What are you thinking? (Part 2)
- Thread starter Romero
- Start date
Foxtrot94
Elite Hunter
I don't like the idea of being in a relationship, the sole thought makes me feel uncomfortable and... caged, restricted.
Gar Bageman
The Spirit of Rock 'n' Roll
Thank you, guys! It's pretty exciting to finally have it out! I started it in April of 2015. I've been ready for it to be out for a while, but I had a song quote I needed in it, and getting the rights took a lot longer than I'd anticipated. Won't do that again!
The title is "Bully For You" and it is under the name Dan Burley. It looks like this:
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Springhosen
Kahnum of Outworld
This is the first Valentine's day I've had someone to celebrate with and, even though we didn't do anything special, I loved just waking up and spending time with him.
I've always enjoyed being single, never really wanted a relationship, though I always wanted someone to share things with, but I just love being with him.
I always thought love was hokey and always kind of scoffed when folks were like "you'll find someone one day who is going to change your mind and sweep you off your feet" because I thought it was a load of hooey but old people know what they're talking about apparently lol.
I've always enjoyed being single, never really wanted a relationship, though I always wanted someone to share things with, but I just love being with him.
I always thought love was hokey and always kind of scoffed when folks were like "you'll find someone one day who is going to change your mind and sweep you off your feet" because I thought it was a load of hooey but old people know what they're talking about apparently lol.
Skagewid
Well-Known Member
And do love alone? But go to the bitches.
The parents are the perfect couple to take in example... not if they are drunkards.
....and zombie-dogs that can't swin.
Romero
Her royal court joker
Bravo, congrats!!
Wow, we have a proper author on the forums.
Wow - nearly 400 pages in 180 minutes! That's like a Xerox machine.
Foxtrot94
Elite Hunter
We're talking about relationships here, not sex. A girlfriend is not just something for you to use as a sex doll.
I'm just not a relationship person, and so far I've only ever experienced simple crushes, no one has made me change my mind yet.
Hel
Goddess of the Dead
Lovey-dovey stuff is not for me either, so I'd say I'm glad this whole Valentine's Day madness is over for now, but it doesn't really make a difference, does it? Many of those love-birds aren't any more bearable on any other day of the year, not when they get so much encouragement from our modern Western society that is constantly doing everything in its power to make singles feel like outcasts for not going along with its extreme fixation on relationships and sex. If that's what makes some people happy, I have nothing against it as long as they don't rub it in my face all the time, but you might as well ask a religious person not to pray... Thankfully, I've always been pretty resistant to any kind of peer pressure.
Congratulations! Did you find a publisher for your novel or publish it yourself? (I realise I could just look that up myself, but I'm kind of at work right now and shouldn't be surfing the internet... erm... *cough*)
Wow, I can't believe you had to fight for the right to use a song quote in your novel! Is the copyright law really that strict when it comes to songs? I find it extremely difficult to find names for characters, companies and other stuff in my novels because it seems like everything is already taken... I mean, of course you wouldn't call your heroine Lara Croft, her business partner Harry Potter and their fictional hotel Hilton, those are well-known trademarks, but what about all the other, less famous names you haven't heard of? I recently discovered that the main character of my novel series shares his name with a Nazi who was partly responsible for the deaths of five Turks twenty years ago, but what can I do? If I rename him, there's just going to be another story behind it.
Congratulations! Did you find a publisher for your novel or publish it yourself? (I realise I could just look that up myself, but I'm kind of at work right now and shouldn't be surfing the internet... erm... *cough*)
Wow, I can't believe you had to fight for the right to use a song quote in your novel! Is the copyright law really that strict when it comes to songs? I find it extremely difficult to find names for characters, companies and other stuff in my novels because it seems like everything is already taken... I mean, of course you wouldn't call your heroine Lara Croft, her business partner Harry Potter and their fictional hotel Hilton, those are well-known trademarks, but what about all the other, less famous names you haven't heard of? I recently discovered that the main character of my novel series shares his name with a Nazi who was partly responsible for the deaths of five Turks twenty years ago, but what can I do? If I rename him, there's just going to be another story behind it.
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Skagewid
Well-Known Member
Yeah ,, but with comment of before I understant other things.
Anyway, sooner or later , arrive a relationship also for you.
Gar Bageman
The Spirit of Rock 'n' Roll
'Proper' may be a bit of an oversell, but I'll gladly accept it! :biggrin:Bravo, congrats!!
Wow, we have a proper author on the forums.
Wow - nearly 400 pages in 180 minutes! That's like a Xerox machine.
And, yeah, I was pretty amazed at her speed as well.
I did it all on my own. I wasn't particularly interested in bothering with the hassles of agents and publishers. I just wanted to write stories and get them into people's hands when they were ready, not when some prick that had nothing to do with making them said they were. I am and have always been a staunchly independent person.
It'll probably bite me in the ass eventually. xD
As for the lyric quote, I didn't so much have to fight for it as I had to fight to find who owned the rights. Once I found them, they were more than happy to take my money, and now I have the rights to quote a David Bowie song for five years.
The trademark stuff, on the other hand, is really easy to handle. You can namecheck just about anything or anyone as long as the context doesn't 'diminish the brand'. For instance, if you had a character saying "Man, I love Kraft macaroni and cheese!" it wouldn't cause you a problem. The Kraft company would very likely be thrilled because it's free advertising. On the other hand, if you had a character talk for fifteen pages about a rash of deaths related to and/or directly caused by Kraft macaroni and cheese, you'd likely be in an actionable position. But even then you might be able to get away with it.
With character names, the best thing to do is just go with what fits and/or sounds natural, whether there's a real person with the same name or not. That's why we have that wonderful bit of legal text that says: "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental."
You can sidestep a lot of things with text like that, but quoting someone else's intellectual property is not one of those things. Personally, I use a mixture of both real places/things and fictional ones. It all depends on what the story demands!
Apologies for the text wall! :lol:
Hel
Goddess of the Dead
The only problem with the "This is a work of fiction" disclaimer is that it has no legal relevance if someone does get the feeling that you're talking about them and sues you for it. I'm not afraid that anyone I know might do this to me, because my novels have absolutely nothing autobiographic in them and none of the characters resemble real-life acquaintances of mine, so any perceived resemblance would have to be very far-fetched. But I do have quite a few evil companies that may or may not have namesakes somewhere in the real world. That's one of the reasons I'm trying to find a publisher or an agency rather than doing it myself, not only for the promotion and advertisement, but also because some of the people working there might know a thing or two about this legal stuff.
There's often a fine line between things you're allowed to do in fiction and things that are forbidden. The sixth novel in my series features many deliberately obvious references to the Wizard of Oz, with my characters even using the Oz characters' names as codenames, one chapter being called "Somewhere over the rainbow", and one scene where a character is in a train waggon that gets swept away by a tornado. There are also many references to Little Red Riding Hood throughout the entire series, some more and some less subtle, but I've been told that this is okay. I'd still like to have someone more familiar with copyright laws to check on those things before it gets serious.
Nonetheless, I get what you're saying about being an independent person and not wanting to let someone else decide whether or not your work is worth publishing, especially when there's so much floating around on the book market that makes you think: "I'm better than that, so if this crap could get published, why does my manuscript get rejected?" But publishers and agencies don't always know what they're doing, see J. K. Rowling whose first Harry Potter story got rejected about a dozen times before someone accepted it, which means there are currently quite a few publishers in England kicking themselves for that missed chance. :razz: What's important is to never give up.
There's often a fine line between things you're allowed to do in fiction and things that are forbidden. The sixth novel in my series features many deliberately obvious references to the Wizard of Oz, with my characters even using the Oz characters' names as codenames, one chapter being called "Somewhere over the rainbow", and one scene where a character is in a train waggon that gets swept away by a tornado. There are also many references to Little Red Riding Hood throughout the entire series, some more and some less subtle, but I've been told that this is okay. I'd still like to have someone more familiar with copyright laws to check on those things before it gets serious.
Nonetheless, I get what you're saying about being an independent person and not wanting to let someone else decide whether or not your work is worth publishing, especially when there's so much floating around on the book market that makes you think: "I'm better than that, so if this crap could get published, why does my manuscript get rejected?" But publishers and agencies don't always know what they're doing, see J. K. Rowling whose first Harry Potter story got rejected about a dozen times before someone accepted it, which means there are currently quite a few publishers in England kicking themselves for that missed chance. :razz: What's important is to never give up.
Gar Bageman
The Spirit of Rock 'n' Roll
I definitely get where you're coming from. And, honestly, I may've been able to get my current book out faster had I not had to navigate through all of that stuff myself and just had someone else do it. However, it left me with a wealth of knowledge that I wouldn't've had otherwise, so I'm happy to've taken the temporary hit to my productivity in favor of being able to rattle out future books entirely at my own pace. It's a kind of freedom that is both exciting and terrifying!
As for copyright laws, some areas are pretty murky, but pretty much everything you mentioned is totally fine and within the law. While I was doing my research into that dark void that is copyright law, I was quite surprised what things you could and couldn't get away with legally. For instance, while you can't quote lyrics willy-nilly, you can use song titles in just about any way you see fit (which is actually really awesome). The only thing you mentioned above that seems like it might potentially pose an issue is "Somewhere over the rainbow". Then again, if you capitalized everything, it probably wouldn't. It's definitely a lot of ass-backward stuff, and I can absolutely see where you (or anyone, for that matter) would prefer to have someone else handle it while you just focus on writing.
Frankly, I've had a lot of people tell me I'm crazy for doing things the way I have been, but the publishing business is, like any old business, antiquated. The way I see it, creative people have more control and influence over their work and how it's perceived now than at just about any point in recent history. The internet has been a great equalizer, in a lot of crucial, and not just for writers, but for artists of all kinds. Yeah, it gives everybody the same opportunity, and a lot of sh!t still gets out there, but people can live off of building even a modest audience if they're loyal, and that's pretty great. I feel like that's the way it should be. Keep the art in the hands of the artists.
And I still cant believe multiple publishers passed on Harry Potter. Everything about that series screamed '$$$$$POTENTIAL$$$$$' from word one. Rowling was smart in her planning. Making the main characters the same age as her target audience and having them grow up with said audience was a true stroke of genius. If I weren't such a naturally vulgar human being (I tone it down quite a bit here), I might well be tempted to veer into the YA market. There is definitely a lot of money to be made there!
Do you mind me asking what kind of stories you're telling? I've seen you allude to your writing a few times over the years and I always mean to ask, but it always slips my mind!
As for copyright laws, some areas are pretty murky, but pretty much everything you mentioned is totally fine and within the law. While I was doing my research into that dark void that is copyright law, I was quite surprised what things you could and couldn't get away with legally. For instance, while you can't quote lyrics willy-nilly, you can use song titles in just about any way you see fit (which is actually really awesome). The only thing you mentioned above that seems like it might potentially pose an issue is "Somewhere over the rainbow". Then again, if you capitalized everything, it probably wouldn't. It's definitely a lot of ass-backward stuff, and I can absolutely see where you (or anyone, for that matter) would prefer to have someone else handle it while you just focus on writing.
Frankly, I've had a lot of people tell me I'm crazy for doing things the way I have been, but the publishing business is, like any old business, antiquated. The way I see it, creative people have more control and influence over their work and how it's perceived now than at just about any point in recent history. The internet has been a great equalizer, in a lot of crucial, and not just for writers, but for artists of all kinds. Yeah, it gives everybody the same opportunity, and a lot of sh!t still gets out there, but people can live off of building even a modest audience if they're loyal, and that's pretty great. I feel like that's the way it should be. Keep the art in the hands of the artists.
And I still cant believe multiple publishers passed on Harry Potter. Everything about that series screamed '$$$$$POTENTIAL$$$$$' from word one. Rowling was smart in her planning. Making the main characters the same age as her target audience and having them grow up with said audience was a true stroke of genius. If I weren't such a naturally vulgar human being (I tone it down quite a bit here), I might well be tempted to veer into the YA market. There is definitely a lot of money to be made there!
Do you mind me asking what kind of stories you're telling? I've seen you allude to your writing a few times over the years and I always mean to ask, but it always slips my mind!
Foxtrot94
Elite Hunter
I think that after RE HD Remaster I'm gonna play RE0 HD and then jump right into RE4. If RE2 and 3 have the same tank controls as the first one, gonna pass, I don't believe I'd be able to digest that. The remaster has the option for more modern controls so that's okay.
Although I hear they're making a RE2 remake so I'll play that one I reckon.
Although I hear they're making a RE2 remake so I'll play that one I reckon.
Peep
Something Horrible
Whaaat. No. Play two or three instead of zero, tank controls are a little faster if you don't like how slow everyone was in REmaster. Those two are so much fun first time around.
Can't argue with four, that game is always fun to play. Just a reminder though, four has tank controls as well, but since there's an over-the-shoulder camera system, you can't even really tell, lol. You'll have a blast.
Foxtrot94
Elite Hunter
I don't think I will play them any time soon, if ever. I hate tank controls, the speed ain't the problem, the issue is how the controls inherently work. I won't subject myself to that torture.
In the case of RE4, I might still enjoy that one cause I imagine the over the shoulder camera will make it more bearable, although if I'm not mistaken its PC port is horrible but hey, I'll figure it out.