Writing Gooder

Banned Books week began this weekend and will run until October 3 here in the United States.  Here’s a portion of the (poorly written) press release from the American Library Association (ALA):

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Here’s what’s interesting about banned books week in the United States: there are no banned books in the United States.  Because of the first amendment granting freedom of speech, the books you purchase are limited only by your financial means.  Yet, banned books week gives the impression that there are libraries and schools everywhere in the country trying to ban books.

You know how a book gets on the banned list?  By it not being available at the school or public library; as if any library could fit the 150,000 new books published each year in the United States.  By this logic, every library in the nation has banned the Young Writers Literary Journal, making it the most banned book in America!

Of course, I am being disingenuous, but I’m being so to illustrate the ridiculousness of banned books week.  Every now and then, a group of people (usually parents) petition a library to remove a book from its shelves.  Most of the time, these petitions fail.  Yet, each petition goes toward the banned book number even where a book remains on the shelf.

And when a library does pull a book from the shelf, is that book really ‘banned’?  In most contexts, banned refers to an action of Government with the purpose of specifically excluding certain books from purchase.  But for the purposes of banned books week, banned just means “challenged” and refers solely to the actions of parents.  Thus, the ALA uses a definition of ban that is not part of normal nomenclature.

Yet, what really irks me is when I read something like the following:

If a country is measured by the books it bans, then America is second to none.

Really?  America is second to none?  Not Iran?  Not Venezuela?  Not Russia?  Really?  What kind of world do people like that live in?

The Rumored iTablet (picture not real)

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on Tablet PC’s lately.  In the next year or so, Apple will be coming out with one most likely (nicknamed the iTablet), Microsoft will be coming out with one, and even TechCrunch (a blog) is making one.

For those who don’t know, a Tablet PC is a laptop with a touch screen that allows you to use it as a notepad.  The current generation comes with a keyboard, but the next generation from Apple et. al. promises to ditch the keyboard (like the one pictured).  I think this could revolutionize the art of writing. (more…)

In two previous posts, I’ve discussed what you need to know about copyright, and the copyrightability of characters.  So now it’s on to another discussion of copyright, but this time concerning co-authors (aka, joint authors).  As always, please note that this only applies to United States law.  That being said though, it’s not going to differ much among developed nations. (more…)

Writing a poem is easy, but writing a good poem is one of the hardest things to do in all of literature.  Unfortunately, while it’s quite easy for me to say why most poetry sucks, I have no idea what makes a poem decent (let alone, good).  This comes down to the fact that except for one poem out of the hundreds I’ve written, I suck at poetry.

So I’m putting out a request for a guest article on “How to Write a Decent Poem.”  Where you take the article is up to you, but please stick to the subject.  For your hard efforts, you’ll take home a free YWS t-shirt.  Keep in mind that the target audience is roughly 13 to 18 years old.

Submissions must be sent to yws.webmaster@gmail.com and the deadline is Friday, October 2.  Of course, only one entry will be accepted.  Also, the entry need not be something new (in other words, I don’t care if it’s been published and/or it’s five years old).  If you have a question, kindly use the comments section below.  The winning entry will be posted on WritingGooder.com on Monday, October 5.

Face it: most poetry sucks.  It’s not just the unpublished stuff either that you find in every crevice on the Internet; a lot of the published stuff sucks too.  Precious few of the poems written in the past 20 years will still be finding their ways into anthologies 100 years from now.  In fact, I think it’s a fair bet to say that 99% of all poetry sucks.

There are two problems contributing to this suckage as I see it.  The first problem is that poetry is not a natural means of expression.  We don’t talk in haikus, villanelles, and iambic pentameter.  So when we try to force words into the unnatural state of the poem, we almost invariably stumble.

The second problem is that a bad poem is extremely easy to write.  Unlike a bad short story or a bad novel, you don’t need to invest too much time in writing a bad poem.  It takes but a few minutes of your day and nothing more.

As a result, it should be no surprise that most poetry sucks.  But the flipside is that of the 1% that doesn’t suck, the vast majority of that 1% is very good.  And a good poem can evoke far more than even the most superb of novels.

So what do you think?

Don't Even Think of Copying Us... for profit of course

In a previous post, I covered the basics of what you need to know about copyrights.  But of course, there are specifics I didn’t cover.  The copyrightability of characters is one such specific.

First off, keep in mind that copyrights are automatic.  You don’t need to do anything to get one.  However, for something to be copyrightable, it must be original and fixed.  Original just means it needs some minimal amount of creativity, and fixed just means you can hold it or see it (an idea, for example, cannot be copyrighted).

As you may imagine, characters are indeed copyrightable.  Otherwise, anyone could write and publish another Harry Potter novel using the characters from Harry Potter.  But just because you make up a character doesn’t mean it’s copyrightable.

The first requirement of copyright is that it be original.  If your character isn’t original, it can’t be copyrighted.  In deciding whether or not a character is original, courts in the United States have used two tests: the Specificity Test and the Story Being Told Test.  Lets go over both!

The Specificity Test

The specificity test is very straightforward.  Is your character specific?  Does your character have a name, a description, and emotions?

However, the specificity test is also quite vague.  There’s no bright-line that you must cross for your character to be copyrighted, and the grey area is very wide.  Obviously, Harry Potter is a copyrighted character.  Neville Longbottom is another copyrighted character.  But what about Nearly Headless Nick?  His name and description probably makes him copyrighted, but it’s not quite clear under this test.

As one court in Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. said, “the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for making them too indistinctly.”

The Story Being Told Test

The Specificity Test leaves a lot of discretion to the Court, so some courts have instead chosen to employ the Story Being Told Test.  In this, if your character is the story, then your character is copyrightable.  But if your character is just a chessman, your cannot is not copyrightable.

Conclusion

Confused yet?  Because if you’re not, you should be.  Courts struggle with when a character can be copyrighted.  Fortunately for most of us, it doesn’t matter.  No one is really interested in copying the characters we make up.  However, if you are concerned, then refer to the quote from the Nichols court above.

Alternatively, can you copy someone else’s characters?  It depends.  As long as you rename the character, it’ll probably be okay.  But if the character is very specific, and you copy all the emotions and details of this character, then it’s definitely not okay.

Addendum: Fan-Fiction

Where does this leave fan-fiction?  Generally, fan-fiction is okay as long as it’s not for profit.  So as long as you don’t intend to profit from your Harry Potter fan-fic, you’re okay.

Whether it be an essay, a story, or working on YWS, I always exercise first.  Sometimes, this involves just taking my dog for a walk.  Other times, it involves a 3 mile run or a 10 mile bike ride.  And there are times when it just involves me walking five minutes to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee.

I do this because exercise is fundamental to being a good writer.  It doesn’t even need to be much; just one 15 minute walk every day is probably enough.  What exercise does is allow your body to relax and improve circulation to the brain.  As a result, when you go to write, your mind feels clearer; it’s easier to come up with ideas and your writing style improves as well.  And as a 1997 study found, exercising even improves creativity.

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One thing I’ve noticed over the years at YWS is just how many people here seem to be writing a novel.  And I can’t figure out why.

If you want to perfect your writing skills, a novel isn’t the way.  Novels take a lot of time and dedication.  As a result, you’re limiting yourself to one story with one theme about a particular group of characters.  This inevitably leads to some stagnation in the quality of writing.
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