Thoughts on other authors using your character?

[TheWritingGroup]

I included @Joe_Doe_Stories in two of mine as an off-screen character, but I have his permission. I hint at @Carl_Bradford (who appears to not have a Forum account) in another story, again with his consent.

 

[FrancesScott]

I’m curious about author’s feeling on other authors using their characters in other works.

I can’t think of any of my characters that I would be happy for other authors to write. They are my children and I love them all.

And part of the point of my Community Pool anthology series is me being able to include an ever growing cast list in supporting or lead roles.

I guess the only exception is Alistair from Alistair’s Harmless Fanstasy.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Places, rather than in-universe celebrities: I still think it’d be pretty cool to curate a list of fake companies that located a bunch of unrelated stories into the same alternate reality without overlapping characters in space and time. Your New Orleans story is happening in the same timeline as his Chicago story and her London story.

I think in particular there are people who fantasize about sex clubs or nude beaches they’ve never actually been to one and I’ve seen at least one thread in my short time in AH of someone worrying about that sort of authenticity. And for very practical reasons there are no or very few photo albums of these places. It’s a different skill than describing how someone’s outfit makes you feel. Or their giggle. Or that little… ahem, what were we talking about?

I could probably knock out a description of a hotel or a beach in an hour or two and then spend four days agonizing over a flirtation. Just based on how many people I’ve had to help assemble furniture or pack a moving van it’s clear there are many, many people who have the reverse problem. And I’ve read stories where the clothing optional hotel or the sex club feels real even though I’m fairly sure they were made up. But those are comparatively rare.

Sounds like another PBP venture to me.

The whole point of Plot Bunny Pens and Free-Use Characters Klub™ is to create repositories for people to contribute to and use. Partly because of the issues I've seen mentioned from time to time where someone wants to pick up where someone left off, because they passed or didn't have time or didn't want to continue some story that other people are really interested in continuing or branching off. That way, we might be able to avoid some of the stickier issues around "well, I don't know if this person is okay, and my messages never get replies." Also a place where someone who's stuck and doesn't have any ideas can just poke around, maybe something inspires them. And it allows for fun collaboration and fleshing out of ideas and nonsense.

Might be good to also have a thread where people can just grant carte blanche access to their characters. Simpler, but I've seen a few people basically say they wouldn't mind if someone came and used their characters. Rather than trawl through the threads to find permission buried somewhere, this would be a way to centralize and make visible all of these things.

I'm down for creating a couple more threads of this nature. Probably should also have a collated thread to point people to all the various places to check for usable ideas/characters/places/etc. Emphasis always being on crediting the creators. But I dunno how much interest there is in these projects. There are clearly a few people, but obviously it only really accounts for authors who are on the forums and know about them.

 

[liliput1]

Sounds like another PBP venture to me.

The whole point of Plot Bunny Pens and Free-Use Characters Klub™ is to create repositories for people to contribute to and use. Partly because of the issues I've seen mentioned from time to time where someone wants to pick up where someone left off, because they passed or didn't have time or didn't want to continue some story that other people are really interested in continuing or branching off. That way, we might be able to avoid some of the stickier issues around "well, I don't know if this person is okay, and my messages never get replies." Also a place where someone who's stuck and doesn't have any ideas can just poke around, maybe something inspires them. And it allows for fun collaboration and fleshing out of ideas and nonsense.

Might be good to also have a thread where people can just grant carte blanche access to their characters. Simpler, but I've seen a few people basically say they wouldn't mind if someone came and used their characters. Rather than trawl through the threads to find permission buried somewhere, this would be a way to centralize and make visible all of these things.

I'm down for creating a couple more threads of this nature. Probably should also have a collated thread to point people to all the various places to check for usable ideas/characters/places/etc. Emphasis always being on crediting the creators. But I dunno how much interest there is in these projects. There are clearly a few people, but obviously it only really accounts for authors who are on the forums and know about them.

May be the best we can manage but a wiki would be the most effective way to handle such things. Tangents are fun when making them or reading them real time but they are problematic a year later.

 

[anthrodisiac]

May be the best we can manage but a wiki would be the most effective way to handle such things. Tangents are fun when making them or reading them real time but they are problematic a year later.

Absolutely a wiki would be better, but as far as I know Lit doesn't have one and I'm not up for hosting and managing one, so threads to poke through is the best I can think of. Of course, that assumes anyone is interested in using them for anything more than just dumping things off.

 

[AlinaX]

When we wrote the Lights, Camera, Blood chain story, I knew from the start that the characters would be shared. Even so, I'll admit to never being entirely happy with how Mircalla was portrayed by the other writers. Or maybe it wasn't *how* they wrote her, just *that* they wrote her.

It was a bit swings and roundabouts. The same freedom that allowed us to pull the characters and plots in different directions as tickled our fancies also meant a degree of low level frustration that our individual visions didn't develop in the ways we wanted with others.

Mircalla was always going to be difficult to write, because she's so many different people wrapped up together. I had an idea for who she was and you breathed life into her - and then set her on a trajectory that was quite the opposite to where I needed her to be. But I really think she works in the end, despite and because of the tensions between us authors.

Now Anna, on the other hand, who was written by me at the very beginning as a curious side character, something of a witch, possibly even a vampire, got dragged into the very centre of the plot and ended up as something even more bizarre. I'm still scratching my head over that.

I think what we created together is amazing and I love it, even if it is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster plot.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Sounds like another PBP venture to me.

The whole point of Plot Bunny Pens and Free-Use Characters Klub™ is to create repositories for people to contribute to and use. Partly because of the issues I've seen mentioned from time to time where someone wants to pick up where someone left off, because they passed or didn't have time or didn't want to continue some story that other people are really interested in continuing or branching off.

Not sure condoning this is a wise thing to do. The near universal response, (I know, there are exceptions) whenever the question gets asked, "Can I continue with someone else's story?" is fundamentally no, not unless you have explicit permission. Which is also the site's stated policy position.

That way, we might be able to avoid some of the stickier issues around "well, I don't know if this person is okay, and my messages never get replies."

These are not really sticky "issues", they're fundamental courtesies and writer's ethics - don't touch someone else's stories or characters unless the original author says you can.

Also a place where someone who's stuck and doesn't have any ideas can just poke around, maybe something inspires them. And it allows for fun collaboration and fleshing out of ideas and nonsense.

That's fine, but also what the Story Ideas forum is for.

Might be good to also have a thread where people can just grant carte blanche access to their characters. Simpler, but I've seen a few people basically say they wouldn't mind if someone came and used their characters. Rather than trawl through the threads to find permission buried somewhere, this would be a way to centralize and make visible all of these things.

You can get stickies put at the top of the forum, but these remain constant questions - people don't pay much attention to what's already here. Especially new writers, who are nearly always the ones asking the same questions.

I'm down for creating a couple more threads of this nature. Probably should also have a collated thread to point people to all the various places to check for usable ideas/characters/places/etc. Emphasis always being on crediting the creators. But I dunno how much interest there is in these projects. There are clearly a few people, but obviously it only really accounts for authors who are on the forums and know about them.

Call me a grumpy old bastard, but the topic of, "Other writer's stories, can I...?" is one of the AH monthlies, and has been for over a decade, and even with the best will in the world, impossible to corral in one place.

It's always best, I think, to treat each question each time it's asked, on its own merits. The folk asking the question - it never occurs to them that it's been asked a hundred times already, because they really really want to finish someone else's story...

... rather than writing their own.

 

[liliput1]

Absolutely a wiki would be better, but as far as I know Lit doesn't have one and I'm not up for hosting and managing one, so threads to poke through is the best I can think of. Of course, that assumes anyone is interested in using them for anything more than just dumping things off.

Yeah I just like to complain sometimes

 

[liliput1]

Not sure condoning this is a wise thing to do. The near universal response, (I know, there are exceptions) whenever the question gets asked, "Can I continue with someone else's story?" is fundamentally no, not unless you have explicit permission. Which is also the site's stated policy position.

These are not really sticky "issues", they're fundamental courtesies and writer's ethics - don't touch someone else's stories or characters unless the original author says you can.

That's fine, but also what the Story Ideas forum is for.

You can get stickies put at the top of the forum, but these remain constant questions - people don't pay much attention to what's already here. Especially new writers, who are nearly always the ones asking the same questions.

Call me a grumpy old bastard, but the topic of, "Other writer's stories, can I...?" is one of the AH monthlies, and has been for over a decade, and even with the best will in the world, impossible to corral in one place.

It's always best, I think, to treat each question each time it's asked, on its own merits. The folk asking the question - it never occurs to them that it's been asked a hundred times already, because they really really want to finish someone else's story...

... rather than writing their own.

Or more charitably, they see plot bunnies and those are harder to rewrite from scratch without plagiarism.

But I hear you on the Eternal September thing. Brains work a lot alike and so the same chain of events keeps happening over and over. (Epiphanies also make you stupid to other concerns, so there’s that too)

 

[Katie_Mae]

Absolutely a wiki would be better, but as far as I know Lit doesn't have one and I'm not up for hosting and managing one, so threads to poke through is the best I can think of. Of course, that assumes anyone is interested in using them for anything more than just dumping things off.

Honestly this is what I wonder also.
Someone writing fanfic of my work, drawing fan art, using a character, borrowing an idea for technology and so on doesn't negatively impact me at all. Of course, I'm happy to allow it.

But, any derivative work, the love of the source material surely comes first? Someone reads a book, thinks two characters would make a cute couple and draw them as a couple. Someone reads a book, sees an awesome piece of technology and thinks, "in the book it's used for military use. But it would work great for virtual sex" and they run with that idea.

Does it go the other way? "I need to do a fan work, so I'm going to try and find an author I can do fan work of," is never a thought I've had.

Me allowing fan works takes no effort. Fan work takes effort. Surely there would be more people willing to allow fan works than people looking for some random amateur author they've never met to do fan works of or be inspired by?

Not to dismiss your idea, but more agreeing with your concern it might just be a place to dump things off which never get used, rather than a useful too, as such.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Honestly this is what I wonder also.
Someone writing fanfic of my work, drawing fan art, using a character, borrowing an idea for technology and so on doesn't negatively impact me at all. Of course, I'm happy to allow it.

But, any derivative work, the love of the source material surely comes first? Someone reads a book, thinks two characters would make a cute couple and draw them as a couple. Someone reads a book, sees an awesome piece of technology and thinks, "in the book it's used for military use. But it would work great for virtual sex" and they run with that idea.

Does it go the other way? "I need to do a fan work, so I'm going to try and find an author I can do fan work of," is never a thought I've had.

Me allowing fan works takes no effort. Fan work takes effort. Surely there would be more people willing to allow fan works than people looking for some random amateur author they've never met to do fan works of or be inspired by?

Not to dismiss your idea, but more agreeing with your concern it might just be a place to dump things off which never get used, rather than a useful too, as such.

Honestly, PBP was mostly just "people can dump plot bunnies here and whatever." Like a less specific Story Ideas. It's more a repository for ideas that could inspire someone, someone could like it, someone could build on it, spawn their own idea, etc. It was primarily a joke, rather than a serious project; more for fun than anything, but you never know what can happen. And if someone is just really hurting for ideas, or perusing for fun, they might come across something that really speaks to them and the original create gets some credit for helping out with that.

Also, people kept talking about plot bunnies in all these other threads, and I thought it'd be good to have a centralized location to dump them, give them a proper home rather than lingering on page 102 of some random thread where no one would ever find it.

Then some people started mentioning they wouldn't mind if people used their characters, and having a repository where someone could go "here, I give permission to use this character, here are the restrictions I have around it" could help facilitate that. Again, similar idea, probably most of these won't be used, but at least it's a front-facing repo where it's public who has given permission for what, everyone knows the boundaries around it, which makes enforcement and provenance more clear. Someone might just go poking through to see if there's a character that speaks to them.

At worst, it's a harmless, useless bit of nonsense. But both PBP and FUCK™ are very clear to check with the creators of the ideas/characters, get their blessing, just like you would in any other case where you approach them directly, unless that person has decided they don't care and the idea/character can be used however anyone wants.

 

[EmilyMiller]

A few people - me included - have said something like, “Use my cherished, fully-realized characters over my dead body [plus 70 years], but you can use this trope-laden, one dimensional character I kinda spent no time or effort on.”

I’m really unclear how that would help the author looking for a character for their latest story.

 

[AlinaX]

A few people - me included - have said something like, “Use my cherished, fully-realized characters over my dead body [plus 70 years], but you can use this trope-laden, one dimensional character I kinda spent no time or effort on.”

Our characters are our friends and children. We know them and want to protect them. And if we were offered enough money, we’d say, “Sure, turn the story into a film with a TV series and major fan fiction base. I can live with the pain of seeing my cherished characters do and say things they absolutely never would.”

 

[anthrodisiac]

Our characters are our friends and children. We know them and want to protect them. And if we were offered enough money, we’d say, “Sure, turn the story into a film with a TV series and major fan fiction base. I can live with the pain of seeing my cherished characters do and say things they absolutely never would.”

Like I would with any of my children.

 

[AlinaX]

Character building, innit.

 

[SavannaT]

I’d be flattered

 

[DEFCOM5]

If someone would ever ask me to use one of my characters, I think I would have a heart attack.

No self proclaimed author here has read any of my crap (not that I would want them to) and if they did, I doubt that they would find one character interesting enough to use in their own stories

 

[Annabelle1990]

I write about my real life (and my third story is overdue - I know) but I would be flattered if someone wrote a story about me.

 

[EmilyMiller]

No self proclaimed author here has read any of my crap

I have

 

[DEFCOM5]

I have

Yes because you are kind enough to have edited a couple of my works which happen to have the two highest ratings for any of my stories.

I would not want you to read the rest as it might make your eyes bleed!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Yes because you are kind enough to have edited a couple of my works which happen to have the two highest ratings for any of my stories.

I would not want you to read the rest as it might make your eyes bleed!

You are too hard on yourself, we all start somewhere. As I have told you before, you have excellent ideas, that’s the hard part. Improving execution is a matter of practice.

 

[StillStunned]

You are too hard on yourself, we all start somewhere. As I have told you before, you have excellent ideas, that’s the hard part. Improving execution is a matter of practice.

Quite right. None of us sprang from Zeus's head with a bestseller in one hand and the Booker Prize in the other.

 

[DEFCOM5]

You are too hard on yourself, we all start somewhere. As I have told you before, you have excellent ideas, that’s the hard part. Improving execution is a matter of practice.

I have an audience. My ratings (for what they are worth and need to be taken with a grain of salt) are positive. But I also know what I am peddling. And I know the level.

Quite right. None of us sprang from Zeus's head with a bestseller in one hand and the Booker Prize in the other.

I thought you did! Or did you hold a Pulitzer prize? or a Grand Prix de L'Academie Francaise?

 

[StillStunned]

I thought you did! Or did you hold a Pulitzer prize? or a Grand Prix de L'Academie Francaise?

No, it was an ego in one hand and a big mouth in the other. But it's an easy mistake to make.

 

[DEFCOM5]

No, it was an ego in one hand and a big mouth in the other. But it's an easy mistake to make.

Thank you for making me laugh. I needed!