Three Plagiarized Pigs

“How do you manage the fine line between being influenced by a work and plagiarizing it? I’m worried that my readers, who know I’m an avid fan of a book series, might start to see the similarities between my work and call me out for “stealing” ideas.” This is something I saw on Tumblr today.

Good question. Especially in view of the fact that writers will at some point come across the fact that there are no new ideas. Period.

Avoiding plagiarsim is therefore simply a matter of taking one of these much used ideas and seeing how we can make it my own. Let’s take the Three Little Pigs or TLP and their nemesis, the Big Bad Wolf, or BBW. Each of those pigs tries to come up with a way to stave off the BBW. Maybe you too want to write a picture book about 3 characters and their antagonist.
So… how can you change it up? If you make a conscious effort it’s not that hard. Three is a magic number so let’s leave that alone. It’s common enough that it slips under plagiarism’s radar. But let’s change the pigs to deer. Or even better, let’s make the threesome a deer, a moose, and an elk. Or better yet, 3 antlered moose, a 2-headed deer and an elk with a Swedish sweater on.

Now we still have 3 characters, but we’ve used our own imagination to change them up. No resemblance now to our piggies.

Maybe you will want them to try three different techniques to deal with the wolf. (We’ll leave the wolf alone, to show that some similarities to existing stories are inevitable and acceptable.

Now for the wolf. Is he gonna be the Big and the Bad? Let’s make him Stupid and Stunning. What does he want from this family of the ruminants? How is he a threat to them? Will he want to eat them too?

This is where brain storming is handy. (Or a deer with two heads, ;P ) Maybe, seeing as we have 3 funny animals, this should be a funny problem. Maybe the wolf wants the elk’s sweater for warmth, the deer’s extra head for brains, and one of the moose’s antlers for over his door for prestige.

I think I’ll leave it at that. The rest of this story will unfold according to the substitutions we have made for the original 3-pig-1-wolf tale. In this tale there will be no huffing and puffing. Perhaps some bucking and butting.

People may recognize the framework but no one can call this plagiarism. And look at that—in writing this post I have a fantastic idea for a picture book that none of you would dare to plagiarize right???

To sum up, plagiarizing can be easily side-stepped by choosing a common story framework, plot or theme and allowing our muse, our creative genius, to play with it. This, then, is called our WRITER’S VOICE and when we let it lead us, we’re safe from plagiarism.

Can Your Cat Fly?

On the weekend I attended a book launch by Marie-Loise Gay, author and illustrator of the “Stella” books and more. This time she had a large book called “Any Questions?”

It. Was. Brilliant.

Marie has done a number of school visits and such over the years, and and her young readers and admirers have bucket loads of questions for her. She used all those questions, put them in a book about how a book is born and grows, and created a masterpiece, enhanced with her lovely, quirky artwork.

Some of the questions these kids asked are, “How did you learn to draw?” “Can your cat fly?” “How many books do you make in one day?” Kids want to know.

I’ve said before that I was always a nosey cat and an imaginative one. When I was younger I had just heard some adults talking about St Francis of Assissi and how he claimed he could speak to animals. Being the animal nut I was, I asked my mother, “Will I ever have that gift to talk to animals?” Children do not relate to impossiblity.

And how else do kids learn than by asking and doing? Kids learn: that crayons will melt in the sun. . .that worms can look just like twigs. . .that if you beg very very hard enough you might just win and get that ice-cream.

Sometimes they don’t ask first, but they still learn. Learn that: plugging wrong things in outlets can give big black shocks. . . .that digging up a pretty dead bird a week after burial to show to someone is quite shocking . . . that frogs die kept under a bowl in the hot sun.

Kids are all about the “why” and “how” and especially the “what if?” All questions writers must keep in the fore front of their brains in order to turn out books people want to read, and not just children.

Here’s a quote I have always loved from George Bernard Shaw: “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?” 

Children are often born knowing how to do the latter. Some adults manage to retain these dreams. They make the best children’s authors and illustrators.

 

Creative Rambling

I read a humour piece recently. The writer did not mind his p’s and q’s. He crossed his i’s and dotted his t’s. Way too many adverbs, probably.

But I soon forgot to notice.  His content was brilliant and oh, so funny!

We can get so caught up in writing correctly. We know no publisher is going to overlook those proofreading errors. But we can’t write a great first draft if we’re hung up on a grammatical noose in our own office. Hmm, here’s an idea for those inclined to slow their creative flow correcting errors, while your right brain is screaming, “Let me Create—darn you!” String a great big noose up above your desk and hang a sign saying ‘Grammar, and the whole dang Rulebook’ on it.

That out of my fingers, what I want to say is that I’ve had an epiphany about blogging, thanks to some other authors’ posts.

Is my blog for readers or writers? First I say, there are enough blogs out there with professional writers’ articles, from those with waay  more experience than I.  I should bow to them. But then I realized I like to write for those who are more or less on the same level of writing as myself, those who are trying to glean what they can, where they can, and progress, working towards gaining a turtle shell while we step out to the front line of fire—unsolicited writers wanting to break into print. Bulldozing might be a better strategy.

We need all the encouragement, all the goading, all the un-baffling we can lay our grubbing turtle paws on.

Be yourself in your writing. Don’t follow someone else’s form. The reason most of us start writing is because we love not just the story but the swirl of language, letters, words. We love to string them up by the toenails and see how they  catch the light. We love to throw them together in a paragraph, hit replay, add more colour, put them in a blender with the lid off and funnel them back to see how the story twists and turns under our thumbscrews.

To get caught up in the—fade in spooky music-—RULES—, you don’t learn and develop your own unique voice. Your world can be round—yet unlike round as we know it. Rules are for later. Rules are for clean-up and improvement. For improving your story, not dominating it.

So cut loose. Get the content in there. The mood. Set it dancing, or Danzing, or Dauntzing.  Free on the wings of the wind, or a power hungry, bronze-glinting dragon with paws like dust pans and claws that cut like a drill press through plastic, smoking and smelling all through.

Which sort of brings me back to what writers should blog more about—Their Own Writing!

Stories, snippets, thoughts, anecdotes, and stories. I’ try to get on it!

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Cloying Clichés 2 ~ Stale Story

Cookie cutter stories. Copy cat fantasy. Repeating romances.

Last week I discussed tired clichéd phrases and comparisons.Peas in a pod similes and metaphors.

But clichés happen in storytelling too.

Boy meets girl. They detest each other. Something happens to the one. The other can’t bear to stand by hating and rescues the other. They realize they love each other. It was destiny. The fillers are just as cliché. Just as predictable.

Fantasy. One humble, gutless or shy hero. One nasty as heck villain. One goal–to attain something or somewhere before the other so the evil git doesn’t destroy the world. End=hero, still humble on pedestal. Oh, and maybe throw in a girl to protect. Possible slight variations, but again cliché, predictable.

The names change, not everyone is red-haired, but basically cookie cutter cut-outs. Some people don’t mind if all they want is escapism for a few hours.

But the multitudes want something more. Twists, turns and that “Oooh, I did NOT see THAT coming.”
And so even though they were about to see if their spouse or brother left them any mango chip, avocado muffins, they tuck their feet up for another chapter. And another.
And they don’t hear their stomach growl in the stillness because in  that chapter the hero starts acting like the villain and the villain has an attack of conscience and you still can’t put the book down cause–wow–you want to see where this goes and how it pans out.

Clichéd story frameworks are crutches. They can be starting points, because as every writer learns there are only so many plots all told. But what do we do with them? Yes, there are few plots, but that doesn’t mean also few stories.

The story is what we do with that plot, where we take it and the characters. Think of the most interesting or influential people in history. Think of the class clown in your school, however long ago. Why were they interesting? Because they dared to be different, to take a different road, to say the unexpected. They were not white stormtroopers, mindless clones.

For example, dragons in story have been cast as brutal and also benevolent, but nearly always large, magnificent, and powerful. Where would a story go with a dragon who was large, yes, but cowardly and had stunted wings of different sizes. He can’t bear a hero on his back to glory. What would he do in battle? This then affects the hero. How does he react to this pathetic sample of dragon kind? How does his reaction affect the rest of the epic journey?

And here’s a big one. What if the Boy wasn’t tall and handsome? Or the Girl slim and beautiful? Why can’t writers portray heroes/heroines who stutter, or limp or have a scar or are even just plain? Nondescript, easily forgotten?

Twist it, distort it, throw everything and everyone in your stories for a great roller coaster loop. Characters in these circumstances will really have a tale worth telling and reading and will stay in the mind much longer than those interchangeable princes and princesses in fairy tales. Remember, “Once upon a time” and “Happily ever after” are clichés too.

Seeking alternatives to clichéd writing, is how we develop our unique writer’s voice, that voice, that writing style and story style that makes a reader say not “I liked her book” but, “I like her books, I love this author, I love her way with words!”

Here’s an exercise. Using all these words in a 10, 15, or 20 minute do-or-die, write-off-the-cuff, free-write. Just fly with it and don’t think too hard.

mammoth,  skiing,  hail,  garage,  mechanic,  perfume,  conservatory. 🙂

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I

I took the one less travelled by

And that has made all the difference”

           –Robert Frost

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Caustic Cadences

Cadence: 1.the rhythmic flow of a sequence of sounds or words

Ever notice, how when listening to someone you’ve known for decades tell yet another one of their stories, you hear their words and yet nothing of what they say.

You hear the cadence of their voice lulling you into a stupor and you know ahead of time where their tone will change, rise, fall; you know where they’ll pause to perform some personal habit–sipping coffee, tucking hair behind ears, blowing a bulbous nose.

You know as you ‘listen’ which lines they will repeat for effect. And you just watch, eyes glazed, smiling or nodding in all the right places, because those cadences are branded on your brain in a niche reserved for such experiences?

(Maybe you marvel how you ever wondered that your kids can’t focus in class. Or yourself. Think back–teacher’s have these cadences too, some rich, some tedious.)

Not everyone has a dynamic cadence to their voice and speech, captivating their audiences. Some cadences tire you while others make your eyes leap out of their sockets and have you groping the floor for them, to put them back in vowing to hold on tighter.

That’s our task as writers. Our cadences need to pop, bang and sizzle. Other times they need to stealthily sneak up on a reader and envelope them in essence of comfort. Our cadences need to take corners with no warning, twirl the ends of big kaleidoscopes, toss our readers up in roller coasters that end in pools full of rose scented clouds, or of jello dotted with scorpions. Keep–them–guessing. Their heads twisting, their antennae probing, their emotions and sensations pulsing.

As with anything, there is such a thing as overdoing it–my simple advice–do not go there. Things still have to be believable.

We need to test our voice–our cadence–on a heart rate monitor and make sure that line is hopping like an Easter bunny on–well, take your pick of stimulants however illegal and feed it to him in a carrot.