Saturday 30 March 2013

There's Only So Many Plots...

Quite a few romance writers were surprised to read that Mills and Boon author Kate Walker and Harlequin had recently been the subject of a copyright violation case; and were happy to hear that Kate (and her publisher) had been cleared of any wrong-doing.

Kate revealed the news on her blog earlier this week. You can read it here.

Kate ran a Romance Writing workshop for Nottingham Writers Club in 2012 that I arranged, and I'd have no doubt of her innocence.

She would never infringe another writers copyright.

And the judge agreed...

Please read the judgement that you can find here you will learn a lot about the elements in romance writing that are not considered protected, and those that are. The detailed analysis starts around page 9.
It really is worth the time reading this judgement if you want to write romance...

The link was available on The Pink Heart Society blog, whose post 'A Troupe of Tropes' has an explanation of tropes and archetypes in relation to copyright, by the editor of the PHS blog, Michelle Styles, who is also an Harlequin Historical author.

It is sad that this case even came to court in the first place.(My personal opinion only.)

As a reader of category romances of over thirty years, I can recall a number of Mills and Boon novels that used scenarios and plots that 'the plaintiff' used in her unpublished synopsis, and first chapter (that formed a part of her claim for copyright infringement).

There are only a limited number of plots, whether you are writing a contemporary romance or an historical. They even apply to futuristic stories.

The scenarios of Star Wars and Harry Potter share many similarities, and it occurred to me today, that even Pip in Charles Dickens, Great Expectations has shared scenarios...Nothing is new, just the uniqueness of your story and the characters you've created.

We all want our heroes and heroines to fulfil certain demands in a romance. Whether you go for the tall dark and handsome man, or prefer the blue-eyed blonde, they are all recognisable.

And red hair does often genetically go with green eyes, like blue eyes with blondes...

My novella uses a returning character to resolve a past situation in the story. But so do a lot of romances...

The only essentials, with stories and characters, are what you do with them and the details that make them yours...

It's all just a variation on a theme...


Do you have a particular plot or scenario that you find yourself regularly using in romance writing? Or are there any you don't like, or wouldn't use?













Wednesday 27 March 2013

A Temporary Halt in Progress...

I've been making steady progress on my novella but have now come to a temporary halt.

Why?

Because my floppy disk reader has gone astray - I know one of the family borrowed it, but can't remember who, and I know they'll all deny they ever had it, or if they did they gave it back.

If they'd given it back then I would have known where it was!!!

When I first got the idea for the novella I had a scene in my head, which I wrote down, and saved for later. At the time I was still using floppy disks as my computer tower didn't have a Cd/DVD drive.

Now I intended to transfer everything over, but just didn't get round to it, and yes, you've guessed it, the scene that I saved onto the floppy (at least it's on one of them) is now needed to refer to...

This week I've been dealing with a lot of introspection with my heroine, Sarah. She's at a turning point both emotionally and mentally, which makes writing tiring. Plus I'm having to jiggle the content on a couple of chapters around because of how the story has actually developed around the scenes in my mind.

No doubt some of Sarah's soul searching will eventually be edited out, but this missing scene belongs here at the point I have now reached in my manuscript. I know I'll rewrite the scene anyway, but the details are being elusive.

The version on the floppy is from about 8 years ago, and my brain seems to work like this: once it's typed onto the screen, and saved, the details go into brain deep storage- perhaps my memory just deletes them entirely because it knows the information has been recorded somewhere, so it's no longer in stand-by.

Weird idea, I know. But that's how it seems to me... :-)

With Easter week almost here and the family being around, my opportunities for concentrated writing will be brief, so I think I better make sure I get these floppy disks sorted, so as soon as my normal routine can be restarted, I'll be able to get on with the story.

So my total so far this month, 4, 553 words, but I have to admit that 200 of those were for a flash fiction piece for the March, One Word Challenge on the writers-online Talkback forum. And the character in that story has more tales to tell but that's for another day- they're contemporary rather than historical...

The 5,000 words a month remains unfulfilled, but it continue to be an on-going target. Smiley

smiley from: http://www.freesmileys.org/