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Your a trooper I bog my game down just trying to make it look shiny. I think its interesting and probably very smart on the part of the developers to accept modding at this point. I mean, look at Steam. If you go ahead and buy the game through them, you get a whole workshop of mods and a community to support them. I mean, those mods install automatically! That’s against everything I’ve ever learned! Mods are supposed to be hard to install lol. I’ll PM you about the publishing… I def saw all the press on Torque closing down, but didn’t actually know what that meant or the authors that had dealings with them. No, your not a warning! You are seasoned! I’m sure you feel differntly about it, but living is a challenge, it sounds like you’ve jumped over quite a few hurdles and your still in the race! Whoot! You go girl!

::nods:: My Elderspawn mods heavily, but more for graphics and killer weapons and armor. I’m not a heavy user of mods myself unless I think the mod fixes what appears to be a plot hole or logic fail. And if David Gaider ever manages to write a decent romance, I’ll die of shock. As far as publishing goes, I’m sort of the horrible warning these days, since my publisher changed owners, and the new owners ran it into the ground. I’ve gotten my rights back, and I’m supposed to be cleaning up my manuscripts for republication, but there’s a few of us who’ve published, either via a press or self-publishing. Ask away, though, and I’m happy to answer!

The legality of fan fiction is something of an ongoing debate. For now, it’s covered under the Fair Use provisions of the US copyright laws, as long as no profit is made (hence our insistence on disclaimers acknowledging the copyright and declaring no profit is made). While you can’t hold copyright on your fan fiction per se, we do hold that your Fair Use work is yours and yours alone, and so long as no profit is being made, the original copyright holder will probably never go beyond a cease and desist order should they decide fan fiction inspired by their work is a Very Bad Thing. But as far as passing around saved copies of fan fictions, we draw a very clear line here. We know it’s done, but AFF will not be a hub for that sort of thing, and I for one was exceedingly uncomfortable with AO3’s download feature and its format options. They have a not-for-profit with deep pockets and expensive lawyers behind them, however, so perhaps they’re okay with that risk. We don’t, and we’re not. I will also say there are some sites out there which archive work (especially HP-related fan fiction) without the permission of the author. We view those as pirate sites, and we won’t allow links to them in our search threads, no more than we’ll allow hard copies to be passed around. But Des is quite right about mods for games. A lot of game modders see their work incorporated into a game, and they don’t get a choice about that, but then again, if they’re consistently good, who knows? They might get a job. It’s much harder for a fan fiction writer to gain that level of respect (although I am still somewhat bemused by the fan fiction of a former fan fiction phenomenon...)

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not an expert and fanfic is already on the edge of legality. So while a fanfic does infringe on the original author’s work, it’s also got its own copyright because it’s considered a derivative work. In the case of Harry Potter, JKR’s made it generally clear that she’s okay with it so long as you’re not making money from it. I mention the derivative work thing because she can’t take your fanfic and publish that without your permission either… In the gaming world, some game studios make that a stipulation in the ToS in order for a mod-author to publish a game mod, ie, the studio can take it and make it an official part of the game. Saving of stories is a definite grey area, and makes authors uncomfortable because some saved copies have a habit of showing up on other websites, perhaps an older revision, under either their name, or under a new author’s name (see the hall of shame for examples...).

I think it's probably best to do it unintentionally. Yep, you can always smooth it over in edits and make yourself look like a literary genius! Your too funny I bet people are surprised :-P we're both turning scenery into guns!!

Ah, I’m a pantser not an outliner. If every word is planned and intentional in setting, theme, plot, character, etc, my muse withers and dies and I can’t write at all. My one attempt at planning ahead sent my one NaNo off the rail and never recovered. To me it feels like I’ve been written into a corner and there’s no joy as there’s nothing left to discover. Turn me loose with a sketchy idea or two and I’m fine, I fill in as I write. I have to make sure I don’t overthink it. Setting and mindset will often include extra stuff, as even freedom fighters need to do RL along with the good stuff. I used to read mainline romances and their outline/checklists became painfully clear because there was nothing that wasn’t significant to the story. Every object was a Checkov gun, so there were not surprises and little life. Not everyone in my life was part of the plot about my degree. Those cheesy books were good as negative examples.

Mine is unintentional as well, but it has happened multiple times. I’m just rolling along, telling the tale and reach an unexpected problem. I reread what I’ve already written and see something mentioned as scenery and color (and sometimes posted many chapters ago) and LO! there is a gun, sitting there, primed and all ready to be fired. You’d think I’d planned it. It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. I figure if I’m surprised, the readers may be too. I think it’s because I have sketchy outlines more often.

I did delete one story because I was replacing it with several others as a rewrite – still in progress… Other reasons I’ve heard are publishing (publishers will typically demand it), and/or other legal issues. I’ll typically cringe when I hear about somebody pulling a story though, just because it’ like a star going out, there’s a void where it was.

I guess I have used Chekov’s Gun… but it was unintentional. I placed an abandoned house at the end of my character’s street. Mostly just for aesthetic purposes. I wanted the ‘isolated’ feel. But I mentioned it more than once and took pains to describe it as well and finally my beta said ‘I feel like something really cool is going to happen there! Can’t wait to figure it out’ or something like that. And lol, i felt pretty stupid, because i HAD no plans for the abandoned building. So I made up a whole different plot line that involved the house. It was a shotty job, but maybe I’m just feeling self-conscious about it, because I know that whole area of the story is basically a band aid from my first accidental use of Chekov’s Gun. In retrospect, I’ll try to take more notice of that happening in my writing. Maybe it’ll be intentional next time