Katherine Frances's Blog, page 256
February 6, 2016
"Ice cold veins and fed up with games, she was a hard woman to love. But underneath all the words..."
- darencolbert
(via wnq-writers)
"The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don’t suppose he means us to stay that way."
- Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
"I realise there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting..."
- Jeffrey McDaniel (via thethingstohopefor)
What do you know about the legality of FanFiction? What's to stop someone reading my fanfics, taking the story and publishing it as their own? Who has legal ownership of a fan fiction story? The author? Is it even possible to legally own FanFiction?
more-legit here
The short answer is: you own the fanfic. As per the Berne Convention, you own whatever you write the second you write it.
However, fanfiction lives in a bit of a grey area. You own the fanfic, but the canon material you used to write it belongs to the author of the canon. So JK Rowling owns Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy and Hogwarts and the magical world she designed, even if she doesn’t own your Drarry fanfic. What that means for you is you cannot legally publish that fanfic you wrote or make money from it. Conversely, JK Rowling cannot take your fanfic and publish it under her name and make money from it (she can however write her own Draco/Harry story).
Non-profit online fanfiction only exists because most authors either tolerate it or encourage it because they have realised it doesn’t hurt them or their work, but instead is an expression of love from audiences towards the work (and it’s good marketing. Nobody ever said they’re not watching X Files any more because they can get the fanfics online for free. They might read the fanfics and go watch the show or watch the show then read the fanfics.)
If someone steals your fanfic and publishes it on another website as their own, report it to the website with a link to the original posting that predates the repost. In the very unlikely case that someone steals your fanfic and publishes it as a book to be sold (almost impossible with traditional publishing as chances of being accepted are low in the first place and publishers do have some checks in place against plagiarism. A google search in the case of a fanfic that was posted online would expose them almost instantly). If somebody self-publishes, then report it to the publisher (for example amazon for kindle-published books).
Most cases you hear of that go to court are cases that aren’t as clear-cut as simple plagiarism (someone just changed your name to their own). Usually, it’s an author who thinks their ideas were stolen for a different story. Most of these cases are rejected because frankly they are bullshit. There’s a vast difference between both Neil Gaiman and I happening to write a story in which old gods roam around the US after being brought in from their old homes by different immigrations waves, that may have nothing else in common and me actually republishing American Gods under my own name or writing a new story about Shadow and Bastet going on adventures after the end of American Gods.
Ideas aren’t copyrightable. Only the form in which they were fixed. So write and publish a story about a boy who finds out he’s a wizard. No problem with that. You just can’t write and publish about Harry Potter finding out he’s a wizard.
Navigating the line between plagiarism/copyright infringement and inspiration/just happened to have similar ideas can feel a little tricky at times but that’s something you learn to recognize with time and by reading a lot (nothing like having read and watched ten completely different stories with the same premise to understand how common ideas really are).
February 4, 2016
When you said I was your number one, I didn’t know that meant there was a two and three.
In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite.
Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.
Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
February 3, 2016
sixpenceee:
These incredibly unique and almost otherworldly...
These incredibly unique and almost otherworldly sand sculptures created by Matt Kaliner are unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
