The Big Stretch

By Mark W. Danielson

Stretching the truth is normal for fiction writers, whether it’s for movies, television, or novels. Pick any TV detective show and you may find yourself cocking your head saying, “I’m enjoying the show, but how can this be?” Simply put, it is because they can.

I was assigned to Miramar Naval Air Station shortly after TOPGUN was made. Since I was in the adversary business, I met several of the pilots who flew in that movie. While discussing some of TOPGUN’s ludicrous flying scenes, the pilots defended themselves saying they kept telling the director, “That’s not how it is,” to which the director fervently replied, “We’re not making a documentary.” TOPGUN not only launched Tom Cruz’s careers, it became a top grossing movie. Had the story been accurate, it would have been boring because in real life, there is no TOPGUN competition, no trophy, and no inverted canopy-to-canopy finger waving. Just the Navy Fighter Weapons School that teachers advanced fighter tactics to a select few so they can pass the information on to their squadron mates. In the end, the director of TOPGUN found the perfect balance between accuracy and entertainment.

Another fine example of this is Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Admittedly, The Da Vinci Code isn’t one of my favorite books, but it serves as a fine example of a writer’s stretch, and Brown’s ability to convince the public (and the Catholic Church) that his fiction is actually the truth. This is the ultimate goal in writing reality-based fiction. Make it plausible enough to get the adrenaline flowing, then kick back and smile.

Think back to the shower scene in the movie Psycho. Sure, it was fiction, but the scene was real enough that people were afraid to step into their own showers. In Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum, each swing of the blade drew the reader in because they were certain someone out there might try it. The scene was a stretch on Poe’s part, yet it still reigns as one of horror fiction’s greatest.

The best thing about writing fiction is authors can create whatever they want. Gene Rodenberry faced a serious deadline in Star Trek when his shuttle models didn’t arrive in time for shooting the TV series. To solve this problem, he came up with the transporter, a means of vaporizing people and beaming them up or down from the Starship Enterprise. Although Rodenberry was the first to admit he just “made it up”, we still have scientists trying to prove or disprove it. Thus, the transporter became another successful stretch on the writer’s part.

Fiction should be fun, entertaining, and plausible, so writers should never hold back. Whether your idea makes it into the final cut is a moot point, so long as you enjoyed creating it.

A Case for Copyright

By Mark W. Danielson

Certainly, the most important aspect of writing is for an author to register his or her work with the Library of Congress. Doing so copyrights your work and, in theory, protects you from infringement and plagiarism. The process has never been easier since it can be accomplished on line at: http://www.copyright.gov/forms/ For a mere thirty five dollars, your work is instantly protected. Your confirmation letter will come via snail mail.

But make no mistake about it, a copyright is not a guarantee. The high-profile case of author/Claimants Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh versus author Dan Brown and powerhouse publisher Random House proves this. You see, Baigent and Leigh had filed a non-textual infringement suit against Random House claiming that Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was inspired by their non-fiction book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (HBHG). The law suit eventually made its way to the high courts where it was heard before Justice Smith. Unfortunately, this case didn’t bode well for the Claimants. Here are some excerpts from Justice Smith’s 51 page report and the OUT-LAW News report on Why The Da Vinci Code Lawsuit Failed. (10/04/2006)

While Baigent and Leigh acknowledged that copyright should not protect against the borrowing of an idea contained in a work, they argued that their book consisted of a sequence of connections no one had previously made. Among them was that the Holy Grail was actually a metaphor for Mary Magdalene rather than a physical artefact. According to the Claimants, Dan Brown copied this conjecture along with 15 other key points that formed The Da Vinci Code’s “central theme”.

Justice Smith accepted that "the facts and the themes and the ideas cannot be protected, but how those facts, themes and ideas are put together … can be." He later added that, "It must be shown that the architecture or structure is substantially copied."

Drawing on other cases, Justice Smith observed, "When a book is put forward as being non-fictional and contains a large number of facts and ideas, it is always going to be a difficult exercise in trying to protect against copying those facts and ideas because they cannot be protected. It is the effort and time that has gone into the way in which those ideas and facts are presented that is capable of protection."

Later, Smith added, "It seems to me … that the Central Theme is not a genuine Central Theme of HBHG and I do not accept that the Claimants genuinely believe it as such. In my view, it is an artificial contrivance designed to create an illusion of a Central Theme for the purpose of alleging infringement of a substantial part of HBHG."

The one central theme that Justice Smith did identify in HBHG was the merger of the Merovingian bloodline with the Royal Bloodline of Mary Magdalene. "As such, it is self evident in my view that is an idea which is of a too general level of an abstraction to be capable of protection. Nor is there any architecture or design in HBHG if that were the theme which can be said to have been appropriated. The Claimants simply do not reveal how they came to their idea or conjecture as they prefer to call it. It not being revealed, it cannot be appropriated."

Lee Curtis, an intellectual property specialist with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said the ruling came as "no surprise to lawyers and authors." Pointing out that copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Curtis added that, "Brown didn't infringe copyright in the earlier book, he just created a new expression of its idea."

Now, here’s the kicker: As a result of this law suit, Baigent and Leigh face paying their own legal costs plus 85% of Random House's legal costs. Their total bill has been estimated by The Times at £2 million. Clearly, there was no divine intervention in this case. I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t afford this expense.

So, what can authors learn from this? That a copyright can protect you from infringement, and that your chances of winning a suit against someone who you perceive has created a smilar novel is slim. Interestingly, this has happened to me twice now. First, in my novel whose central theme paralleled the movie Swordfish. In this case, I chose not to seek publication because I may have been accused of infringement, even though my copyright was registered long before the movie came out. Second, a year after my Diablo’s Shadow novel was released, another book was released with a strikingly similar plot. Here, I chose to ignore it.

The bottom line is authors can certainly have similar thoughts, and as such, can create similar stories. What sets them apart is the author’s ability to convey their thoughts in a thoughtful and entertaining manner.