₦airaland Forum

In the last fortnight or so, I have read -

* The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
* The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra
* The Outcast by Sadie Jones
* Waiting for an Angel by Helon Habila
* What is the What by Dave Eggers
_{(Okay okay, I know it says which books are you currently reading)}

I am currently reading Mohammed Naseehu Ali's The Prophet of Zongo Stree[/b]t (which includes the Caine Prize shortlisted story [b]"Mallam Sile" which was published in The Newyorker magazine).

What's going on with this project, guys?

Whatever happened to those people who wanted to get their works pooled together to create an anthology?

Where is she? I mean which country. I know her book was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers prize. but she did not win though she was a regional winner.

Hey Oriks, how is it going? Did you manage to get Karen King-Aribisala to edit your "Memories of a Refugee Child" story? And, have you put your book back on the market? If yes, do tell me before you send me a copy cos I have moved house and I won't get it if you send it to my old address.

great LOL

tianshie:
It's the second day of the workshop at the Lagos resource centre Victoria Island and it's very taxing with all the readings and assignments Chimamanda gives us but the experience is invaluable!!

Tomorrow is another day

LOL. Well, I'll advise that you soak up as much as you can. You know what they say - No pain, no gain. Remember that you can only be a better writer for the experience (not worse). I'm sure that you will appreciate the experience sometime in the not too distant future. Did you manage to hook up with Chukky76? Since Seun banned him, he has not posted on Nairaland (though I believe the ban has since been lifted - ^{I may however be wrong, who knows?}).

Anyway, all the best to you guys. Ensure you make the most of the workshop.

Back on Track, Good.

Orikinla:
May I advise Jide Osikomaiya to ask for submissions from Nigeria through the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), to make sure that the anthology is a good compilation of contemporary prose fiction.
He can also inform Sola Osofisan of the African Writer.

Nice one Orikinla.

jideosik:
I hope too that a mature, decent and intellectual discussion website will emerge shortly whereby Nigerian writers can exchange ideas and build a friendly community.

Hear, Hear!

Aloy.Emeka:
Chineke umunwanyi!!! who be Doyin again? even if he's Doyin motors, i no care. It was me that first made my interest known in the other thread for anybody that cares to listen but now, thi Doyin comot from forest dey covet another man's woman. Take your time and leave my wife alone because I've paid her dowry. Didn't God command us not to covet anothers wife? read the word of God and leave my woman for me, You are playing with fire.

LOL! Na wah for this kain love o. U don carry wine go meet im Papa yet? If not, gate still dey open for plenty suitors o.

playah P:
SIR,if u need me to write a really good movie for u then u must pay half of the sum, maybe about 10k to ma account before i do any story for u, i have written songs and movies for[b] top artist[/b], i wrote kini big deal
and i wrote behind closed doors for some popular artist which i don't want to say there names.
contact me on 08054816171

StephenP:
Lest I forget, how does one write movies for musicians??

The guy never wrote that he wrote movies for musicians. He said he had written [both songs and movies] for "top artist" (sic). The last time I checked, an artist included an actor and people who work in one of the performing/visual arts.

Seun:
She was not alive during the war. She does not live in the country where the war was fought.
Yet she won't let it go just because she happens to be born to Igbos. How does that help anyone?

She actually does live in the country. She lives in both Nigeria and the US.

Don't get me wrong, I did not say refine the language. I am aware that the language gets even crasser than that. I am saying that in my opinion, there are bits which can be expunged without doing material damage to the overall effect of the work. While striving for literary effect, use the language to pack a punch a couple of times, but going on and on takes it to the level of bad taste. [Obviously, this is just my own opinion. It is your work, so if you do not agree with me, totally ignore what I say. There is no obligation to take this on board in anyway]. Like I said, it reads as an interesting piece.

Orikinla:
I believe there is a lot of room for improvement.

I concur. It does need good tweaking.

Oriks, I believe that if you remove the gratuitous sexually explicit stuff in there and polish it up a bit, the guys at Wasafiri, Agni or the Virginia Review might be interested in publishing it. Alternately, Nam Le at the Harvard Review might also be interested (though this is more poetry than prose, so that means at HR it should be Major Jackson and not Nam), but like I said, you'd need to work on it further.

Regards,

SMC

chukky76:
thanks SMC for all the good thoughts and wishes. we'll do our best. please go make up with sisikill in the next thread. ok?
we all need to hook up one bright sunny day, all nairaland writers.

twill be fun.

I have no grouse whatsoever with Sisikill. He/she is not known to me personally and I do hope my posts on that thread are not interpreted to be a personal attack on him/her or even Seun or anyone else, because no matter how displeasing those posts may be to anyone or how it may have ruffled their feathers, all I did was politely raise a pertinent question, and frankly I do not see that being a ground for offering an olive branch. If anyone feels slighted by my queries, he/she should learn to address the issues and stop ego tripping.

Interesting! Kinda straddles the fence between prose and poetry, doesn't it?

@ Sisikill, Touche, LOL. . . glad to see you read around.  Though you could have saved yourself the unnecessary agro by google searching the quotation.

On people feeling they are too much for Seun's competition (whether or not you were referring to me) -

I do not know about you, but most writers actually pick and choose the different contests and journals/anthologies they will enter and/or submit stories to. Like me, they unfortunately cannot make submissions to everything that comes their way. I appreciate the fact that some of you guys can churn out material enmasse, sadly though it's not the same for me, as I do not write stories that fast (e.g. one moment, I was supposed to submit a story for the HISSAC contest, the next , the deadline was upon me and I still had not polished my story to my satisfaction and thus ended up not sending in an entry). Like I said previously, Seun's competition is not my scene (the same way BBC 3's call for scripts was not my scene), so if you decide to twist that to arrive to the conclusion that I think he is "small potatoes", too bad. I have actually submitted stories to a number of Nigerian and Naija based magazines and anthologies, but like I said a few lines above, I pick and choose what I submit to (and carefully too). It is my prerogative to do so (as it is for everyone else) and if for you, Seun or anyone else, that has been interpreted to mean that I (or any other person who chooses not to enter Seun's Competition) feel that I am "too much" for the competition, again, that's just too bad.

Seun:
If you change your mind about the competition and your story is the best, you'll still get the prize.

LOL! Believe me when I say that the "prize" you are offering can never be a motivating factor for me (I will be hard pressed to make the money stretch on a typical friday night out on the town). But let me make it clear that the remuneration has nothing at all to do with my lack of interest in the competition, as I do actually submit my work gratuitously in certain instances (It's not always about the money). This just isn't my scene, that's all.

Seun:
Sisikill, why do you care what anyone thinks?
SMC's disapproval can't stop you from winning the prize. 
Her refusal to participate significantly improves your chances of winning.

See me see wahala o. I do not disapprove of this competition or anyone who enters it. I actually think it is quite commendable that you are giving your Nairalanders the chance to showcase their work (that is of course if the film sees the light of day and is any good). I just thought there were some points that had not been covered. Apparently, people questioning you does not go down well with you.

@ Chukky and Tianshie,

Good for you guys.

Hope you enjoy the workshop. Chimamanda is a good writer and she does have good tips to pass on. Usually, she has the 2002 Caine Prize winner and editor of Kwani?, Binyavanga Wainaina cover the workshop with her (and some others). I am not sure that is the case this year, though I hope it is. So hopefully, you guys will have a good experience with the workshop. I hope to see your works published somewhere in the not too distant future. Goodluck.

Sisikill:
Moving on, let’s see if I understand what you are asking here . . . during the reading process, the reader comes across something in one script, say a Character hides behind a door and something comical ensues, the reader likes it but not the entire story. He moves on to the next script, he likes the entire script but thinks it needs a little comic relief, so he finds a way to work something similar to hiding behind the door scene into it. Your question, if I understand correctly is – Will the owner of the first script be credited? From my experience, the answer is NOPE.

Nah, you have not understood my question at all. All you have done is using your analogy to oversimplify a clear question.

Sisikill:
If Seun uses someone story in its entirety without giving credit, the writer can say his script had a DIRECT INFLUENCE on Sean’s movie. However, if he uses idea from scripts. . . Seun has the concept of INSPIRATIONAL SOURCE backing him. So to reiterate, it is NOT a crime to be inspired by others, it is a crime to steal someone’s work in its entirety without crediting them. . . but that isn’t what Seun is doing here.

You obviously know nothing of copyright and intellectual property law. A person's work does not have to be taken or used in "it's entirety" before credit has to be given. If a writer can prove without a doubt that a film or book has ripped off his work, he or she can have a cause of action. It could be a distinct scene or sequence that has been nicked. It does not have to be the "entire" story. Like someone in the business rightly said "if they use anything you have developed yourself - e.g.: structure, dialogue, attitude, point of view, theme, invented characters and scenes or even your own private research - then that is rightly your copyright." 

I think you got carried away in trying to come to the defence of Seun and thus decided to latch on to the word "idea", interpreting it as narrowly as possible and conveniently ignoring the fact that I had said "ideas, scenarios, and maybe even huge pieces". Strictly speaking, it is undoubtedly the position under copyright laws that mere ideas cannot be protected nor form the basis of an action for infringement. And that is why I used the term loosely (in conjunction with other terms), stating clearly that the end of my piece that I was not "talking about  general/common school anecdotes that might be common" to what he might receive ^{(and just before you go there, anecdote is to be interpreted in the widest form possible).}

Sisikill:
Every year, from March to June/July, networks start shopping for new shows for the fall season. They put out ads, calling every writer from Alabama to Timbuktu to send in story ideas and tens of thousands respond. They have readers, mostly interns fresh out film school, who are given specific instructions on what kind of of storyline they are looking for. More often than not, what they are looking for is something close to a hit show from the past season. For instance, after the first CSI show became a hit. . . networks started shopping around for procedural shows like that. Same thing with Desperate Housewives, suddenly we had cashmere Mafia etc.

The scripts are divided into categories – Very Sure thing (100% of what the network is looking for), Sure Thing (75-99%), Maybe (45-75%) and anything below 45% is not discarded, they go into another category and then there are scripts the reader might find something interesting in. He's not sure if it would be useful but he makes note of it. Say the network is unable to come to an agreement with the writers of script from the Very Sure thing bracket and they really want a show like that, they can decide to pick scripts from the sure thing or maybe bracket and try to amp it up, at this point our freshed faced intern can say. . . you know, if we did this and add that we might have thus (I'm sorry, I was looking for something to go with this and that) and where did This and That come from. . . you guessed it, one of the other scripts.

Do you think the Networks are taking down names of the writers whose scripts they got ideas from? Heck No! The only way to safe guard your ideas is to keep it in your head and should you decide to purge it out, put it under lock and key, where it won’t see the light of day…ever!  Writers trying to break into the business know this; they understand that the moment their script leaves their hands, they have no control. Except he uses the script from beginning to end, Seun has no obligation to credit someone for an idea.

Apart from sending scripts, writers are also invited to pitch to studio heads. Anyone who has gone to film school knows this is your moment to shine, you better bring all you’ve got or else. Network heads can listen to over 50 writers in one day, except there is a way to unhear [/i]what they hear, I don’t see how they won’t get some ideas from the stories. At the end of the day, they may not pick any of the stories they’ve heard but you can bet your bottom dollar on it that they will find an idea, a concept they can build on. I’ve give you an example:

I, Sisikill a starving writer, meet with the Head Honchos at ABC to pitch my idea for a show.

[i]Mark is a Cop with a blind dog solving crimes, they live in a small town in Kaduna, He is divorced with 3 children and has a hard time paying child support which causes conflict with his ex wife. Once in a while, in order to make ends meet, he takes bribes from the Mob to look the other way. The other cops in his precinct don’t like him because he is a hot head; he has no friends except his dog.

The Studio likes the idea of the Bond between Man and Dog but instead of going with the pitched Story, they decide to this instead

John is an ordinary guy who loves to solve crime in his spare time. He has one eyed a dog, they live in a big city in Lagos. He fun loving guy and he always has women trouble because he is a love ‘em and leave ‘em type.  Once in awhile he breaks the law to make sure justice is done. His neighbors don't like him because of his suspicious late night dealings. He has no real friends except his dog.

If you knew how a lot of those netwoks and film/production companies work, you will readily admit that they are constantly hit by lawsuits from writers who constantly complain that their works/ stories were ripped off. Admittedly, many such actions do not succeed, however, the networks do settle quite a number of them. That is why many of these companies option works from writers, and/or make the writers sign "releases" or "waivers". You will be surprised how many options production companies/networks acquire for one film/series etc (there are many times, that the works optioned end up not even being used by the production companies). Moreover, I can assure you that most of the actions filed do not complain that their work has been stolen in its entirety. An example of one such action was the one against NBC for 'Heroes' (though I believe this action failed). Another lawsuit was the case against Simon Cowell by Simon Fuller for the X-Factor series. Mr Fuller took legal action "after seeing what he believed were clear similarities between the X-Factor and Pop Idol". This was the crux of the action (although there were actions regarding breach of contract as well) and Simon Cowell settled the copyright out of court (the contract issue also got dealt with). There are many other examples I can state.

So as in your example, it would have been easy to argue that though there were similarities, there were material differences in the two shows/scripts (because there really are differences between both shows), but that defence will not avail someone who has clearly stolen anothers intellectual property and come up with his own "original" idea. The problem with you is you always attempt to simplify concerns. Rarely are issues as cut and dried as you have attempted to state them. Let me state clearly, that following the American Screen Writers Guild rules, which many western countries adopt in different forms, credits can be given to more than one writer and for a writer of an original story to be credited all he needs to have contributed is at least a third of the story. Moreover writers can be credited for themes and characters (as I have said above). Seldom is a story or work from one writer used without it being re-written (several times usually)/ worked over/snipped/changed etc before it forms the basis of a film or series or documentary etc. So, your portrayal that it is when a story is used in its entirety that Seun is obliged to give credit is cockamamie.

Sisikill:
I think the sooner people realize that Ideas are not copyrightable, only their expressions are so if someone uses an idea then there is little recourse, the better for us all.

I will never understand why we have to make a mountain out of a Molehill.

I believe I have addressed the Ideas issue. Yeah, Ideas are not protected by copyright, but works which have formed the basis of the plagiarist/thief/borrower's ideas are.

Finally, if you think that writers addressing issues of their intellectual property is making a mountain out of a molehill, then I guess you are not much of a writer, because if you are, you will know that copyright infringement/protection is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) issues that writers/authors face in their writing careers. In your response to someone's post, you say that you know Seun is going places, yet it does not occur to you that some people may also feel the same and think their stories may end up going far (who knows how far?), thus making them want to protect their interest or at least clarify their position. Like I have stated, I have no interest whatsoever in the "competition" as a writer, but as an observer, I think some strong issues need to be addressed.

LMAO, this thread has degenerated into some kind of jesters feedback. I should say, I have been amused by some of the posts.

@ Seun,

Quick valid question (it is not for self interest, as your competition does not interest me in the slighest as a writer) -

Knowing a considerable deal about the writing industry generally, I can say that it is the usual practice that once a winner of a writing competition is chosen, the work is published (as well as a few others e.g 2nd and 3rd best story. . . and sometimes highly commended stories too). Now under those circumstances, after the usual contracts etc., the work gets published and credited to the appropriate writer, and that's the end of it. The losers are left to lick their wounds and console themselves that they may have better luck next time. Hell, they may even submit the same story to another publication or competition, and unless they are dealing with unethical contests, their works/ideas are not usually plagiarised by the judges.

The problem with your "competition" is that while you may well like and indeed choose one story above all others, it will be unlikely that you will not "borrow" or "nick" ideas, scenarios, and maybe even huge pieces from the works of one or more of the losers. Don't get me wrong, I do not think you are a swindler (well, I don't know you personally, so I hope you aren't), but if you are going to personally read and review each entry and select the winner, it is inevitable that these myriad of ideas from all the stories you read would swirl in your mind and you will end up regurgitating them as your "original" film script (to be touted as based on the winning story you chose, which it solely won't be) to the detriment of those writers who may subsequently be unable to use their losing story or at the very least, they would be worse off, having contributed to your project without any remuneration nor credits. Like I said, it may happen (and does not have to be as a result of a sinister plot on your part) because we all are influenced by what we read/see etc. That is why in creative writing exercises, when students have been given a topic to write on, there is usually a rich diversity to be seen in the works, but when subsequently, those same students are given a couple of texts to read and told to repeat the writing exercise, there are usually to be found many themes and similarities running through almost all (if not all) of them, which have come from the prescribed texts.

Question -
Are you going to give all the writers who submit their stories to you the assurance that even if they do not get the prize money, they will at least get film credits should any part of their work form part of your script? (and no, I am not talking about general/common school anecdotes that might be common to most if not all stories you receive).

^{Before anyone goes on about how the question was not quick, It was a short question (one sentence). Na all the foreword yabis dey long-winded.}