License to Steal

Last week during our discussion of AU fan fiction, we briefly touched on the subject of plagiarism. I insisted what I was doing—writing stories while picturing certain actors/characters as the leads, with nothing else in common with the original TV show/inspiration—wasn't stealing. I don't see how it could be, given those parameters, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't think like one. Both DC and Marvel Comics say you can't call your costumed characters "superheroes" any more, and don't get me started on Disney. I'm not taking any chances of getting slapped with a cease-and-desist.

Except for what I'm about to discuss.

I've noticed a form of plagiarism that appears to be okay. You're still taking somebody else's words and using them as yours, but people shrug and look the other way. I've seen it done on TV, in movies, and in print. I've done it myself. Nobody's come banging on my door in the middle of the night. Yet.

Here's my personal tale of filching: My first published novel (as opposed to short story or novella) was the romance A London Werewolf in America. My werewolf hero came to Philadelphia and fell in love with a (human) witch. It was established right from the get-go that the werewolves referred to humans as monkeys, apes, simians, primates, and words of that nature. Shapeshifter speciesism. You get the picture.

Then I got to the part where an alpha wolf's brother gets shot. The brother's dying. The alpha's going berserk. The witch tries to help. She's human, and the shooter was human. The alpha's on the brink of attacking her.

And all of a sudden that famous line from Planet of the Apes lodges in my brain and won't go away. I couldn't help it. I had to put it in. The witch is up to her wrists in werewolf blood and the alpha screams at her, "Take your stinking paws off him, you damn dirty ape!"

What the hell. It fit in context. I figured if there was a problem, the editor would let me know about it.

The editor did mention it, but it was more of a "I see what you did here" than a "take that the hell out, you bloody thief." We had a laugh over it. I left it in. So did the editor. The book came out, got good reviews, and nobody brought it up, least of all the lawyers for 20th Century Fox.

Later in that same book the witch and her werewolf boyfriend capture and question one of the bad guys. "Bite me, chickie," he tells her. "And your little dog, too." The editor didn't even comment on that one. Neither did anyone else.

But it's still stealing, right? Those aren't my words. They are obviously not my words. I think that's one of the reasons I was able to get away with it.

The other reason is, the book under discussion was intended as a comedy. That seems to be the magic Get Out of Jail Free card in these circumstances. If you're writing a comedy, a spoof, or a satire, you can get away with almost anything. There were enough original gags, one-liners, setups and humorous situations in London Werewolf (even the title is a play on John Landis's movie title, An American Werewolf in London) that the Apes line came across as just another punchline. Because it and the Wizard of Oz line are so well-known, there's no question I lifted them. Everybody already knows from where. I'm not trying to put anything over on anybody. My thievery is right out there in the open for all to see, and I'm using it to get laughs. Make people laugh and they'll forgive you for a little literary snatch-and-grab.

I think the winner of the Pilferage Sweepstakes has to be the classic "Do you feel lucky?" speech from Dirty Harry. One time I saw variations on it on two different TV shows in the same week. One was a cartoon. (Specifically, the old '90s X-Men cartoon show. Specifically, Wolverine. Wolverine was born to sneer, "Do you feel lucky?" at people. Batman was born to growl, "Go ahead. Make my day." Which he did, in an issue of Batman and the Outsiders.) I even saw a version of it used, with dragons, in a Discworld novel by the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett. Pratchett was a satiric genius. Are you going to try to convince me he was a plagiarist?

Of course he wasn't. Neither am I or any of the other writers whose works I noted above. Neither was the guy who used the Wizard of Oz line before I did, in a Dungeons and Dragons novel, of all places. Yes, it was a humorous one. Yes, we all knew what he was referring to. That's what makes the joke funny.

It's when you take other writers' words—sometimes by the paragraph—and deliberately try to pass them off as your own that the law has to step in. 50 Shades of Grey was not plagiarism, in spite of its origins. E. L. James lifted Stephenie Meyer's storytelling techniques, not her words. She changed the characters before she changed their names. That guy who wrote a spy novel by cobbling together scenes and sometimes whole chapters from other, published spy novels, including some James Bond books, was a plagiarist. The people who lift entire books off Amazon or fanfic sites, change the character names and then slap their own bylines on them and try to sell them are not only plagiarists, they should be burned at the stake. And their little dogs, too.

Meanwhile, I've been toying with the idea of whether or not it's possible to write an entire novel using only movie quotes. It would have to be a humor book, of course. One of those novelty books where you see how many of the quotes you can guess the origin of. Which means every single line in the book would need to be identified in the back, so you can check your answers. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of plagiarism.

Forget it. That's way too much trouble. Somebody else can do it. I'm going to go write something original. And don't even think about stealing it, you damn dirty ape.

Aw, It's AU

I'm liable to get crucified for this, but I'm going to say it anyway: I just don't get some fan fiction.

Before you start hefting that brick, let me clarify. I love to read fanfic. Those Star Trek and Star Wars novels glutting the bookstore shelves? Authorized fanfic. My definition of fan fiction: stories set in a specific universe that aren't written by the original creator. So yeah, I say media tie-in novels and comic book continuations count. The only difference is, those writers get paid. We'll get back to that in a minute.

The stuff produced by actual fans, available for free on sites like FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own, ain't all that bad either. Sure, some of it sucks, but according to Sturgeon's Law 90% of everything sucks. In the ten percent that doesn't suck you'll find the bestselling authors of tomorrow, honing their skills in their favorite universe. I'm surprised some of them aren't writing professionally already. Maybe some of them are. Pro writers do write fanfic. Why not? It's fun.

I've written my share of fanfic in my time. Back in high school I wrote a whole series starring the X-Men. None of it saw print, thank God, but some concepts I developed in those stories later made their way into my first professional SF story sale. I also discovered I had a taste for writing M/M, long before I knew it even existed as a genre. My book Temptation and Tights was my M/M tribute to those old superhero stories.

Two of my fanfic stories that did see print (actual print; this was pre-Internet) were set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe. One was a crossover with Alien; the other featured Q because I love Q. Put him in a scene with Data and the story writes itself.

A couple years back I discovered Supernatural and became obsessed with Cas, Sam and Dean, in that order. Again, none of my fanfic scribblings saw print and again, thank God.

Or did they?

I haven't made any secret that most of my recent books wouldn't have existed without Supernatural's influence. Belonging was a tribute to Wincest. Jessalina's Pets was inspired by the Season 9 publicity photos of Sam and Dean in cages. Just last week I sold a story to an ebook publisher; it's Destiel in all its glory, and I have a couple others in the works. The question is, are these fan fiction?

Fanfic writers, get ready to hurl those bricks. Here's where we diverge.

I say they're not, and not just because I want to avoid plagiarism charges. The stories mentioned above and the others I've written/am writing/hope to write do not take place in the Supernatural universe, and do not star Sam, Dean and Castiel. The plots do not involve two brothers hunting monsters. The closest I've come in that regard so far was Belonging, where the "Dean" character was a vampire slayer. These stories take place in different milieus, with different characters who have different personalities. They just happen to look like the actors, if only in my head.

When fanfic writers do this, it's called alternate universe, or AU. If you know anything about the genesis of 50 Shades of Grey, then you're familiar with this. 50 Shades was originally a fanfic story starring Bella and Edward and all the sex they never had in the Twilight series. E. L. James took the characters and put them in a different world and different situations and let them go to town. Later she changed their names to Ana and Christian and got the book published, and the rest is history.

Personally, I don't see the point of AU. In my mind, fanfic is stories written by fans using their favorite characters and set in the milieu of the book or TV show or whatever. It's stories that take place between books or broadcast episodes, the untold stories, the "good stuff" we're not getting from the official product, or "canon." Like Destiel. C'mon, you guys. Dean and Cas belong together. Everybody knows it. So what if Jensen and Misha are two straight married guys? Too bad. The fans want to see it, if the tons of Destiel fanfic out there are any indication. You're actors and you're under contract. Suck it up.

Stories that explore things like this I don't mind at all. It's when you start switching things around, moving characters out of their universe and changing everything but the names that I question it. You want Bella and Edward to have a BDSM relationship? Go for it. But change them into a businessman and his assistant with nary a vampire in sight? Why? Or Dean and Castiel getting it on? I'm all for it. Oh wait, they're both in high school now, and Castiel's not an angel. It's not Twilight or Supernatural any more so really, why even bother?

I guess it's because you love these characters and you want to play with them in different situations. I can dig it. Playing with a fascinating character is what makes writing fun. What I can't dig is changing everything about the characters and the universe that pulled you into that particular fandom in the first place. If you're going to do that, why not just write an original story with original characters, and imagine your favorite actors playing these new roles?

Which is what I'm doing, for a practical reason: I want to get paid but not sued. I have bills. I have expenses. I need to work for a living. I'd like to make a living as a writer. I don't have time to write free stuff. (I had a day job when I wrote the ST:TNG stories, so I didn't mind giving them away.) If I was writing real Supernatural fanfic, it would be with those characters as defined on the show, set in that particular universe. And it would have to be for free, because I don't own the copyrights. "Free" doesn't fill up my gas tank or pay my utility bills.

That's why it's Christian and Ana and not Edward and Bella doing kinky stuff for three novels. That's why it's not Ginny Weasley getting snuggly with Draco Malfoy in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series. And that's why those two guys in the pic up there aren't Dean and Castiel. When I write that story they'll be two different people, living in a world far different from the Supernatural universe. Or at least different enough to keep me out of court.

There will not be a fan fiction version. My stories are not repurposed fanfic. I skipped that step in the progression and went right for the legal, saleable stuff. I also skipped the fanbase, and therefore the sales, James and Clare built up with their original fanfic stories. It's a tradeoff.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping a close eye on Amazon's Kindle Worlds program. Amazon's got the tie-in rights to a number of properties, like Vampire Diaries and the Valiant Comics characters. Fans can write their own stories in these selected universes and earn royalties for them. Yes, you can get paid for writing certain fanfic. If they ever get the rights to Supernatural, I'm gonna be all over that so fast your head will spin. I've already got a couple stories in mind—stories set in that particular universe, starring those particular characters. The AU stuff I save for my original fiction. Those are concepts I own. If one of my "AU" books takes off, I'm in the catbird seat.

I leave you with this bit of irony: I hear 50 Shades has its own fan fiction. Wrap your head around that one, folks, and happy reading!

Fan Fickle

Before the mudslinging begins, let me say here and now that I enjoy fan fiction. I’ve even written some: back in the ‘90s I published a couple Star Trek: The Next Generation stories. (In one of them, Wesley complained to a teacher that he wanted more of a challenge. The teacher programmed the Holodeck with Alien. This is why I should not be allowed anywhere near media tie-ins.)

I’m still writing fan fiction, sort of. Or maybe it isn’t. You be the judge.

These days I have a love/hate relationship with fanfic. I love to read it. If a show or book or characters move me, I love to write it. However, now that I’m a grownup with expenses and trying to make a living with my keyboard, I hate writing something I know will never earn me money. Unless you’re writing 50 Shades of Grey, which is a whole other animal.

There’s a way around this, however, that lets me write what amounts to fan fiction (at least to me) while allowing me to sell it to pro markets without having to look over my shoulder for lawyers and plagiarism suits.

What’s this marvelous invention that lets me have my cake and write about it too? It’s called Alternate Universe, or AU for short.

Basically, it’s your favorite characters … but not really. They might be younger or older than they are in the show/book/movie, or in high school, or different genders, or have different occupations, or be gay (helpful if you’re writing slash). It’s not the official characters from the official show/book/movie background; it’s folks from the universe next door. This allows you to do whatever you want with your faves and not have to worry about things like lawsuits and stealing and keeping them in character. You get to play with the toys in your playground.

For instance: a fanfic story where Harry Potter is an American would be AU. Stories where Sam and Dean aren’t brothers and can therefore indulge in their overwhelming lust for each other without the squick factor are also AU, if a bit questionable. Or Dr. Who as your high school science teacher (how'd you like to go on his field trips!). You get the idea.

I used to question this. I mean, if you’re going to change the characters to the point they’re practically unrecognizable, why even bother calling it fanfic? I always thought fanfic was about writing additional adventures of your heroes—the untold stories, as it were. All the worldbuilding’s already been done, you just plug Harry or the Doctor or the Winchesters into your plot and see what they do. What’s the point of AU? If you’re going to change them that much, why not just write an original story with original characters?

Okay, yeah, they can have sex. And they do. Holy guacamole, do they have sex. More than they do on TV, and in a lot more interesting positions. If you want to see where the new crop of erotica writers is coming from, check out fanfic sites.

And then I realized the real attraction: change things around enough, and it becomes an original story with original characters … which means you can sell it for real-world money and not be called a plagiarist.

All of a sudden I’m in the mood to write me some AU fanfic.

It’s been done, and long before Edward and Bella got name changes and started having kinky sex as Christian and Ana. That’s just the most famous example. I recall flipping through a SF paperback and recognizing characters and concepts I first ran across in a Star Wars fanfic. I’ve heard there’s quite a number of paranormal romances out there that started life as Buffy/Spike stories. To my knowledge I’ve never read one, but I’d love to.

And, of course, there’s my own book, Belonging, which would have been M/F except I got hooked on Supernatural. That one’s extreme AU, Wincest division. Made watching the show really interesting for a while.

Why not just write original characters? Turns out I did. They just look and sound a helluva lot like Sam and Dean. I got to flex my fan fiction muscles while writing a book I could pay bills with. And not a lawyer in sight.

Let me set the record straight on one thing: don’t go skimming through fanfic sites looking for the fanfic version. There isn’t one. There never was. Yes, people do “file off the serial numbers” and publish rewritten fan fiction. I skipped that stage and went straight to the original version. Saves time. Only trouble is, if you do that you lose out on the fanfic audience that follows your stories and, hopefully, will buy your non-fannish stuff. Well, Supernatural doesn’t have the huge fandom that Twilight enjoys anyway. I doubt if I missed out on much.

I’m still doing it, too. The book I just finished started out with Sam and Dean as the leads again. They didn’t stay that way for long. Within a chapter they’d developed totally different personalities, and somewhere along the way I realized Dean’s character actually looks more like Tom Hiddleston/Loki. But it makes writing dialogue so much easier when you can hear a specific voice saying the lines in your head. To say nothing of the fun in visualizing the sex scenes.

For my next project, I’m mulling over a story for a Halloween anthology. I’ve decided to “cast” Dean and Castiel as my heroes. Under different names, of course. And different backgrounds and personalities. And lots of slashy sex. I always wanted to try my hand at some hot Destiel. Why the hell not? Nobody needs to know, and I need to fill up the gas tank. Off to the alternate universe!

Slippery Slope

I'll come right out and say it: I'm a pessimist. After last week's foray into fan fiction, I got wondering about a couple of things. 50 Shades of Grey to the contrary, there's no money to be made in fanfic. They're not your characters. They belong to E. L. James and Stephenie Meyer and J. K. Rowling and Eric Kripke and Joss Whedon or whoever created them in the first place. We write this stuff for the love, not the money, because trying to make money from it is called plagiarism. If you absolutely have to write fanfic and still want to get a check, you can do what I did: write an original story and "cast" the actors from the TV show as the leads. Chances are, if you're writing AU (alternate universe) to start with, the story and characters are going to mutate anyway and by the time you're done you'll have an original work on your hands. Saves a lot of bucks on lawyer fees.

That scene I wrote last week was meant as a joke, just for laughs. But my pessimistic brain got to thinking. Suppose, in the wide open world of the Internet, somebody connected to the show stumbled across my joke scene. Suppose they liked it, enough that they decided to incorporate it onto the show or in one of the tie-in books. Suppose they did this without telling me. So one evening I'm watching the show, or reading a book, and there's my scene, almost word-for-word. Either it's the most amazing coincidence in the history of TV fiction, or I've just been ripped off.

What are my legal options? I'd say zip. It was a piece of fanfic, stuck on the web as a free read for everyone to see and rip off. The characters don't belong to me. If anyone would be accused to stealing it would be me, for using someone else's creations in the first place.

This is all hypothetical, of course, and the odds are astronomically against it actually happenings. Too bad. I'd love to see that scene on TV, even if I didn't get paid for it.

And then, in the world of weird coincidences, I ran across a thread on  the Absolute Write forums (www.absolutewrite.com) that took my paranoid can of worms and slapped a whole new label on it. See what you think about this:

There's this indie writer (can't remember his name, Howey something or other; maybe I'll look it up later) who indie published a story, "Wool," and a number of sequels. It did well and got him noticed. "Howey" has a publisher now, and his "Wool" series has fans and a following.

"Howey" appreciates his fans so much he's encouraging them to write their own stories set in the "Wool" universe. Not just write them, but publish them. On Amazon. For money.

Yeah, you read that right. This guy is encouraging his readers to write, publish and sell their own fanfic based on his original concepts. What a guy.

And what a potential mess.

Hey, it's his decision. If he wants to give away his rights and cut into his own profits, that's up to him. I'm not sure what his publisher or agent thinks about this. Here's what the folks on AW think: is he out of his freakin' mind? Does he expect to get a percentage from any derivative works? What happens if somebody writes something that violates his concept of his universe? What happens if it takes off, a la 50 Shades? Would he go after the writer then? Who now owns the rights to his creation, if he's basically given them away?

Or the question that occurred to me after I wrote last week's scene, but didn't want to mention for fear of giving unscrupulous people ideas: what's to stop somebody from taking all that free literature that's been posted all over the Internet, changing a few names and scenes here and there, and selling it as your own?  What legal recourse do you have if it was fan fiction to start with?

Or, as I explained to Savanna, suppose someone else had turned E. L. James's original fan fiction into 50 Shades of Grey? What could she do? Go cry to Stephenie Meyers?

I think I'll avoid the whole mess by not writing fanfic any more. Or if I do, it'll only be short scenes like last week's. Or I won't post it where it can be pirated by anyone with a computer. I like to make money from what I do. That's why those books I mentioned earlier in the post never had a fanfic version. I've never denied its origins, but it's an original work now, and I own it. So there.

We'll be putting a copyright notice up on the Shapeshifter Seductions blog in the near future. We've had enough problems excising all the risky names from the characters for indie publication (it was fine when we were doing it for free, but once you start raking in the bucks lawyers come sniffing around). Now people are going to listen to this guy and think it's okay to rip off any book or TV show because this one writer said so. Not our stuff, folks. We own it. Hands off.

Fasten your seatbelts, readers. We're in for a bumpy ride. I think that paraphrased line is from All About Eve. I'm citing all references from here on in.