Writers Central

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VirginiaMay
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Re: Writers Central

Post by VirginiaMay »

*dusts off my own soapbox*

Openhome~ I think you hit is dead on when you pointed out the following:
openhome wrote:I also have a very hard time with the ideas of:
1) pulling your fic to make money off of it after it was posted as a fanfiction. Why pull it if it is a "new" story? It's not like the story will disappear.
2) lying to a fan base that supported you and then expecting them to pay for the thing. That seemed like a very unscrupulous thing to do.
Perfect word there: unscrupulous. Nobody says you have to leave your stories out there forever, but it really, really irks me that he didn't even wait for the thing to be completed all the way through before pulling it. I think that the final chapter was up for maybe a week or two tops?? And never once was the entire story up with epilogues et al. I know there are dozens of people out there who reviewed every chapter and pimped the story out like crazy, and never even got to finish it. Does anyone really think they're going to run off and buy it now? Like this?? Had he wanted to be a legitimate author there was nothing stopping him, but it is really, really sad that this is the route he chose to take. SR came off as a highly intelligent, creative and very capable writer. I never would have pegged him as one to go about getting published like this.
openhome wrote:This leads me to ask why he didn't go with an established publishing house.

In SR's case, why isn't Random House or even Harlequin asking to publish his work? It was certainly written well enough to be published by them. So, why wasn't it?

My guess is that he must have taken the first offer that came his way and I'm also guessing that Omnific approached him while it was still a "work in progress". I have to wonder if SR even tried to get a query together and find a literary agent who could help get major publishers to look at his story as an original all on its own. ???

(And for those of you who are unaware or wondering why we wouldn't consider Omnific an established publisher, that is because it is owned/operated by the same people who started Twilighted.net. Many of their staff are former and current fanfic writers and betas in the Twilight fandom. Kinda makes you go "hmmm...")

Lastly...
Openhome wrote: Fanfiction, no matter how original, is a form of legal plagiarism. I admit it, freely. The fact that the authors allow fanfic writers to write is simply a matter of grace and legal gray areas. I hope for SR's sake that he did alter it because if the book reads exactly like the fanfic, that is a very shaky legal position to be in.


My thoughts on this aren't really specific to UofEM, but just thoughts in general.

It seems to me that other than the names "Bella" and "Edward", most All-Human fanfiction has very, very little - if any - material that could be tied back to Twilight or Stephenie Meyer. Am I wrong there? The names and family trees of the original characters belong to SM in the context of the world of Twilight. The plot of a clumsy young girl moving to a new town and falling in love with a good-looking vampire belongs to Stephenie. Sparkling vampires, vampires with funky abilities, shape-shifting werewolves, hybrids, the Volturi, shiny-silver Volvos and little yellow Porches... those all belong to Stephenie Meyer as well. But outside of those indisputable facts, it seems that many hopeful authors claim that they've re-worked an original idea they had and just borrowed SM's character names so that they can get their stuff out there and get feedback right away. I'm sure it's not a great way to go about crafting your own story, but is using fanfiction as a platform for your own work always a form of stealing??

I don't know the answer to that as it hurts my brain to think about it too much. But I guess that questions and others like it are (as Kayla said) a very good reason to keep your fanfiction as fanfiction, and keep your original work to yourself.

Sorry for the rant... *steps down and puts soapbox back in storage* ;)
Amanda Beth
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Amanda Beth »

TBH, I don't think any legit company would publish it BECAUSE it started as a fanfic. Even though SM allows us to write fanfiction (for those that don't know, not all authors do), it's still looked down upon in the majority of the publishing world.

UoEM will never be a hardcover book. It'll never be on the front shelves of B&N. Maybe I'm being a publishing snob, but when I say I want to be an author, that's what I want for myself. I don't want my books to go to mass market paperback right off the bat.

And I know what Kayla means. I see AH as plagiarism because even though Edward and Bella don't necessarily have the same personality and are in difference circumstances, the AH writers were inspired by SOMEONE ELSES CHARACTERS. This goes for UoEM, TEF, CW&IA, WA..etc etc. They are using the NUMBER ONE thing that the entire saga revolves around...Edward and Bella's LOVE. Their absolute devotion to each other, the fact that being together makes NO sense, the odds that they face and overcome...THOSE are what makes them TWILIGHT fanfics. SM created that LOVE and that is what the stories "steal" from it. There is no amount of reworking that can change a fanfic enough.

And maybe I see this more now after the painstaking task of writing my own story. Characters are hard to create, their relationships between them are even harder to form, and above all...to make people fall in love with them is definitely the hardest of all.
Susie
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Susie »

Hey - Thanks to Openhome, I found you!

You've all been very informative. I agree that it is a form of plagiarism at worst and sheer laziness at best, using someone else's characters. So, don't do that, Ginnie, for your yet-to-be-conceived best seller.
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Amanda Beth
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Amanda Beth »

Susie, I think you are misunderstanding what we were saying. We all love fanfics obviously...and AH(all human) fics which are well written can be great. Calling them plagiarism in this situation is not hating on any of the works--hell, I write canon fics which is 100000% plagiarism. And it's not laziness because SR most likely didn't begin writing UoEM with the idea it would ever be a published book. I think what Kayla and I are getting at is that it's still riding someone else's coattails even if the story isn't in the world of Twilight and he changes the characters names.
Susie
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Susie »

Amanda Beth - Actually I did understand!! And I agree.
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VirginiaMay
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Re: Writers Central

Post by VirginiaMay »

Susie~ Do you not know me at all? :lol: J/K. I know what you mean by laziness though. I think I told you that "Timing is Everything" was an original idea that I had started a long time ago and I never did anything with it. It was a scene or two and that was it. It just had no life of its own for me and the characters weren't working, so I abandoned it. When I realized that I could dust it off for Fandom for Preemies, it became something new and I found it worked much better for "Bella" and "Edward" than it did for my more realistic characters. And what AmandaBeth said about Edward and Bella's love??? That was totally what made that story click as fanfiction, where it had always fizzled before. However, because of that, that story completely and totally belongs to the fandom now and always will.
VirginiaMay
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Re: Writers Central

Post by VirginiaMay »

Hey Ladies & Gents...

Some of you may be interested in this: The Twilight Fanfiction New Year's Challenge.

I'm not entirely sure I understand how it works just yet, but it sounds interesting and it's good timing for me. Especially, if it helps me finish WDH. I've sent an email to ask for clarification on what it entails, but if any of you have ever done something like this I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. :)

Oh, and FYI- original fiction is welcome in this challenge, but I don't know if I would want people to be able to see or keep track of my original writing if it were me. (As my fanfic stories don't really belong to me anyway, I don't mind so much sharing what I've written for those.)
missp
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Re: Writers Central

Post by missp »

Hmmm... SR publishing UofEM... interesting. I won't drag the soap box back out of its storage place, but I will say DITTO to all the wonderfully eloquent statements made by Kayla, Ginnie, Amanda Beth, and Susie.

I also have a discussion question for Ya'll.
Would/do these stories have the same draw WITHOUT the characters (Edward, Bella, Alice, Jasper, etc) that drew us to them in the first place? Hmmm...
Openhome
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Openhome »

That is actually an excellent question. The answer is both yes and no. If an author did a good job of setting up their love as a part of the story, then the story will work on its own. If the author used the names as a took to set up the story itself, then no. Here is a fun thing to do, go and copy a chapter of one of your favorite fics. Use the find and replace tool in your word processor and change a few names. If the story works with the names Fred and Ethel just as well as Edward and Bella, it really is a well written story. Most of the time, it doesn't work. At all.

That is another reason that any author needs a complete re-write. Without the names, the story no longer works. I only know of a few AH fics that I think could pull it off.

By the way, do it for CWIA. It's HILARIOUS!
Amanda Beth
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Re: Writers Central

Post by Amanda Beth »

Out of all AH I've read I think WA would work with different names the best, but it's a bit late because we know the stories and characters. But like I said, even if they're rewritten, they were inspired by someone else's creations and therefore the story, IMHO, is not an original piece of work. And I'm not saying it's wrong to be inspired by someone else's story, there's just a line that fanfiction crosses no matter who's names are where. I don't think I'd like AH stories all that much if I didn't already LOVE SM's characters. That's why the AH are popular. Put Edward in a bow tie, tattoos or doctor's jacket -- we first and foremost, even if it's subconscious, connect to him as the original Edward and just learn the tweaks in the AH story as we read. Same with Alice, Bella etc etc.

SM said it best in an interview with fansites (I believe before Eclipse came out?). She doesn't understand the fanfiction and why they don't just write their own books. I wouldn't write an AH fanfic because if I'm going to write a whole new plot I'd make it MY story. I wrote LAF and TPC for the sole purpose of ending the saga for myself because it wasn't done to me...so although others enjoyed them also, it was a selfish need. Same reason I wrote a (short) Mockingjay fic.

In other news....BAD BAD BAD WRITERS BLOCK. I just cannot connect two parts of the story and I'M SO CLOSE TO BEING DONE. The big edit I did with changing the age of the one character really wasn't bad at all and I got a bit more out of the story because of it. I really wanted to finish the entire book over my winter vacation but, as I was explaining to my mother, I can't force it out because I'll hate it and delete it eventually anyway. Where is that smilie that's banging it's head against a wall when I need it?
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