Continuing abandoned stories? Whats the procedure?

[Duleigh]

The only correct and ethical way is to continue the story in your head.

What is wrong with properly announced Fan Fiction? There's entire websites filled with storied featuring 100% copyrighted material using copyrighted characters and content. How many times has Harry Potter fucked Hermione Granger over at Fanfiction.com? I've written over 350,000 words based on another authors material, characters, and universe, but no one here has made a fuss because I start with a:

HUGE DISCLAIMER​

I say, do it, write it, and put a HUGE DISCLAIMER on the title page, make it gushing and complimentary, then reach out to the original author and tell him exactly what you did and say, "If you do not like it, please tell me and I will pull it down immediately"

 

[EmilyMiller]

Continuing abandoned stories? Whats the procedure?​

It’s simple. It’s not legalistic.

The story is the original author’s story. Even if they lost interest. Even if they are dead. If you don’t have their explicit permission, then go create your own story.

I’ve had people borrow my characters and been delighted to say yes. But I’d be pissed if someone just did that without asking.

Em

 

[Cagivagurl]

The author seemed to have stopped this story 4 years ago.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-village-is-no-place-for-girls-ch-01

I tried contacting him many times but he never answered so the account looks dead. SHall I continue his story for part 5
If so,whats the procedure?

IMO. The answer is simple.
No....
It's not yours.
As much as you might like to continue the story. It doesn't belong to you.
If the author grants permission. Then fair enough.
No response is not a yes....
Either he can't be bother responding to you, or has moved on.
That doesn't give you permission to use his intellectual property.
Do the polite thing and leave it alone...
Write something of your own...

 

[Bamagan]

No story on this site has been abandoned, unless the author specifically says something to that effect. Length of time between works doesn't mean much. Go write Winds of Winter instead, if a few years of no visible progress suggests abandonment.

The author seemed to have stopped this story 4 years ago.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-village-is-no-place-for-girls-ch-01

I tried contacting him many times but he never answered so the account looks dead. SHall I continue his story for part 5
If so,whats the procedure?

 

[AchtungNight]

My advice on this is to get the author’s permission if possible and if not, carefully consider your story before publishing. I have written fanfics and read more- I consider many superior and inferior to original material in various degrees. If you write a work based largely on another author’s, establish this in author’s notes and do not claim canon without direct permission. By claiming canon I mean something like Brandon Sanderson finishing the Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died or Ernest Cline enjoying Andy Weir’s Ready Player One fanfic so much he made it the villain’s official backstory. Poke fun and give praise if you can, be careful if you critique and try to stay constructive or satirical. If you write about a widely recognized person or organization remember that every popular person and group has their haters and fans. Same for erotic kinks.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What a waste, you guys should be in a courtroom, not on a porn site. Much like the AI threads, there's an abundance of holy zeal here too, devoid of any real context, making it difficult to perceive as anything but ridiculous.

Like the guardsmen in George Martin's Night's Watch, you're squandering your time on a block of ice, guarding against imaginary zombies.

So why are you here? Just asking. You seem to be spruiking a whole bunch of writerly wisdom, for someone who's published nothing here.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not quite the kind of thing we've been discussing here, but there was a recent case where fanfic went to court:

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/tolkien-judgement-dec-14.pdf

It's such a stupendously ill-advised case that it makes me wonder if the fanfic author (Demetrious Polychron) was having some kind of breakdown that blinded him to all common sense. He wrote an unauthorised continuation of LotR, contacted Tolkien's grandson and the Tolkien Estate asking for their blessing (requests variously ignored or denied), sold it online anyway, and then attempted to sue Amazon for "infringing" on his fanfic with their licensed Rings of Power series. He lost that case, the Tolkien Trust and Tolkien Estate countersued, and he was ordered to stop distributing his fanfic and delete all copies. (Plaintiffs waived damages, so he only had to pay his own legal costs.)

But I don't have to since I'm not a lawyer. So... I called one. And what I wrote in my original post was what she told me on the phone. Apparently, a fan fiction story on AO3 even won a Hugo Award (apparently it's a prestigious literature award) in the "Best Sci-Fi" category. Who knew?

Close but not quite; sounds like it's been garbled slightly in the telling.

The Hugos are a prestigious set of awards (probably the most prestigious) for the best sci-fi and fantasy from the previous year. There's no single "Best Sci-Fi" category; rather, they're broken into things like "Best Novel", "Best Novella" etc. etc.

One of the Hugo categories is "Best Related Work", for "works which are either non-fiction or noteworthy for reasons other than the fictional text". Usually this is writing about the genre e.g. histories, and encyclopaedias of SF/F writing and the surrounding culture. In 2019, the Organisation for Transformative Works (the body that runs AO3) won Best Related Work for the AO3 website - that's the website as a whole, not for any specific story there.

The Hugos are granted according to a vote by members and every voter will have their own reasons, so I don't think there's any definitive statement of how it qualifies, but IMHO it's best interpreted as something like "for providing a platform that enables amateur SF/F writing" rather than a judgement on any particular story or stories hosted there.

There has been at least one Hugo awarded to a fanfic story: Neil Gaiman's self-described "Sherlock Holmes/H.P. Lovecraft fanfiction" story "A Study in Emerald" won Best Short Story in 2004. [Edit: I would guess that this one was licensed by the Doyle/Lovecraft rights holders but haven't verified that.] Some of the other winners could probably be described as fanfic, depending on one's definitions. But to the best of my knowledge no individual AO3 story has yet won a Hugo.

(There is also a "Best Fan Writer" Hugo category but that's not a fanfiction category; it's mostly for fan-run blogs, reviews etc.)

 

[u1u1u1]

Personally I don’t really believe in copyright in a moral sense. Consider this permanent permission to create derivative works of all my work on a Creative Commons Share-alike Basis.

In a legal sense then there’s no doubt that works on Literotica are copyrighted in the same sense that published books are. You don’t need to register your copyright, legally it just exists (similarly you have a right to life even if your birth was never registered). Parody is fair use, but derivative works themselves are not inherently. People mentioned Harry Potter - back in the day Rowling said she was fine with fan fiction, one of the first authors to do so, but she did ask people to keep their work age-appropriate and I think some people got cease-and-desists. There’s half a dozen authors who fanfiction.net will not publish derivative works from - I think these include Anne Rice, Robin Hobb, and Terry Goodkind.

And then there’s the “what will Laurel accept” question, where I think it’s fair to say that there’s a fairly clear written policy, a slightly grey applied policy, and a very clear and consistent policy of what is done if a work is truly an unlicensed derivative work.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Fair use refers to snippets of copyright material used in a more extensive work where you credit the original creator. It has nothing to do with continuing someone else's work. Let me be clear: no one may use any of my characters in their work. No one can re-write anything I have written. I give no one permission to fuck with what I have created. The fact our work contains "Copyright © 2023 by Insert Name Here" means we created it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Personally I don’t really believe in copyright in a moral sense. Consider this permanent permission to create derivative works of all my work on a Creative Commons Share-alike Basis.

In a legal sense then there’s no doubt that works on Literotica are copyrighted in the same sense that published books are. You don’t need to register your copyright, legally it just exists (similarly you have a right to life even if your birth was never registered).

Technically yes, but practically no. While you do acquire copyright merely by publishing, that copyright is effectively unenforceable under US law unless you've paid to register it.

Parody is fair use, but derivative works themselves are not inherently. People mentioned Harry Potter - back in the day Rowling said she was fine with fan fiction, one of the first authors to do so, but she did ask people to keep their work age-appropriate and I think some people got cease-and-desists. There’s half a dozen authors who fanfiction.net will not publish derivative works from - I think these include Anne Rice, Robin Hobb, and Terry Goodkind.

ff.net also bans explicit work in general; it's one of the main reasons AO3 was founded.

 

[MillieDynamite]

But some of us have purchased copyrights on our work.

Technically yes, but practically no. While you do acquire copyright merely by publishing, that copyright is effectively unenforceable under US law unless you've paid to register it.



ff.net also bans explicit work in general; it's one of the main reasons AO3 was founded.

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, James Joyce lived more than a millennium after Homer. Also, there were no copyrights at the of Homer. There are copyrights now.

It turns out that James Joyce ought not to have penned Ulysses since he didn't secure Homer's permission during the séance intended to summon his spirit.

 

[Bramblethorn]

But some of us have purchased copyrights on our work.

Indeed - because that gives you more protection than the "copyright" you get just by publishing it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

This is profoundly philosophical... Why are we here? (tense music)

@ 2023-2024

Okay, you're a smart ass. Also, the symbol is ©, not @, so that tells me all I need to know.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

This is profoundly philosophical... Why are we here? (tense music)

@ 2023-2024

Good question. I've lost count of the people that have expressed very succinctly No. For a variety of reasons, this is not proper, correct, nice, a good idea, possibly even legal or in alignment with site policies and procedures.

What I see is you continuing to discount and deny the advice you've asked for. So, yeah, why are we here? You don't want an answer. You've already decided you're going to do it, you just want someone to tell you you can so you can blame them when it goes sideways.

Sure, Like the knights of the wall, You've been warned of the White Walkers. And again, like the knights of the wall, you will refuse to believe they are real until one bites you on the ass.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Good question. I've lost count of the people that have expressed very succinctly No. For a variety of reasons, this is not proper, correct, nice, a good idea, possibly even legal or in alignment with site policies and procedures.

What I see is you continuing to discount and deny the advice you've asked for. So, yeah, why are we here? You don't want an answer. You've already decided you're going to do it, you just want someone to tell you you can so you can blame them when it goes sideways.

Sure, Like the knights of the wall, You've been warned of the White Walkers. And again, like the knights of the wall, you will refuse to believe they are real until one bites you on the ass.

Dybbuk's not the OP, who seems to have gone quietly into the night. This new chap seems to have appointed himself as a spokesman for writers, which is sweet but not particularly authoritative, if you go look at his body of work.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Dybbuk's not the OP, who seems to have gone quietly into the night. This new chap seems to have appointed himself as a spokesman for writers, which is sweet but not particularly authoritative, if you go look at his body of work.

Well, that is awkward, isn't it?

I think I'll leave my reply up anyway. I like what I did by throwing the white walkers back at him.

And, yeah, I checked out his story list. Impressive, not...
At least he's got good taste in what he reads.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well, that is awkward, isn't it?

I think I'll leave my reply up anyway. I like what I did by throwing the white walkers back at him.

And, yeah, I checked out his story list. Impressive, not...
At least he's got good taste in what he reads.

You're fine. At least you've got a body of work to base your views and opinions on, rather than a soap-box.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If I were being a smart ass, I'd say I was too lazy for Ctrl+Alt+C and opted for Shift+2. But, the truth is, I simply asked: What are we really doing here at the turn of the year?

Points for trying, I guess .

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

If I were being a smart ass, I'd say I was too lazy for Ctrl+Alt+C and opted for Shift+2. But, the truth is, I simply asked: What are we really doing here at the turn of the year?

Speaking of smart ass, if we add Ctrl-Alt T, we can spell cat, well ©@™ actually, ...

 

[KachinaDoll]

The author may have written the story four years ago but the data on the story says that it was "Updated 06/09/2023", so the author was active on the story six months ago. This negates your claim that the story has been abandoned.

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

I think it would help if people would not hypethesize what copyright means when Wikipedia explains it in detail. The key word in copyright is copy. This means literally copying. Word by word of paraphrasing while keeping the structure and notions. And derivative work does not mean, any work that takes something from another story is derivative. If that were the case then any response to a forum post would be derivative work. Or any story based on the world of Gor, or the story of O would be derivative. Us copyright office states "To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new material. " In this case copyrightable means it is a work in itself and not a derived work. A continuation usually reuses characters and the situation (e. g. conflicts) but little more. It does not reuse plot, because in the new story different things happen. We must also be aware, that copyright infringement not only occurs when stories or ideas of literotica are reused, but any published work. If you take a story from e. g. a religious monthly magazine, take the original text, but add wording to turn it into a sex story, then you might still be in trouble.

I believe literotica could benefit from a less restrictive handling of continuation or alternative versions. It would enrich and deepen the community and provide many interesting new stories.

 

[Devinter]

I believe literotica could benefit from a less restrictive handling of continuation or alternative versions. It would enrich and deepen the community and provide many interesting new stories.

But don't you think that it would also enrich and deepen the community if the original author and the person wishing to continue the story actually talked to each other, showed respect, and developed a correspondence? See, I truly believe that if two authors got to know each other, quite a few of us would be more than happy to lend out our characters, or our fictional worlds, or even do collaboration work together.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think reasonable people can have different opinions about what constitutes a "fair use" of a copyrighted work, and about the ethics of continuing a story.

But it should be clear to everyone that, whatever your personal views, it's obvious that many authors would NOT want their works to be continued without express permission. Given that fact, doesn't plain decency require that you defer to that possibility and decline to continue another author's story without the author's express permission? I think so. If someone asked me if they wanted to write a sequel to one of my stories, I would probably say "yes." I'd probably be flattered that they wanted to do it. But I would want to be asked. And I think many, perhaps most, authors feel that way. Given that fact, it seems to me that regardless of what your personal feelings are on this issue that preference should be respected.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I think it would help if people would not hypethesize what copyright means when Wikipedia explains it in detail. The key word in copyright is copy. This means literally copying. Word by word of paraphrasing while keeping the structure and notions. And derivative work does not mean, any work that takes something from another story is derivative. If that were the case then any response to a forum post would be derivative work. Or any story based on the world of Gor, or the story of O would be derivative. Us copyright office states "To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new material. " In this case copyrightable means it is a work in itself and not a derived work. A continuation usually reuses characters and the situation (e. g. conflicts) but little more. It does not reuse plot, because in the new story different things happen. We must also be aware, that copyright infringement not only occurs when stories or ideas of literotica are reused, but any published work. If you take a story from e. g. a religious monthly magazine, take the original text, but add wording to turn it into a sex story, then you might still be in trouble.

I believe literotica could benefit from a less restrictive handling of continuation or alternative versions. It would enrich and deepen the community and provide many interesting new stories.

Got to be careful here. I mean look at what HBO did to GoT in season eight, and they had permission...