Under the Covers: My Director's Commentary

I know I might be in a minority, but I enjoy watching films with the director's commentary.  I like hearing how the movie was put together, how choices were made.  Knowing that Indiana Jones initially planned an elaborate sword-fight that got scrapped because Harrison Ford had a cold and realized it made more sense for his character to shoot his attacker.  Or that the famous "It's game over" speech in Alien was improvised on set by Bill Paxton.  Or that Joss Whedon initially planned to have the Hulk "sniff" out Loki's true self among illusionary duplicates in Avengers.  It's why Bruce Banner makes several references to being able to "smell the crazy" on Loki.  But it was decided that the scene would play better if Loki didn't bother to take the Hulk seriously.

I like knowing the behind the scenes of decisions behind writing.  When I met Roxanne St. Claire several years ago, she explained how she began writing the Barefoot Bay series as a request from her editor to do a small town contemporary romance series.  At the RWA National Conference, I heard Sherry Thomas talk about how she began writing to get out of post-partum depression.

With Revelations, I decided to do a chapter by chapter commentary, sharing references, such as a request from a family with a handicapped child to include that child in the story.  Where I didn't have time to fit in research details, I've included them in the commentary.  I explain where I found inspiration and share credit for ideas which came from friends and family.  I enjoyed sharing it and did it again with Metamorphosis.  You can find them both by clicking on the book's page and finding the mirror.

I'm looking forward to doing it yet again for Inquisition.  I go through each chapter and write a few paragraphs for each one.  It's a fun way to look back on how far the story has developed and where it began.  And it's a way to say goodbye before launching into new stories and worlds.

Weekly update: April 17 to 23

Weekly word count: 6100

Not bad for a week where I lost two days to errands.  The words are really flowing nicely right now.

I got a question asking whether or not I include my non-fiction word total in my weekly word count.  And the answer is that the word count only includes work on my novels or short stories.  Blog posts, articles and other writing don't count.

I do a lot of non-fiction work.  I have the two posts here every week, plus I do a daily blog in my "real" life about what's going on to keep my family and friends updated.  I do at least two articles a month for Apartment 613 and I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting regular book reviews on Goodreads.  My non-fiction work is probably close to 4000 words a week, but that doesn't get the next book any closer to being written.

It's tempting to "cheat" and count it if I've had a bad week and no progress on the book.  But I started posting my weekly word counts to keep me honest and motivated.  I don't like having to say that I haven't made progress and so it gets me in front of the keyboard when it would be otherwise too easy to put it off.

Thanks for keeping me going, blog readers.

The P-word (Plagiarism): How Close Is Too Close?

Most of the authors I know work very hard to keep their stories original.  There are some notable exceptions (like Laura Harner, who plagiarized entire books from best-selling authors) but for the most part we earn our legal disclaimers: we make it up ourselves.

But on the other hand, we're all influenced by what we've seen, heard and read, which means that some similarities are inevitable.  So when is a story too close to another story?  If I had a solid answer to that one, I could make millions as a trade infringement lawyer but the answer always boils down to: it depends. 

For example, last month, Sherrilyn Kenyon launched a lawsuit against Cassandra Clare, the author of the Shadowhunter series.  Kenyon and her lawyers are claiming that the main characters are too close to Kenyon's own Dark-Hunter series.  Per the lawsuit, Kenyon's fans alerted her to the similarities in 2006 and Clare agreed to remove the term "shadowhunter" from her book (Mortal Instruments: City of Bones).  Since then, the term has apparently crept back into the sequels and the movie.

Clare's lawyers and Kenyon's lawyers will have to battle it out.  I haven't read Clare's series but I have read the Dark-Hunter books and there are surface similarities based on the description.  An elite, but isolated and brooding band of men and women with supernatural powers have to fight against an unknown supernatural world, which is completely unknown to the ordinary people in the books.

The problem is that the idea of a secret society of superpowered individuals is not exactly original to either of them.  One of my favourite TV shows from the early 1990's is Forever Knight, about a vampire who becomes a police officer to protect people against the hidden occult world.  This predates both series.  People and objects imbued with magic or other powers have been a standby since the epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest written story.  Myths of shamans and heroes protecting the innocent from unseen forces, also ancient.  So it comes down to the details.

Are the names too similar?  Do the plots follow similar lines?  Are there phrases or word choices which appear in both series?  Those are the questions which must be answered to both parties' satisfaction.

Then there comes smaller details.  I recently saw a post from an author who was concerned because she had created a character with a peculiar idiosyncrasy for her latest book, only to discover another recently released book with a character who did the exact same thing.  The plots and genres were very different, but this one small detail matched up.  In this case, given that both books are recent releases, the overlap is probably a case of parallel inspiration (the excuse usually given for why we can have two volcano disaster movies released in the same year). 

This minefield is terrifyingly intimidating for a new author.  Without the deep pockets of established or best-selling authors, proving that any overlap was accidental may be an out of reach goal.  There are certain things which can be done to protect oneself, such as keeping records and files (both hard copies and digital) of the creative process.  Also be wary of any brilliant ideas which come into your mind fully formed.  You may be remembering them rather than creating them. 

I've been caught by that a couple of times, such as when I was excited about an idea I had for a group of time-travellers who would go through history witnessing key events.  My husband reminded me that I was basically talking about Dr. Who, Sliders, Quantum Leap and the Observers from Fringe.  Now, if I'd had something original to add to that formula, I could have gone ahead, but upon further reflection, I decided I didn't really have anything new to offer which hadn't been covered in the original series.

In the end, authors simply have to forge ahead.  Those of us creating our own worlds shouldn't be too afraid of the rare and few outright thieves.  Inspiration is nothing to be ashamed of, but make sure that it acts as a launching pad hurling you out into unknown realms rather than a trampoline, letting you land exactly where you started.

Reader Demands vs Writer Integrity

I've actually been thinking about this topic for a few weeks now.  I didn't want to open a can of worms but I think both sides of the issue have a valid point.  I'll avoid naming names as a sacrifice to the gods of Dontsueme.

This all began because of a comment I noticed where a reader was complaining that a particular author was too slow because she was only putting out one book every two months.  This reader said they would no longer be buying any of the books this author produced.  As an author with a one book a year plan, it made me a little nervous.

I have heard complaints from the writer side as well.  Writing a book is not easy and writing a quality book takes even more time.  As much as we would love to have polished prose flowing directly from our brains to the keyboard, it rarely works that way.  So I've heard writers who are both discouraged and upset by readers who get impatient with waiting for the next installment.

On the other hand, I've been a reader waiting for that next installment and if the writer has done his or her job, I'm dying to know what happens next.  And I've had to wait.  And wait.  Sometimes the author loses interest in the story and doesn't complete the series.  Sometimes the author dies and there's no one to continue the work.  And sometimes they just take a really, really long time (10 years to pick a particular example) to write the next book.

Now, I believe harassment is wrong (and counterproductive!) no matter how much I want to know how the story ends.  If editors are having to use a Ouija board to contact the author, I may just have to accept not knowing.  And if the author is losing interest or is just a slow writer, then no number of emails, letters, calls or in-person visits will cause a jump start.  The plot of Stephen King's Misery is not really a viable real-world outline on how to get your favourite author to produce.

Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years, but for now, I take it as a compliment when readers say they can't wait for my next book.  I get excited when a reader takes the time to contact me to ask when the next book will be out.  It means that I've done what I wanted in creating an interesting world and characters that people want to know more about.  But I am not going to rush my work to try and get the book out sooner.  I know it's frustrating to wait but I also believe that most people would rather wait a little longer for a quality story rather than one I rushed through.

And with that in mind, it's back to the keyboard.

What Is A Lalassu Anyway?

This is one of the most frequent questions I've been asked since I published Revelations.

As I was writing the book, I wanted an overall term for people with supernatural abilities.  I tried a few variants I'd seen elsewhere: supes and SPPs (super-powered people/person).  I toyed with calling them some variant of demigods (based on the ancient myths of gods mating with humans to create gifted individuals) but I couldn't find something that worked.

I'd already established Dani in my mind as one of the line of Babylon priestesses, living in hiding and exile for thousands of years.  The main language in Babylon was Akkadian so I decided to hit Google and see if I could find an Akkadian word which might match what I wanted.

I found a list of about thirty terms used in Akkadian (but originally Sumerian), one of which was lalassu, defined as spectre.  Spectre, ghost, hidden ... the ghostly people.  That's how I came to use lalassu as my overall term for people in a secret society of superpowered people.