rangers of Aleera.)
Now when I'm typing it up, I do some snacking but I don't eat my meals around my computer. Are you crazy? As I write this I have a bunch of grapes sitting next to me on one side and a Dr. Pepper on the other.
Now, if you do snack while writing, I don't suggest a juicy fruit or a messy snack (learned my lesson with Pringles). Something light will keep the dying whale at bay.
Until next time, Friends
Thanks to Varun G for suggesting this weeks topic
Follow me on Facebook and Twitter
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Patricia-Lane/206475586037926
https://twitter.com/patriciaglane
When I write, I always have my MP3 player (I either have it hooked to a speaker or I have my headphones) and a Dr. Pepper. Now I don't go overboard when it comes to snacks. Just a candy or granola bar or a cracker pack and I've even had string cheese and grapes nearby.
Why not eat a big meal before you start?
Because then I'll want to take a nap instead of writing. Now don't skip a meal in favor of writing, but you really can't do your story justice if your stomach is saying "feed me" and sounding like a dying whale. It's annoying even with headphones in.
Now, I have also wrote as I am eating a meal. The second and third books of the Asagai of Mitera trilogy were written during my lunch break when I worked for a retailer. The Rangers of Aleera was writen while I was eating breakfast at McDonald's and during my lunch at my current job.
How can you eat around your computer?
I don't really. Everything I write, I write "old school". I have a wonderful collection of spiral notebooks (A little trivia for you: It took me three regular ruled one subject notebooks before I completed the rough draft of The Rangers of Aleera.)
Now when I'm typing it up, I do some snacking but I don't eat my meals around my computer. Are you crazy? As I write this I have a bunch of grapes sitting next to me on one side and a Dr. Pepper on the other.
Now, if you do snack while writing, I don't suggest a juicy fruit or a messy snack (learned my lesson with Pringles). Something light will keep the dying whale at bay.
Until next time, Friends
Thanks to Varun G for suggesting this weeks topic
Follow me on Facebook and Twitter
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Patricia-Lane/206475586037926
https://twitter.com/patriciaglane
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Writer's Block
Or as I like to call it, My Muse went on vacation
Now I've had a few times where my Muse went on vacation and I'm not blaming fully the event of not writing on the dreaded Writer's Block. Sometimes you just need a break. But what if you really don't know what to write next and your characters or muse aren't talking?
The following is what I do personally:
1. Draw
Yes, I do draw sometimes. I have a deviantART account just for that. (I also post fan fiction on there. Which is actually most of my posting there. Go figure.) What do I draw? Sometimes I draw scenes I've already written. Other times, I draw portraits of my characters. Other times I draw random doodles that end up in the trash. Ok most of my drawings to see the light of day, but I digress.
2. Music
No, I don't play music. I listen to music. Usually, if the people crammed into my head aren't making a peep, I head over to YouTube and start listening to "Epic Music" This is what I call it, if there's an official name let me know. My go to's are Two Steps From Hell, Immediate, X-Ray Dog, BrunuhVille and Adrian von Ziegler, just to name a few. Since I write fantasy with an epic vein, these companies and composers really help me out. Just listening to their music can trigger a scene to play out in my head. Or a "Oooo that would be perfect for this scene or this character" And then I get to writing again, inspired by their music.
Now these are just my personal techniques to combat Writer's Block. At least I no longer start another project when I get stuck. As they say, so many books so little time.
Got any tips on how to combat the monster called Writer's Block? Just leave a comment.
Until next week, Friends.
Happy Writing
Now I've had a few times where my Muse went on vacation and I'm not blaming fully the event of not writing on the dreaded Writer's Block. Sometimes you just need a break. But what if you really don't know what to write next and your characters or muse aren't talking?
The following is what I do personally:
1. Draw
Yes, I do draw sometimes. I have a deviantART account just for that. (I also post fan fiction on there. Which is actually most of my posting there. Go figure.) What do I draw? Sometimes I draw scenes I've already written. Other times, I draw portraits of my characters. Other times I draw random doodles that end up in the trash. Ok most of my drawings to see the light of day, but I digress.
2. Music
No, I don't play music. I listen to music. Usually, if the people crammed into my head aren't making a peep, I head over to YouTube and start listening to "Epic Music" This is what I call it, if there's an official name let me know. My go to's are Two Steps From Hell, Immediate, X-Ray Dog, BrunuhVille and Adrian von Ziegler, just to name a few. Since I write fantasy with an epic vein, these companies and composers really help me out. Just listening to their music can trigger a scene to play out in my head. Or a "Oooo that would be perfect for this scene or this character" And then I get to writing again, inspired by their music.
Now these are just my personal techniques to combat Writer's Block. At least I no longer start another project when I get stuck. As they say, so many books so little time.
Got any tips on how to combat the monster called Writer's Block? Just leave a comment.
Until next week, Friends.
Happy Writing
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Kicking a Publisher to the Curb
Those that know me know I've had an issue with my publisher in the form of royalties. I had been contemplating hiring a lawyer to help me legally get out of my contract, but my publisher handled that for me. As of last month I am no longer with PublishAmerica. Which frees me up to do a revamp on Asagai and republish it with someone who will pay me royalties. Which I will do as soon as I finish my current project, The Rangers of Aleera.
Which I am very excited about. Rangers is perhaps my longest project to date. And I've had a ton of fun writing it. I'm in the home stretch on finishing it so I maybe in the near future detailing my editing and the publishing process.
Yes I know this blog is shorter than usual but hey, I haven't much to say right now.
Until next time
Happy Writing!
Which I am very excited about. Rangers is perhaps my longest project to date. And I've had a ton of fun writing it. I'm in the home stretch on finishing it so I maybe in the near future detailing my editing and the publishing process.
Yes I know this blog is shorter than usual but hey, I haven't much to say right now.
Until next time
Happy Writing!
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