When Good Plotlines come from Crazy News

If you've been keeping up with my writing process, you probably know that I have been playing around with a few storylines. As a reviewer, I read many books with weak plots and predictable or weaker endings. I didn't want to make the same mistake. So I decided to do like Frank Peretti and take a year to plot a solid story. My year is almost halway up.

Well...a story came along this week that maybe too good to be true, because it is was real. It was news. It was crazy. And it was the perfect trigger for my story about this woman searching for a missing bride to be(now you know the newstory I'm speaking on:))

My bride had been kidnapped(actually she was pretending to be kidnapped to thwart a killer.) And I have reworked this plot to the point where it has lost all good sense. I needed a simpler motive for her disappearance. I needed to take my book out of horror into a suspense. And I needed to make the theme of the novel coherent with the tone of the book. Up until today the two were out of whack. But now my whacky Runaway Bride has given it some teeth.

But I'm not sure. Law & Order SVU does it all the time--that is, take news and turn it into a teleplay. But can I get away with it. Can I take a news story, make it a premise, use its climax as my storyline without getting sued.

I don't know, so I'm asking you. Do fiction authors take news and tweak it into fiction? Is it legal? Is it ethical? Is it creative non-fiction gone bad?

What gets me is that I had been working on a story line so similar to this story and now I fear it might get to see the light of day, because someone actually did it? Aargh!! Help me...

Writing to see what the end' gon' be,
Dee

Publisher Blog: Zondervan

This blog has been around since 2004. It is more of a marketing piece for the company, but you can see the list of Zondervan author blog links. And you can see what new awards Zondervan has won. What you cannot do is get a better understanding of Zondervan: its mission, what it's looking for, why it exists?

If you find a better Zondervan blog, hit me up.

Click on the title to direct you to Zondervan.

Writing to see what the end gon' be.

Dee

CBA's Fiction Top Ten for May 2005

I thought that on Saturday's I would keep us informed about the CBA Market and which books are selling the most.


Ranking Title Author/Publisher
1 (4) The Rising Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins, Tyndale,c
2 (7) Breaker's Reef Terri Blackstock, Zondervan,p
3 (9) Moonlight On the Millpond Lori Wick, Harvest House,p
4 (39) Beyond Tuesday Morning Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan,p
5 (49) Obsessed Ted Dekker, WestBow (Nelson),c
6 The Warrior Francine Rivers, Tyndale,p
7 Redeeming Love Francine Rivers, Multnomah,p
8 Glorious Appearing Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins, Tyndale,c&p
9 Whence Came a Prince Liz Curtis Higgs, WaterBrook,p
10 The Hope Within Tracie Peterson, Bethany House,p
11 River's Edge Terri Blackstock, Zondervan,p
12 One Tuesday Morning Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan,p
13 Black Ted Dekker, WestBow (Nelson),c&p
14 Oceans Apart Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan,p
15 The Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan, Barbour,p
16


Reunion Karen Kingsbury & Gary Smalley, Tyndale,p
17 The Storekeeper's Daughter Wanda Brunstetter, Barbour,p
18 Hadassah Tommy Tenney & Mark Andrew Olsen, Bethany House,c&
19 Tie The Prodigal Beverly Lewis, Bethany House,p
19 Tie The Scarlet Thread Francine Rivers, Tyndale,p

Numbers in ( ) denote Top 50 placement. / p designates paper; c, cloth

This list is based on actual sales in Christian retail stores in the United States and Canada during March, using STATS as the source for data collection. All rights reserved. Distribution and copyright ©2004 CBA and Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.