Blundell’s Preparatory School in Tiverton, Devon on Tursday, where I had a lovely day – made even better by home-made cakes in the staff room! Coffee and walnut have always been a bit of a favourite of mine, since I had a slice in the Copper Kettle tea rooms somewhere near or in Bletchingley, Surrey, in the mid 1960s. I can still taste it when I close my eyes.
For a long time, I thought we would not get a story, then it all came tumbling out. I find it fascinating how stories appear in these sessions. One minute I’m in despair, the next its flowing out towards a reasonably satisfying conclusion for a pre first draft plot. In this case the cobra, unlike other snakes, had ears for gossip. The more he listened the bigger they got! I won’t tell you the end, because I think there may be a good story in there.
Children always ask me if I’m going the write the stories we come up with. It’s a tricky one. Who came up with the idea. I’m conscious that I push the children in the direction I want them to go and often have to drag it out of them when I can see the story and want them to provide the important influences on the plot. But sometimes a child will say something so left field that it turns something mundane into something quite good. Even so, it’s generally my interpretation of their comment that gets us to the end of the story, otherwise we would be discussing it for weeks!
I think I came up with the answer on Thursday, when a child asked the question again. “Its just a framework of a plot at the moment,” I said. “There is no copyright in it until someone publishes the story. So the first one to get it published is the winner.” Everyone seemed happy with that. Of course, if everyone wrote their version of the story, they would all be so different, there probably wouldn’t be a copyright issue anyway. So I’m beginning to feel more comfortable about maybe using the ideas that come up in these sessions.
Maybe the thing to do is start another blog, where I write up the stories. After a while, it may turn out that some of them would make a collection, and then a book. The act of putting them on my blog would copyright my versions of them, so I could share them as I went along, but it would also protect me and my future publishers, if I were to make a book out of them.
It’s a tricky subject. How far does copyright extend? I don’t think copyright covers ideas anyway. But at least if I did make a blog of it, those who were involved would be able to follow the stories.
So many people assume that a story is worth millions and that there is a fortune to be made from the copyright. The truth is that one story can barely support the author for the time it takes them to write it out. Sometimes authors get lucky – but that is such a rare occurrence.