Yep, that's the title to one of my plays.

I'd forgotten about it during all of last years rush to other things. Then I was looking for something else and rediscovered it. I then had to hunt down my Dramatists Sourcebook and decide on a theater to send it to. After all, it will never be produced if I don't send it out.

See, back then I actually went through the book page by page and marked specific theaters as especially good prospects for various plays.

Even with all that previous work it still took me all day to get the submission actually sent off.

But, it was a good feeling none the less.

For those of you who consider yourself a new writer - there is ONE trick to becoming published etc. - that secret is simply that publishing is a numbers game. You send off X number of pieces and you get X number of sales. That's it folks. SEND OUT YOUR WRITING. Even when you suck someone will buy it.

The only difference between you and those other authors is that what they are offered is currently MORE, not because their work is better than yours - a lot of the time it isn't better - they are offered more because they are slightly ahead of you as a BRAND or you are BRANDABLE (cute, special) - brands sell more and faster. That's it. Don't be sold on the idea that your writing sucks, unless you know it sucks. Mostly writing is decent to okay to maybe good to slightly better to good to even better to really fucking good.

Mallory

Tags: plays, submitting, the gold hairball
Current Mood: amused

Robot Jox is a fucking awful movie. It’s got an average review rating of 4.9 on IMDB, which is actually pretty good for something we watch as part of the Trashy Tuesday Movie series (and if you’re interested in seeing my immediate reactions to the film, the twitter stream is archived over on the TTM wiki), but it doesn’t change the basic problem. This film is a mess. A glorious, glorious mess.

Personally I think people on IMDB are rating the film too high. Of course, I personally don’t really think Robot Jox deserves to be called a film, since it utterly fails to achieve all but the most basic requirements. I mean, it is filmed, and I suppose we could call what’s happening on the screen acting if we’re being generous, but that’s really about it.

And yet, I’m going to suggest you go find a copy of this absolute dogs breakfast of a movie if you’ve got an interest in writing, ’cause it’s failures have some pretty important lessons in terms of figuring out how stories work. One of the reasons I adore some terrible movies is the opportunity they afford me to hone my writing chops, figuring out what mistakes to avoid and how things could be done better.

So if you’re up for the challenge, I’m going to help you. Track down a copy of the movie, make a tub of popcorn, grab yourself a notebook and let Stuart Gorden’s 1989 masterpiece school you on the following.

1) MOTIVATION, MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU NEED IT

The biggest failing of Robot Jox isn’t the out-of-date effects whenever two giant robots go to war. Instead, it’s the utter failure to establish anything resembling a character motivation for anyone who isn’t the villain. People have reasons for doing things, but they’re largely at the service of the plot.

When you watch this film, try and lock down what every character wants and why they can’t have it. It’ll drive you ten kinds of batty, ’cause it seems to change on a whim. Sometimes Achilles, our protagonist, wants to stop piloting giant robots ’cause it’s kinda pants as a career. Sometimes he’s really like sexy-times with one of the trainee pilots, who is also a clone.

Sometimes he’s kidded himself that his desire for sexy-times is actually the beginning of true love, despite the fact that the trainee pilot basically spends the film being all “I want to be the best damn giant fighting robot pilot in the world” and shows no real interest in Achilles at all.

Getting motivation is actually pretty easy: your character should want something they can’t have. Films are actually built around a central spine where the protagonist, whose wants we empathise with, is finally forced to confront their demons and go after that thing they really want. It doesn’t matter what it is: world peace; a Twinkie; dumping the one ring into Mount Doom so you can go back and live a simple life in the Shire. So long as they want, and there are obstacles, you’re golden. All the other sub-plots will hang off that.

What lets this film down isn’t the lack of motivation, but the lack of consistent motivation.

2) INTERTEXT IS AWESOME, ON THE NOSE IS NOT

I’m a big fan of films that make veiled intertextual references to other narratives. There is a delight, in these moments, where you get more meaning out of a scene or a plot point because you can see it’s echo. The key to these things is subtlety, making sure it’s there for the people who want to see, and gone for the people who don’t.

There is nothing charming when your main character is named Achilles and he pilots his giant robot into space purely so his enemy can shoot him in the foot. It’s making the reference ’cause the reference is there to be made and it serves no narrative purpose outside of that.

3) WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO GET YOU

Robot Jox is written by Joe Haldeman, whose actually an SF writer with some pretty serious chops and the ability to write an engaging narrative. Unfortunately he’s been hired by a director/producer who doesn’t have much interest in that, which results in the very uneven film you’re currently watching. Joe isn’t exactly happy about that. Go look at the Wikipedia entry for this film and check out  his comments, ’cause they’re pretty damning.

Believe it or not, this is a lesson for writers. Even the ones who aren’t interested in writing movies.

‘Cause fiction isn’t quite as collaborative as film-making is, but there are still a hell of a lot of people involved in the production and distribution of a book. Writers like to bitch about writing being a solitary profession, but you’re actually working with a team of editors, publishers, agents, etc over the course of your career.

Making sure you’re on the same wavelength and capable of working together is important.

4) YOUR CLIMAX SHOULD BE A MORAL CHOICE, BUT IT’S NOT AN AUTOMATIC KNOCKOUT

If you’re anything like me, you’ll hit the end of Robot Jox and start screaming obscenities at the film. Probably ’cause you demand an ending to a film that’s actually an ending, rather than a half-baked feel good moment that’s the narrative equivalent of hitting the ejector seat.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: the climax of the film isn’t about the action, it’s about the choice that’s made by one of the major characters. In Star Wars Luke Skywalker’s decision to trust the force is the real climax of the film, a moral decision to trust instinct over technology that provides the context for the action (and exploding Death Star) that follows.

Robot Jox does end on a moral choice at its climax. It’s right there in the exchange between Achilles and Alexander, and their decision not to kill each other. If you try real hard, you can actually see a connection to some of the stuff they try to set up way back in the early stages of the film.

And it fails horribly, ’cause by this point you’ve been distracted by so many other things that you’re no longer really following what’s going on.

This point goes back to point 1 – the conflict you’re setting up is going to be made meaningful by this decision. Get it right and the audience will lift off, literally rising out of their seat as they hit that moment where they scream hell, yeah, about time.

5) “YOU MAKE MY DRINK TASTE LIKE BLOOD”

There’s a good line of dialogue in Robot Jox - I stole it for the title of this section – but it’s not really a film that’s known for it’s subtlety in character or speach. Take a close look at our opening scene, just after the voice over: desolate landscape in the Siberia battleground, a pilot lying in the ruins of a giant robot who calls for a ruling, the referee’s declaring the match over…and the evil protagonist, Alexander, crushing his opponent beneath a giant robot foot despite the fact that the other pilot’s back is broken.

This is a real brute-force moment for the film, hitting you over the head with the fact that Alexander is evil, but it’s also slightly confusing for us. We haven’t been given any context to the narrative yet, beyond the voice over. We know there’s factions, we know there was a nuclear war, and we know the one-on-one giant mecha battles have replaced war. This is all background; it’s got nothing to do with the story we’re about to be told, and the real conflict we’re hoping to see play out on the screen.

With that one sequence – the referees declaring the match over and Alexander choosing to kill his opponent anyway, the injured pilot screaming I yield, I yield – we’re left with the inescapable impression that Alexander is a psychotic asshole.

What’s missing in the scene is this: a sign that Alexander isn’t our protagonist.

Believe it or not, this is something of a problem. We’re trained, as audience members, to seize upon the first major character we see and invest in them as the people who are going to carry the film. We do a similar kind of thing in books, but novels have the advantage that prologues are generally marked as such.  There very word ‘prologue’ is like a warning sign that we shouldn’t invest, that none of the characters we’re being introduced to are going to be around for long (This is one of the reasons that prologues kinda suck; people check out, narratively speaking, until the real action starts).

So Robot Jox essentially starts off with a moment of cognitive dissonance, introducing us to a character we can’t invest in because he’s got screaming-bloody-lunatic written all over him in permanent marker. Quite possibly in Russian.

You don’t really invest in Alexander as a bad guy, ’cause he’s so obviously bad. He’s like a parody of evil, when he should be a dark mirror for the films real protagonist, an example of what happens when robot jox machismo is taken to its logical extreme.

6) “YOU’RE MAKING MY BEER CURDLE.”

The film suffers another moment of cognitive dissonance when we meet out protagonist: Achilles is watching the opening sequence on a monitor, and he looks…scared. Or constipated. I’m not really sure which emotion is being portrayed here, and while I’d ordinarily say this was the fault of the actor, Gary Graham, the lack of actual directing chops on offer here suggests that it’s not entirely his fault.

In any case, Achilles is a man whose been targeted by our Russian psychopath who is probably not our protagonist. He doesn’t actually say anything or do anything meaningful in this scene, he just sits there while his trainer talks and does a whole bunch of…well, seeding subplots, really. Which is fine, except this film is lacking a main plot, and all you’ve got is the subplots to hold things together. And they don’t.

So Achilles’ manager starts talking, setting up a Jox against the establishment dynamic, but Achilles is focused on the fact that he’s the last of a ten-man team who represented the stand-in for the USA. His…well, there’s no evidence of this on screen, but we’ll the pilot who just died a friend, just died before his eyes. He’s sweating the upcoming fight.

There is something about Alaska and a possible spy, but honestly I don’t much care by this point. Alexander is so fricken’ eeeeevil he should have a twirly mustache or a hockey mask to wear, and I’m not being given a reason to give a damn about Achilles going up against him. Achilles is frightened. He’s ignoring the political reasons the fight is important, which everyone else is talking about, and he’s ignoring the fact that Tex is basically setting up the Robot Jox in the way that warriors are set up in every film – faux knight-errands, with their own code of honour. When the government man talks about needing to keep Alaska ’cause the territory is important, Tex points out the stupidity: “Dirt is just dirt.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that Tex is a bagillion years older than everyone else in the scene, out of shape, and lacking Achilles cool facial scar, he would be setting himself up as a hero I could invest in. He believes in things, man. He has a code.

Achilles, near as I can tell, doesn’t particularly want to die. I can respect that. I’d be much the same in his situation. But it doesn’t make him someone I empathise with in a film about Giant Robot Death Matches. Near as I can tell, he’s doing this ’cause he signed a contract. He’s got some chops as a pilot, ’cause he’s lived this long and he’s got the cool facial scars that tell me he’s probably competent-ish, but being the guy who is reluctant to do the job you’re hired to do ’cause its going to be a bad day of the office isn’t enough to inspire me. Presumably, psychotics like Alexander were around when he signed up. He knew what he was getting into.

Achilles, in short, isn’t being sufficiently heroic to make up for the fact that I’m already wondering who the protagonist is going to be. He would be better off if he was a prisoner of some kind, being made to fight in order to win his freedom. At least then we’d understand his reluctance and the tension is established: is it better to die free or live in a cage? He needs to find an answer.

But that doesn’t happen. Achilles is a guy whose been hired to do a job.

Worse, he’s teamed with Tex Conway as his mentor figure/trainer, and Tex Conway is kind of an asshole. In fact, one scene later, he’s a particularly misogynistic asshole. Not in a subtle, we’re-characters-in-an-action-movie-way that you’ll get in a film like Die Hard, but in an overt and quite obvious we’re being assholes kind of way.

This makes sense later in the film, when you discover that mentor figure Tex Conway is also a villain, but in those early scenes where Tex and Achilles get on screen and you’re desperate for a protagonist, they’re presenting a united front against every other character, which means Achilles gets dragged along into asshole land simply due to the fact that they’re a closed circle in terms of social groups.

Setting up two guys against a system, particularly a government system that’s trying to replace them with cloned pilots, is a brilliant short-hand for hero. Pity its when the two characters are at their lest empathetic. Back in 1989, when this film was made and feminism was moving into the public consciousness, being a misogynist prick was also a big signifier for hey, I’m a bad guy.

Worse, Achilles involvement in these scenes is never really redeemed; there’s no moment in the scene where you get a strong feel for the fact that he’s a different kind of man than his mentor, which is problematic to say the least, nor that he’s learned his lesson about the role of women in the arena of the giant robot death match. He just…falls in love? I think? It’s not terrible well handled in the film.

That we accept Achilles as a vaguely empathetic protagonist (really, go with me here) is largely a result of that opening scene; Alexander is so obviously a bad guy that Achilles is empathetic in contrast, simply ’cause he’s the victim of the Russian’s psychotic taunting. You don’t want to root for Achilles, but you do, ’cause the other option has been painted so broadly that you’ll cling to him like a life-raft.

Thing is, you’re not exactly happy about it. Neither of these guys is endearing, and neither of them is interesting yet, ’cause they’re so easy to read. Alexander is psychotic; Achilles best trait, thus far, is that he’s not Alexander and he’s showing signs of vague competence in poorly choreographed sparring sessions with trainees.

This entire films hangs on you giving a damn about Achilles and his non-struggle against a system you don’t really understand. This is why it fails.

7) YOU MUST FIRE THE ILLITERATE GUN ON THE MANTLE

There are two points in Robot Jox where characters make mention of the fact that Achilles is illiterate. One of the weird aspect so writing is that anything you mention twice is pretty much seized upon by the viewer/reader and expected to appear a third time, particularly if it’s been important enough to mention.

This goes back to the moderately famous Chekhov quote, where the gun that appears on the mantle on the first act must go off in the third. If you include an element and make the audience pay attention to it, it must pay off.

It also goes back to the rule of threes: we’re so used to seeing Chekhov’s metaphorical guns in narratives that something that get mentioned twice feels like it should be coming back in the final act as a plot element/recurring motif. If you don’t put it in, readers will notice. Put it in a third time and there will be this pleasing sense of balance.

8) AMBITION MATTERS

Robot Jox may be a failure, but it’s the kind of failure that’s fucking glorious when seen from a certain perspective. This movie killed an entire studio, sucking down ten million dollars of funds that don’t seem to have been spent on anything that actually appears in the film. It fails on every level: the acting is wooden, the direction uninspired, the script vaguely nonsensical.

But HOLY JESUS FUCK does it want to be better than it is. You have to look real close to see it sometimes, but the evidence is there. It strives for bigger metaphors than it’s capable of, writes in literary allusions that are far to on-the-nose to be truly delightful as meta-textual elements, and generally aims to be the most SF movie you’ve ever seen when a rogue clone climbs into a giant battle robot and the action heads off into space.

It’s not a movie that’s playing it safe. It’s failing on its own terms, however misguided they may be, and that’s probably one of the reasons why people respect it enough to rate it just below the point of failure rather than the 2.3 it deserves.

Your average viewer probably doesn’t give a damn about ambition, but as someone who’s consumed a lot of narrative written by aspiring writers, I can tell you how much it appeals to me over the stories that are both not-terribly-good-yet and not-particularly-ambitious. You may not be able to sell something on ambition alone, but it’s more likely to earn you further interest from the types of jaded readers (IE submission editors) who are seeing the same themes and topics and stories day in and day out.

9) FAILURE IS AN OPTION

One of the things that I think it’s really important to note about this film: despite my rhetoric, it didn’t really kill anyone’s career. Joe Haldeman continued to make a living as a writer. Gary Graham, who played Achilles, has over 90 acting gigs on his IMDB profile, most of which took place after this movie. Stuart Gordon made a whole bunch of films afterwards.

And yet there’s no way you can look at this film as anything but a collassal fuck-up. It lost huge amounts of money. It killed a studio. It is sure as hell not a film that got a new lease of life in DVD. If there’s a way to tank a film, this film pretty much did it.

People still found work.

Failure is totally an option. Some days it’s worth embracing that.

So here’s my challenge: how would you improve this movie after watching it? What tweaks to the plot and characterization would you look at making in order to give it a satisfying arc? Despite its various flaws, I truly believe it wouldn’t take much to overhaul this film and make it truly enjoyable rather than a nostalgic/guilty pleasure, and I’m interested in hearing people’s takes. 

Originally published at PeterMBall.com. Please leave any comments there.

Tags: robot jox, trashy tuesday movie, trashy tuesday writing class

Last Saturday night the 18th annual Aurealis Awards were held at North Sydney's Independent Theatre. Margo Lanagan scooped the pool. Check out my Flick set.

pictured: me with Kate Forsyth and Pamela Freeman

And that’s a wrap for series 7. Join Deb, Erika, Liz, and Lynne as we discuss whether the season closer was everything we hoped it could be or left us feeling slightly uncomfortable. Were the fans properly serviced? Was the last climax really a climax? Was the “reward” video of Matt Smith and David Tennant really much of a reward? We cover all this and more.

^E

Also covered:
Series 8 is a thing! And Matt Smith will be in it!
All the Doctor Who DVDs!
Daemons action figure set available for pre-order!
Hello Sweetie Podcast!

Download or listen now (runtime 1:05:59)

 

Tags: doctor who, verity!

Because all the writer-kids are doing it.



http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1823219&highlight=

Amazon Publishing Introduces “Kindle Worlds,” a New Publishing Model for Authors Inspired to Write Fan Fiction—Launching with an Initial License of Popular Titles from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment

Like Kindle Singles and Kindle Serials, Kindle Worlds Adds a New Approach to Digital Publishing SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May. 22, 2013-- (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Today, Amazon Publishing announces Kindle Worlds, the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division for its New York Times best-selling book series Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar; Pretty Little Liars, by Sara Shepard; and Vampire Diaries, by L.J. Smith; and plans to announce more licenses soon. Through these licenses, Kindle Worlds will allow any writer to publish authorized stories inspired by these popular Worlds and make them available for readers to purchase in the Kindle Store. Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author’s royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35% of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price—rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price—and royalties will be paid monthly. -------------------------------- This is all I know about the project, which is just now hitting the Internet-waves.  But the following is my initial reaction 1.  This is not going to be some free-for-all of fanfic.  It's carefully curated properties, which means probably most writers don't have to worry about it, one way or the other (alas or yay, depending on your take) 2. If Amazon is licensing these properties, and paying everyone involved, it's legal and even morally fair (for payment levels of fair). 3. Amazon is reportedly prohibiting crossovers and explicit sex.  80% of fanfic's not welcome.  :-) 4.  I suspect most readers will be "why should we pay for fic we used to get for free?  Especially if there's no assurance of quality?" (welcome to the return of the Why Gatekeepers are Good argument.  But I digress) 5. Nobody's property gets put into play without their licensing those right (see #1), so it's opt-in, just like any other subrights deal. 6. This will hopefully finally teach people to HOLD ONTO THE DERIVATIVE RIGHTS ON EVERYTHING THEY SELL, FOREVER AND EVER AMEN. 7.  Fanfic writers too will learn that there are wolves in the world... and that they are bunnies.  Tasty, tasty bunnies. You sign Amazon's contract, make sure you understand what you're agreeing to.... and yeah, 8.  Amazon still isn't in this for anything other than their own profit, up to and including squeezing all competition out of the field in any way possible. Short version: I'm not thrilled with the idea, but I'm not flipping like a mammal just yet.  Engaging wait and see mode. EtA: and Matt Forbeck has blogged about what it means to pro tie-in writers...  http://www.forbeck.com/2013/05/22/kindle-worlds-worlds-burning/

Tags: business, fanfic, publishing, the writing life

Amazon announced Kindle Worlds today, describing it as “the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so.”

I didn’t know this was coming, but I’m not surprised, exactly. Amazon has been a very successful business, and if they see a potentially profitable area they can branch out into, they’re gonna do it.

I found out about this through Chuck Wendig’s post here, wherein he talks about the press release and proceeds to fragment his own brain into tiny, shiny pieces.

I’m still digesting and processing this, and I suspect some of it will boil down to having to wait to see how it all plays out. But some of my initial reactions are…

• This isn’t a free-for-all. Amazon has licensed these rights from the rights-holders, and it’s for a specific and limited list of properties.
  • But wait, if they’ve licensed the rights, is it really fanfiction or is it an open call for licensed tie-in work?
• They’ve got a no porn rule. Fair enough. If anyone’s going to write 50 Shades of Blue: A Goblin’s Erotic Awakening, I think it should be me.
• My understanding of the fanfiction community is that there’s a strong value on not profiting from your work. This seems like a potential culture war between Amazon and the community they’re trying to court.
  • That said, no community is perfectly homogenous, and as a writer, I have nothing against getting paid for your work, so long as it’s done legally, which this would be.
  • Also, as someone who isn’t a part of that community, I could be TOTALLY AND EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG ABOUT THIS PIECE.
• Who decides whether to license a work, the publisher or the author? Can DAW license Libriomancer fanfic without my approval? Can I do it without theirs?
• Amazon takes all rights to your fanfiction story. Which isn’t entirely unreasonable in a work-for-hire situation, but will make a lot of folks uncomfortable.
• Why would people pay for fanfiction when so much is available online for free?
  • Then again, why would people pay for licensed tie-in work when so much fanfiction is available online for free…
• Should prolific fanfic writers look into getting agents? I’m not sure the benefit of an agent in this situation, but I also cringe at the idea of writers who aren’t very, very business-savvy signing contracts without someone else looking it over.
• Does this mean fanfic could now qualify for SFWA membership?
  • Waiting for various heads to explode at that question…
• Finally, Amazon is not pro-author, nor are they pro-reader. They’re pro-Amazon. (This doesn’t make them any worse or better than most businesses, by the way.) When Amazon’s interests overlap with those of readers or writers, great. But don’t lose sight of their bottom line, because I guarantee that’s what they’re watching.

I’m sure there will be many, many discussions and arguments about this, and I have no idea how it will all play out or whether or not it will work. But I do think it’s a fascinating step in the ongoing evolution of the industry.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Check this out: Amazon is setting up Kindle Worlds, which is a way for people to write fanfic and sell it with the IP creator’s consent. So far they’re only going public with three of the shows (and all three are TV shows) they’ve licensed–GOSSIP GIRL, PRETTY LITTLE LIARS, VAMPIRE DIARIES (yeah, I know the last was a book first)–but obviously there are going to be more.

Some thoughts: First, they’re going with their onerous 65% sales commission, which is understandable, I guess, since they’re paying the owner of the IP as well as themselves. Don’t forget that’s based on the net revenue. Quote: As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of customer sales price

Still, it’s good to see that they’re going to be paying monthly, which is the first of the five big changes Tobias Buckell hopes to see in publishing as a whole.

Second, the books will not be commissioned by Amazon. It’s all spec submissions. You can check out their rough guidelines for the program as a whole and see that they will not be accepting anything with graphic sex[1] or offensive language[2].

They also won’t accept crossover works, or works that contain a whole bunch of brand names (presumably because they think the writer is getting paid to do so[3])

Third, they reserve the right to reject work for things like bad ebook formatting and shitty covers.

Yeah, that’s right. The authors are expected to create their own covers for work being published with the consent of Warner Bros. I can’t help but wonder if they’ll turn a blind eye to using actors’ publicity shots.

Fourth, I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.

So… okay. The way it works is simple: You write (or more likely “have written”) fanfic within a licensed setting out of love for the show. Amazon opens its doors to Kindle Worlds. You create a cover and format an ebook file, then submit it.

At that point, someone at Amazon actually reads it–when they’re explaining that poor customer experience will get a book rejected, they say: “We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience.” I’m going to assume that means they have a reader on staff vetting projects before they’re published, not that they publish everything and take it down later based on reader complaints. Frankly, it’s what I would expect if I were Warner Bros.

If it’s approved, it goes on sale and you start getting the ka-ching (they set the price).

One thing I’m not clear about is whether they acquire all rights to your work on publication or submission. It’s not as though you can sell your GOSSIP GIRL novella somewhere else, but you could certainly change the names around once it’s been rejected for the sexy, and Amazon could make trouble for you if they have your submission in a database somewhere.

As for how I feel about it, honestly I’m conflicted. Some years ago before I was published, I wrote and submitted a story for an open Star Trek anthology. It was a prison story starring that transporter-accident clone of Riker, after he’d been captured by the Dominion and, while I was proud of it at the time[4] and while my rejection was personalized (and quite nice) the damn thing was much too specific to file the serial numbers off.

I think it’s great to open up settings in this way for the fans, and I hope they take advantage. At the same time, writing tie-in novels used to be a way for writers to make a bit of money (and have a bit of fun) between their own projects. With luck, a successful HALO or Star Wars novel would draw in new fans to their original work.

So, does this signal the end of the pro tie-in novel? Probably not entirely, but there is going to be pressure on the market by people willing to write the books (and make their own covers!) on spec.

And for the people publishing their fanfic, it seems like playing small ball. Yes, there will undoubtedly be people who make good money through this program, but I can’t help but think they’d be better off in the long term by filing the serial numbers off and striking out on their own, as in 50 SHADES…

Personally, I don’t have any fanfiction I could even submit. (There was the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN thing I did in 4th grade) because I’m not part of that community, but it does open up other ideas: will authors be allowed to list their own IP[5] with Kindle Worlds, allowing fanfic in their settings be sold online? Personally, I think that would be cool.

So we’re turning fanfic into media tie-in novels.

It’s an exciting time, isn’t it?

[1] Big surprise, right? Don’t bother pasting that mpreg into Caliber just yet.

[2] As my theater improv friends put it, the work will have to be “TV clean.”

[3] “I am Jack’s attempt to publish fanfic with an anti-consumerist message.”

[4] No way am I looking at it again.

[5] At the moment, the only IP I have available are my Twenty Palaces series. The first book is only $2.99.

Mirrored from Twenty Palaces. You can comment here but not there.

Tags: internet, publishing, tv, words

This just in:  Amazon is going to start selling fanfic, with royalties to be paid to both the author and the world-creator.  Color me… bemused?  Uncertain?  Confused?

Like many authors, I have an uneasy relationship with fanfic.  Although my first serious-to-me writing effort was a sequel to The Lord of the Rings (drafted when I was thirteen years old), I’ve never been serious about fanfic, and I’ve never participated in any of the many online communities dedicated to the craft.  As far as I know (and that’s the way I’d like to keep it), no one has created fics in my worlds.

As a lawyer, I’m not as rabidly anti-fanfic as most.  I understand the difference between copyright and trademark law, and the defense of estoppel (which applies to the latter, but not the former.)  While trademark owners can lose their marks if they don’t enforce against infringement, the same standard does not apply in copyright law.

Mostly, I just don’t understand the allure of fanfic.  I invest a tremendous amount of time, effort, energy, blood, sweat, tears, angst, etc. into creating my fictitious worlds.  I don’t understand the craving the pour all of that into someone else’s world.  It feels … like a cheat?  Like a waste?  Like…  A bunch of things that sound really negative, but I don’t actually mean them that way.  What I mean is, I don’t have the resources to do my writing and fanfic writing, and I don’t understand the investment some people make.

So.  I suspect that Amazon’s program is going to open the door for a lot of public discussion about fanfic.  It’ll add a lot of pressure to authors who have publicly demanded their work not be ficced.  It’ll raise some questions about plagiarism and continuity and, and, and…

Maybe I’ll go pop some popcorn.

 

Mirrored from Mindy Klasky, Author.

Tags: business of writing, copyright, writing

And our entire family will be in attendance.

This WisCon is also the official launch for Queers Dig Time Lords!

Thus, I have a very light schedule in deference to Michael's book launch.

It really is a splendid book. I got to read the manuscript. (And you should totally come to the QDTL/Outer Alliance party on Friday night. Trust me on this.)

My one panel:

Monday 1o:00-11:15 am, Conference 5

How to Edit an Anthology

Anthology editors discuss the nuts and bolts of editing an anthology. From finding a publisher, to picking the stories, to writing up contracts, to securing reprint rights from estates, to cover design, to TOC order, to… to everything! Well, everything that fits into 75 minutes anyway.

James Frenkel, Philip Kaveny, Brit Mandelo, Lynne M. Thomas

I am also participating in the SignOut immediately afterwards.

Otherwise, I will be underfoot, attending readings, and basking in the glow of Michael's first book launch. <3

Thanks to the generosity of friends who have volunteered to help with Caitlin's care in the evenings so that Michael and I can attend social time. They made attending WisCon possible this year, and we love them.

Tags: appearances, caitlin, conventions, editing, michael, wiscon

I've just posted the last book discussion for the DAW Book releases for April at the DAW Books blog (dawbooks). This one's for Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear, the second in his Kingkiller Chronicle series. Stop on by and check it out, if you haven't heard of it already. Leave a comment if you've already read it!