Dramaticapedia

A writer recently asked:

I purchased your Storyweaver, because I’ve had many stories rumbling around in my head for years. Several of them are adaptations of old tv dramas and old movies.

My stories are totally different from the originals, but use the same characters names.

I guess my main question is: am I legally allowed to write these stories?

I’m guessing there must be some sort of rights acquired in order to do so. If that’s the case, I’ll have to forget it. I can’t afford the possible hundreds of thousands it would cost to acquire rights to characters names… and without these characters, my stories wouldn’t be the same.

Thank you for any help you can possibly provide.

Respectfully yours,

SV

My reply:

Hi, SV

While a character name cannot be copyrighted, it can be trademarked. And, in copyright cases, character names can be taken into consideration as part of an overall argument of infringement.

For example, there is no doubt you cannot get away with calling a character Luke Skywalker, even if you were telling a story about an orange and an apple, and Luke was the apple.

At the other end of the scale, you couldn’t get away with publishing a story about a young farm boy in a galaxy far far away whose father turns out to be the villain, and both of whom use a paranormal power (know as the PP) to move objects and control minds no matter what you called them, even Fred and Ethyl.

And in the middle are character names such as Joe Smith, which don’t really ring a bell with most people as belonging uniquely to some previously published work. Those kinds of names can be used without concern, even if they have been previously published in some obscure fiction.

In the end, it is up to you to determine if the character names are so identifiable that using them would violate copyright or intellectual property rights, and if you run into trouble, then it is up to the courts.

Hope this helps.

Melanie

I love index cards. I hate index cards. They are the best way to organize and re-organize my thoughts and story concepts before I write. But, they are time-consuming to fill out, impossible to edit, and UG-LY when stuck to a wall.

Finally, I go so frustrated I hired a programmer to build an interactive index card program designed to meet my story development needs.

The result is Throughline, and (I’m not kidding you here) it has changed my life! Not only did it streamline my work on stories, but I’ve started using it for everything from “Things to Do” to shopping lists!

The beauty of the program is its simplicity.  Click one button to create a new card.  Click once on the card to give it a name.  Double-click on the card to open the “content window” (essentially, the back of the card) where you can enter any information you want.  Drag and drop cards to rearrange them in any order you like.  You can give each card a color, change the font, and justify the text.

By description it doesn’t sound like much, but wait until you actually start using it!  In fact, why don’t you take it out for a test drive by downloading the Windows Demo.  (Sorry, no Mac demo at this time).  Or, since we have a 90 day money back satisfaction guarantee, why not just buy it so you can save, export, and print your cards.

Either way, once you’ve given it a whirl I’m pretty sure you’re going to feel like I do:  how did I ever get by without this thing?

Click here for complete details about all the features and how to use them, and let me know what you think!

Contributed by Teresa Darnold 

A character can be seen as being more thoughtful or more creative if they say things that are inventive and unique. Phrases that the reader has never heard or read before will seem new and fresh – unlike many colloquialisms that are said so often they have lost all original meaning, like; ‘We’re/they’re/somebody’s not out of the woods yet’. Now – while this might make some sense when the story is taking place in Washington state, when you hear newscasters say it when describing a car chase in the middle of a California desert or in the city of Los Angeles – it makes very little sense at all. 

If you’d like to see what I mean – try this; start to listen to your local evening news reports for the ‘Not out of the woods yet’ phrase and you might find yourself surprised at how often it’s used. It’s so overused we really don’t hear it being used. Likewise, if you fill up your story with characters uttering commonly called-upon colloquialisms, metaphors and puns, your story stands the chance of being as memorable as the evening news itself. 

Lawn Janitors. Have you ever heard the phrase before? They’re those guys who do little more than run a lawnmower, edger and/or leaf blower at your bank or apartment. Can such technicians really be called a ‘Gardener’ if their entire job involves cutting grass, sweeping up said grass, and then taking said cut grass to the trash?  I’m pretty confident you haven’t heard that one before because I just made it up for the purposes of this article.  And that’s what you should do for your stories as well. 

For example, Shawn Levy, the director of Night at the Museum I & II used a word in the sequel that he and his wife had made up in their own private conversations: “jimmyjack”.  It is intended to mean something like “crackjack” in its old usage, but with more of a sense of “splendid” than “top notch”. 

In his commentary on preparing the movie he says he gave the word to the character of Amelia Erheart because it simultaneously enhanced her personality and also made her unique.  Further, the sound of the word fit in with her time period.  And finally, it gave the audience something memorable to repeat, which leads to more word-of-mouth and recognition for a movie (or a book or stage play, for that matter). 

Think of all the clever, totally devised phraseology in other movies such as Men In Black, Beetlejuice, and Avatar, and books like Harry Potter, Interview with the Vampire, and anything by Clive Cussler. 

Now, admittedly, it isn’t always easy to come up with an inventive new word or phrase on the fly, so a good trick is to train yourself to notice when they pop up all on their own, such as when you mis-hear a phrase on TV or the radio, or when you mispronounce something in your own conversation. 

When you hear it, jot it down straightaway in your writer’s notebook.  You DO carry a writer’s notebook don’t you? – or at least the modern equivalent such as a smart phone, ipad, or voice recorder? 

Well if you don’t, you should – and for a lot of other reasons besides only made-up phrases.  And if you do, you will be richly rewarded with richer dialog and descriptions.  Or, as I always say, you’ll more pleased than a butt-happy, foot-happy kick-a-roo pony!

Like to contribute an article to Dramaticapedia?

Email your submission to mail@storymind.com

“Snakes… Why did it have to be snakes….???”

What a character likes and dislikes takes the curse of its larger than life stature. Whether you are writing a novel, play, screenplay, or teleplay, your characters loom in the hearts and minds of the audience. No one can relate to a loom. To humanize your characters and bring them down to size, give them feelings rather than just points of view.

You work in an office. Everyone does their job. The place runs like clockwork. Who ARE these people?! Until you know if they love football but hate sushi, you don’t really know them all. Who CARES what their purposes are; what do they take in their coffee, or tea, or do they not touch either but guzzle cola and pistachios.

Red. Does it do anything for them? What about wall paper patterns with thousands of little ducks? The things your characters like and don’t like set them apart from the crowd. And letting yourself go a little bit off the wall can bring forth attractions and repulsions that can suggest settings for a whole scene, sequence, or even the whole story itself.

Work yourself into the words. If you have pet likes and dislikes, this is the place to spout off about them. Assign them to your characters and you can get back at all those hated things, and express all those yearnings for the loved ones.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Story Development Software

Your thematic message (moral of the story) has two sides: the Issue and the Counterpoint. The Issue is the human quality under examination in your story (such as greed) and the Counterpoint is the opposite trait (such as Generosity), presented for contrast. Together, they play both sides of the moral dilemma. But how do you go about making your thematic point to your readers or audience?

The most important key to a successful thematic argument is never, ever play the message issue and counterpoint together at the same time. Why? Because the thematic argument is an emotional one, not one of reason. You are trying to sway your reader/audience to adopt your moral view as an author. This will not happen if you keep showing one side of the argument as “good” and the other side as “bad” in direct comparison. Such a thematic argument would seem one-sided, and treat the issues as being black-and-white, rather than gray-scale.

In real life, moral decisions are seldom cut-and-dried. Although we may hold views that are clearly defined, in practice it all comes down to the context of the specific situation. For example, it is wrong to steal in general. But, it might be proper to steal from the enemy during a war, or from a large market when you baby is starving. In the end, all moral views become a little blurry around the edges when push comes to shove.

Statements of absolutes do not a thematic argument make. Rather, your most powerful message will deal with the lesser of two evils, the greater of two goods, or the degree of goodness or badness of each side of the argument. In fact, there are often situations where both sides of the moral argument are equally good, equally bad, or that both sides are either good nor bad in the particular situation being explored in the story.

The way to create this more powerful, more believable, and more persuasive thematic argument is as follows:

1. Determine in advance whether each side is good, bad, or neutral.

Do this by assigning an arbitrary “value” to both the Message Issue and the Counterpoint. For example, we might choose a scale with +5 being abolutely good, -5 being absolutely bad, and zero being neutral.

If our thematic argument is Greed vs. Generosity, then Greed (our Message Issue) might be a -3, and Generosity (our Counterpoint) might be a -2. This would mean that both Greed and Generosity are both bad (being in the negative) but that Generosity is a little less bad than Greed since Generosity is only a -2 and Greed is a -3.

2. Show the good and bad aspects of both the Message Issue and the Counterpoint.

Make sure the examples of each side of the thematic argument that you have already developed don’t portray either side as being all good or all bad. In fact, even if one side of the argument turns out to be bad in the end, it might be shown as good initially. But over the course of the story, that first impression is changed by seeing that side in other contexts.

3. Have the good and bad aspects “average out” to the thematic conclusion you want.

By putting each side of the thematic argument on a roller coaster of good and bad aspects, it blurs the issues, just as in real life. But the reader/audience will “average out” all of their exposures to each side of the argument and draw their own conclusions at the end of the story.

In this way, the argument will move out of the realm of intellectual consideration and become a viewpoint arrived by feel. And, since you have not only shown both sides, but the good and the bad of each side, your message will be easier to swallow. And finally, since you never directly compared the two sides, the reader/audience will not feel that your message has been shoved down its throat.

A story without a clear indication of success or failure is a failure with your readers or audience. You need to work out exactly how the audience will know the goal is achieved or not.

This might seem obvious in an action story, but may be much more difficult in a story about character growth.

Success and Failure don’t have to be binary choices; they can be matters of degree. For example, the effort to bring back a treasure may fail, but the adventurers discover one large ruby that fell into their pack. Or, someone seeking true love might find love but with someone who is rather annoying.

Whether either of these examples is a partial success or a partial failure depends largely on how you portray the characters’ attitudes to the imperfect achievement. To ensure a sense of closure in your readers/audience, make sure they know exactly how things end up on the success/failure scale.

A goal is what the characters chase, but what chases the characters? The consequence doubles the dramatic tension in a story by providing a negative result if the goal is not achieved.

Consequences may be emotional or logistic, but the more intense they are, the greater the tension. Often it provides greater depth if there are emotional consequences when there is an external goal, and external consequences if there is an emotional goal.

Your story might be about avoiding the consequences or it might begin with the consequences already in place, and the goal is intended to end them.

If the consequences are intense enough, it can help provide motivation for characters who have no specific personal goals.

The achievement or failure to achieve the goal is an important but short moment at the end of the story. So how is interest maintained over the course of the story? By the progress of the quest toward the goal. This progress is measured by how many of the requirements have been met and how many remain.

Requirements can be specific, such as needing to obtain five lost rubies that fit in the idol and unlock the door to the treasure. Or, they can be nebulous, such as needing to reach three progressive states of enlightenment before the dimensional portal will open.

The important thing is that the requirements are clear enough to be easily understood and “marked off the list” as the story progresses.

Personal Goals are the motivating reasons your characters care about and/or participate in the effort to achieve or prevent the overall goal. In other words, they see the main story goal as a means to an end, not as an end itself.

Although a personal goal for each character is not absolutely essential, at some point your audience or readers are going to wonder what is driving each character to brave the trials and obstacles. If you haven’t supplied a believable motivation, it will stand out as a story hole. e trials and obstacles. If you haven’t supplied a believable motivation, it will stand out as a story hole.