Plagiarism and The Sea of Stories, by Enid Richemont

By -
When does using traditional, or well-known and loved stories such as those by Hans Christian Andersen (one of my all-time favourite writers) and the like, become plagiarism? There must be a HCA estate of some kind, yet versions of these stories appear everywhere - in film, theatre, books and whatever. It's said that there's no copyright on ideas, that ideas are universal, and we all know where Shakespeare got a lot of his from. Might there be, as in Salman Rushdie's children's novel, a "Sea of Stories" into which we dip? I'm mentioning this, because I've recently spent some time re-structuring and shortening one of the stories from the John Bauer illustrated collection of Swedish tales, all of which, I think, must be re-interpretations of much older ones. If you're not familiar with John Bauer's work, here's an 
 idea of it on the left - magical!

Most traditional folk and fairy tales seem to centre on fairness and honesty. The one I've been working on is about being true to your word, and keeping a promise no matter what - which could serve as an excellent primer for our current politicians. 

Back to plagiarism, though. A Costa prize-winning author took the concept of "Groundhog Day" - a day which is stuck in a time loop and keeps on repeating itself - and has written a murder mystery which does just that (tough on both the victim and the observer who is beginning to fall in love with her!) And every author's nightmare - you once, long ago, read a novel which has sunk so far into your consciousness that it starts feeling as if you own it. Was there ever a book, or did I dream it? Wow! you assume - the Muse has been kind to me, so I'll get to work and write it.

And recently, the John Lewis Christmas ad featured a small dragon with antisocial fire problems. Such a clever idea, but seems quite a number of picture book authors had got there first, and, understandably, felt a bit miffed. The upside of this was that at least one of the authors found that her book sales had increased quite noticeably following the ad!


Some time ago, one of my small Franklin Watts books was translated into Arabic. It's a story based on pigeon poo, and it's both funny and rather rude, so I was a bit surpised - well so much for my preconceptions! Is anyone reading this blog familiar with Arabic? It seems to me that there must be quite a few variations on the language because it's spoken over such wide areas. I'm asking for a rather special reason - my family in Cornwall, together with local support, has made it possible for a Syrian refugee family living in a camp in the Lebanon to be housed in Falmouth. There are three children - a baby, a four year old and a six year old, and I thought I might offer them this as a welcome present, but maybe it's a form of Arabic they're not familiar with. Comments, especially from any Arabic scholars out there, are more than welcome.


Comments

Jan Needle said…
Fabulous post - thank you!
28 November 2019 at 09:29
Sandra Horn said…
Thank you, Enid - I share your anxieties about ideas that suddenly pop up, who knows from where! I've also rewritten some old tales - The Silkie and Babushka in the belief that legends are fair game as sources of new 'takes'.
Lovely story about the Syrian refugees in these ghastly times! x
28 November 2019 at 09:40
Post a Comment

Popular posts

Banged Out by Julia Jones

By -
Image
No caption needed? Photo: Edd Westmacott / Alamy Stock    October 31st is an unmissable festivity in the web of worldwide Wheens. If you are lucky enough to know a representative of this rare breed, you approach with cat-like tread. 'Hallo, Wheen,' you say, with just the smidgen of extra emphasis necessary to make it clear that you know, that they know, that we all know that it's Halloween. 'Hallow-Wheen,' geddit? You share a tired chortle. And that's it. Till next year. This year, with poignant unintended irony, Francis retired. His colleagues at Private Eye took their one last chance to utter this hallowed greeting -- and then they banged him out. Wikipedia will explain this former Fleet Street ceremony -- either for a youngster completing their apprenticeship, when they might be ' placed in a truck and showered in printers' ink, glue and paper'   or, more sedately when ' retiring employees would be walked through the print room by their colle
Read more

Avoid Career Suicide or Self-Homicide in Online Firefights -- Reb MacRath

By -
Image
With a title like that, I know I really should start off with a bang. A pulp flourish or note of high drama. Shutters flapping. Lightning flashing. Thunder booming. That and more. And yet, I beg your forgiveness, I must start with a single word. And not even one in English:                                         Ardalio That's the final word in an eight-line Latin poem I was trying to translate. Martial, the poet, spent six lines telling us how Atticus could do anything in the nicest or prettiest, effortless way. The word 'belle' or 'bellus' appears thirteen times in those first six lines. And each repetition seems a bit more mocking. Then, suddenly, Martial springs his trademark stinger: at the tail end, a raucous quip or dazzling bit of word  play. Here, he wonders: 'Since you do nothing well and everything not badly/What would you have me say of you?' The answer in Latin: Magnus es ardalio. You are a great...something--but what? Loeb Classical Library tr
Read more

A Few Discreet Words About Caesar's Penis--Reb MacRath

By -
Image
Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There  was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts
Read more

While publishers play safe, authors create the brands of the future - By Roz Morris

By Roz Morris aka @Roz_Morris . Blog: Nail Your Novel -
Image
Readers of this blog will know how many fine authors choose to self-publish or are driven to it because they don’t fit a marketing niche. But when we go it alone, how do we build a brand? One important function that publishers used to perform was curation - taking the creme de la creme, producing it well, putting it out under an influential imprint. In the real world, that didn’t always count for much, but the reading public thinks it did - so to get credibility, indies have to replace it somehow. And here’s how we’re doing it. Publishing collectives Some indies band together to form an editorial board. Books aren’t published unless all members approve them. That takes a lot of trust and rigor, and all members have to be in tune with a particular type of reader. Perhaps not good for mavericks, but it’s the indie version of the niche publisher. The handpicked collection Some authors are gathering collections of writers whose work they admire. I was lucky enough to ca
Read more

Meet Nora Stunt -- Ruth Leigh

By -
Image
Every other writer in the whole world, ever, it seems gets asked the same question at live events. “Where do you get your ideas from?” It’s become a bit of a joke now, a well-worn trope in the industry. I have only ever been asked this once, at a school talk and I was so chuffed that I think I scared the student a little with my enthusiastic response.   However, questions that people do often ask include, “How do you think up your character names?” and, “Are they based on real people?”   When I was writing the Diary of Isabella M Smugge, my search history was peppered with things like, “posh girls’ names from the 1980s” and, “popular Suffolk surnames.” I didn’t introduce many new characters in the Trials of Isabella M Smugge, but by the time I was writing book three, I’d come up with an absolutely spiffing plan. I was out on the road for the first time, invited to both the Brechin Bookfest and the Scottish Association of Writers event in Dundee by the magnificent Wendy H Jones. For
Read more