Update – I’m back on track with the romance, but only up to a point. My realization last week has me rethinking all the characters, not just the coyote shifter. For example, my heroine is one of those annoying “too stupid to live” types, and she deserves better than that. How was she supposed to know the town was run by shapeshifters? Or that they’d mistake her for a spy just because she’s human? This was supposed to be a little quickly-tossed-off romantic comedy, but now it’s acquiring themes and depth. Nothing and no one is/are what they seem to be. I will not be calling it A Comedy of Errors. I believe that title’s been taken. Meanwhile, I got stalled at a scene farther along so I’ve gone back to typing up the longhand Story So Far in the hopes a better idea will occur to me when I hit the trouble spot. Sometimes being a pantser really sucks pencil erasers.
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If you’re sweating over the title up there (not to mention my choice of illustration), fear not. I’m talking about literary cannibalism—re-using an earlier story as the foundation for something I hope I can sell. The romance started life as a serial story I fiddled around with on a writing blog I was on several years ago. Each week we’d post a scene about life in our little shared universe, which included a remote Western town populated by shapeshifters. I had a human outsider show up, looking for a place to use as a writer’s retreat, who started writing her book based on the people around her. The ruling wolf shifters, being wary of strangers, had two of the pack (young, handsome and sexy) follow her around to find out what she was up to. Hijinks ensued. The story progressed through about five erratically-published installments before I lost interest and moved on.
When I decided to write a book a month, I had a different story in mind—an action romance series about vampire slayers, told over the course of eight books. However, as soon as I sat down to write that one, I got blocked big time. My subconscious and I still have issues. But then I remembered all the snippets and flash scenes and ideas that petered out on the blog, just sitting there and moldering. Why not re-purpose them into something that could maybe help me pay the bills?
I’m not the first person to think of this. More than a few fan fiction writers have filed off the serial numbers on their media-inspired creations and turned them into self-published novels. Sometimes they get professionally published; repurposed fanfic is how we got Fifty Shades of Grey, and allegedly several vampire romances starring variations on Buffy and Spike. I went back to the blog—the group faded out several years ago, but the blog itself is still up—and trolled my entries for useable material. This story and another one hit a chord, and here I am writing a book.
What’s the difference between cannibalism and plagiarism? Basically, who wrote/created what. I’ve heard there are romance writers who’ve written and sold the same book to different publishers, only one version’s M/F and the other’s M/M. Same basic plot, maybe even duplicated sections of prose, but the characters and certain incidents would have to be radically different. “Brandon worshipfully caressed Michael’s ample breasts” just doesn’t cut it, not even in M/M.
As for “writers” who take someone else’s book, change the names and nothing else, and publish it as their own, that is plagiarism and is not to be tolerated. You’re basically stealing money from someone who did all the heavy lifting. Stealing ideas from yourself is a different matter. I never read any of Barbara Cartland’s romances, but I’ve heard she wrote essentially the same book over and over, with only minor variations. No wonder she could churn them out so fast. That’s cannibalism on a professional scale. If the readers don’t mind, what’s the harm?
Again, it depends. I’m not stealing from anyone else; these are all words, plots and characters I created and wrote. However, those chapters that appeared on the group blog need to be revised. We were using a shared universe, created by everyone. Other people’s characters could and often did show up in each other’s stories. As I rewrite I need to go through and scrub out anything that wasn’t originally mine. The notion of a remote town populated by (vampires/shapeshifters/aliens/monsters/Nazis) is a common trope, so I’m okay there. I’ve renamed the town and moved it to a different state. I’ve also had to rename my main characters because one of them (the coyote) appeared in a book the group put out as a freebie to drum up interest in our writing. The café where my heroine gets accosted for writing was someone else’s creation, as was its original owner. Both have now been changed. I’m going to miss Sergei, my white Siberian tiger assassin, but he appeared in a book I self-published under the group’s imprint, with permission from the other members. He’s a Russian bear now. He’s dating the local bookstore owner (a widowed bison) because his original girlfriend was created by somebody else. And so on down the line.
Getting sued for plagiarism is bad enough. Getting sued for plagiarizing yourself? That’s downright embarrassing.
If I’m lucky, I won’t have to worry about that. Because something interesting’s happened. With the new names and setting have come new ideas, new inspiration and new characterizations. It’s taking on a whole new life. By the time I’m done I suspect it’ll look nothing like the original. Of course, the original was never officially published; only readers of the blog ever saw it, and I doubt if they’ll remember. Though now that I’ve spilled the beans on this blog, I could be in for trouble. I really should have thought this through. But hey—pantser. What can you do? See you all next week.
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