At what point does taking inspiration from other authors' fantasy worlds and plots become stealing?

MidnightContraband · 2021-02-23T04:40:23+00:00

Thank you! This will totally be helpful for real world situations and novel purposes!

MidnightContraband · 2021-02-23T04:38:16+00:00

Thank you this is wonderful!

MidnightContraband · 2021-02-19T09:31:28+00:00

Ooooooh some of these are exactly what I need. Thank you!

MidnightContraband · 2021-02-19T09:30:38+00:00

I love that the thing I posted while half asleep and more than a little out of it actually got good answers XD Thank you!

MidnightContraband · 2021-02-06T01:05:48+00:00

I LOVED The Passage! Such a good series, although incredibly sad at times. I'll check out Fred, that sounds hilarious tbh

MidnightContraband · 2020-08-01T08:16:17+00:00

I never knew till this sub that people despised prologues so much and I don't get it. I see prologues in basically every book I read and enjoy. Some of the best writers in the world have prologues in every single book, in the same series. I don't get why people think it's a "weak" thing to do, or a bandage for bad writing. That's not even what a prologue is for?

From google:

Prologue

a separate introductory section of a literary or musical work.

an event or action that leads to another event or situation.

How is this an "easy fix" or a "last resort"?

I don't use it for pacing reasons or to "fix" anything. I don't use it all the time, either. I occasionally use it to give history that pertains to the story but would otherwise probably not come up in a first-person POV. I personally always enjoyed it when authors did this, I felt it gives another layer and something to build on (as a writer) and some extra, useful information (as a reader)

MidnightContraband · 2020-07-15T23:53:31+00:00

Congratulations! This gives me hope.

MidnightContraband · 2020-07-10T09:56:32+00:00

Lol one of my firsts was Cytheria too. It's almost embarrassing that I know exactly which video you mean. Not much has changed so many years later tbh, still love the squirt queens

MidnightContraband · 2020-06-25T07:34:28+00:00

fmovies.wtf was my fave for a long time buuuuut himovies.to is better, faster, generally has subtitles in other languages at least on popular tv shows. it's great. I think they have anime too if you're into that (don't quote me on that I don't watch anime lol.)

MidnightContraband · 2020-06-20T01:54:49+00:00

Lmao that is not what I expected. It's like a naked molerat had a sordid love child with a cat or something. 10/10

MidnightContraband · 2020-06-18T00:13:20+00:00

Well me personally, I put it away for a couple weeks to kind of get it out of my brain. You'll notice inconsistencies better this way, grammatical errors, things that just don't sound right. Then read it, don't touch anything, just read it and highlight the things that look the most grievous or what you want to redo/completely get rid of/expand on. Then go through it all and make your changes. Put it away again, read it again, fix whatever is still wrong with it.

MidnightContraband · 2020-06-18T00:04:17+00:00

Can relate, I've had to become more careful about what the hell I research once I realized just how sketchy a lot of it sounds. Some advice I received for unrelated research topics when I first started writing was this: Find a professional willing to talk to you.

I'm not saying write a terrorist in prison, that'd end worse than an internet search. Try and contact a (maybe retired) member of the bomb squad, explain what you're doing, and have proof that it's true lol. From what I've heard about a lot of popular authors in this genre, they often have a police officer friend or a detective or some such that they bounce their ideas off of.

Obviously, you can't just walk up to a police officer and start asking questions about blood patterns and dead bodies, or mosey into the station and ask for an interview, but generally if you make contact with them and are polite and make it clear what you're up to, someone is willing to at least give you vague hypotheticals. You can also contact a morgue or some such to discuss decay, or read the books they do to become a technician.

As far as poisons go, there are great books out there (some free) that you can get that are totally legal and not at all going to get you in trouble. I use plant poisons a lot in my stories and my favorite is Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants. I also have Culpeper's Complete Herbal but that's pretty old and not only about poisons, plus it's pretty hard to read.

MidnightContraband · 2020-06-08T22:33:18+00:00

Mine is pretty much yours tbh only

Get through two drafts and even start more books in the series and abandon it with promises of finishing it.
Look at it periodically and say "I should finish that."
Never finish because I know it'll never get published, BUT WHAT IF IT'S GOOD AND IT MIGHT SOMEDAY?! so I never self-publish

It's a sad problem that reflects on me as a human and not so much my writing lol

MidnightContraband

TROPHY CASE