Writers in the Storm

By Susan Spann

For the past few months, my guest posts here at Writers in the Storm have taken a look at different aspects of the author estate plan. This month, we’ll finish the series with a problem every author faces: selecting the heirs.

In some cases, choosing who will inherit an author’s copyrights isn’t difficult – for example, when the author has a spouse but no children, children but no spouse, or simply wants to leave the estate to charity. For most of us, however, inheritance issues require at least a little thought.

Let’s take a look at some of the available options you might–or might not—have already considered:

1.         One heir, one copyright – splitting the works. When heirs don’t get along, authors sometimes consider splitting copyright ownership by leaving each heirs full ownership of a different copyright. A spouse might receive some of the works, and the author’s children each end up with ownership of a different novel. Generally speaking, this is not a good idea, especially if the author writes a series. Conflicts among the heirs may tie the works up indefinitely, and publishers don’t want to contract with different heirs for different works. As a general rule, splintering ownership of a literary estate creates more conflict – and more chance of everything going out of print – than treating your body of work as a single “property” or estate.

2.         All heirs, all copyrights – treating the copyrights as a bundle. When authors want multiple heirs to share the benefits of the author’s literary estate, the best (and easiest) way to address the issue is to name a literary executor and/or “managing heir” who has responsibility for managing the entire literary estate, and then leaving each of the other heirs an “undivided percentage interest” in the literary estate as a whole.

In simpler language, an author who has three children might name the oldest child the literary executor and/or “managing heir” (the person who will work with the lawyer or literary executor to manage the estate) and leave all three children an undivided 1/3 ownership interest in the literary estate (meaning the author’s copyrights and the right to receive a 1/3 share of royalties and other income generated by the author’s works). Sometimes, authors prefer to leave the managing heir a slightly larger share, or to split the percentages unevenly – all of which are normal variations on the theme.

This way, if one novel or series generates more income than the others, the inheritance isn’t split in a lopsided manner. This is the most common, and usually the simplest, way of splitting an author’s literary estate.

3.         Life estates and multi-generational heirs. Sometimes an author wants to leave the copyright income to one set of adult heirs and also to ensure that the literary estate will pass to a younger set of heirs (for example, the author’s grandchildren or great-grandchildren) at some future date. The author accomplishes this through a “life estate.

A life estate is a type of inheritance in which a person inherits an asset (in this example, the right to receive a share of the income from copyrights) for as long as that person lives, and upon the named heir’s death, the asset automatically passes to another person (called a “remainderman”) named in the author’s will or trust.

An example of “life estate” language might look like this: “I leave ownership of my copyrighted works, and the right to receive all income and profits therefrom, to my son George for his lifetime, and thereafter to all of my living grandchildren in equal, undivided shares.”

Authors should always consult an attorney before attempting to draft or create multi-generational inheritances and life estates in estate planning documents. In many states, special legalese is required to create a life estate and other special estate planning interests. “Estates and Future Interests” are a special law school course – sometimes taught as part of property law as well as estate planning classes – and the attempted gift can fail if the language isn’t properly worded. Even worse, a person can inadvertently create one of several rare but tricky “future interests” that causes a truly difficult probate snarl. If you want to create a specialized estate plan, it’s worth the time to find an experienced, reasonably priced attorney in your area who understands the special needs of intellectual property (copyright) inheritance issues.

4.         Charities. Leaving part or all of your estate to charity is a noble, and often beneficial, act. Many of my clients do include favored charities in their wills and trusts, though charitable in the author estate plan can create some unique and unusual issues.

First, most charities aren’t set up to manage copyrights and other intellectual property interests. An author’s literary estate might bring in thousands of dollars a year, money a charity might well need and put to excellent use. But if the charity’s work is focused on fighting hunger by equipping and training individuals in developing countries, that charity might not have the time, staff, and capacity to manage copyrights on the side. In many cases, it might even cost the charity more to manage the copyrights than the literary estate is worth.

If you want to leave a portion of your estate to charity, consider leaving the charity a share of your liquid assets (cash, or the proceeds of selling stocks and bonds) or a percentage-based interest in the income from your literary estate—but placing the burden of managing the literary works on a different heir (who should probably also receive a percentage share, or the right to payment, in compensation for managing the literary estate). The less work a charity has to do to manage its “inheritance,” the better the organization can use the funds to accomplish the charitable purpose you intended to support.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on author estate plans and how to manage them! Join me next month, when I’ll start a new and exciting series to carry us into 2014!  

If you have questions about this or any other author estate planning issues, please do ask in the comments – I love to help!

About Susan

Susan Spann is a publishing attorney and author from Sacramento, California. Her debut mystery novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Thomas Dunne Books, July 2013), is the first in a series featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori. Susan blogs about writing, publishing law and seahorses at http://www.SusanSpann.com. Find her on Twitter @SusanSpann or on Facebook.

By Kimberly Brock

I think writers of any ilk can benefit from a healthy appreciation of setting, but regional – particularly southern writers – are haunted by our connection to, love of, loss of, and clawing crawling, desperate journey back to – the land.

Oh, I wish I was in Dixie…away, away. Every song is a lullaby of going home. We close our eyes and dream of the old house in the valley. We contemplate a city skyline, thinking only of the ancient ridges that surrounded freshly turned lowlands where we walked a row as a child. That old scene where Scarlet O’Hara’s father warns her that land is the only thing that matters? We took that old man seriously and so, when we write our stories, do our characters. Their whole world, how our characters view their circumstances, why they struggle, why they rejoice – it’s all reflected in the setting.

Pick up any piece of southern fiction and you will understand what Lee Smith meant when she said of regional literature, “There is an intimate identification with landscape. Setting is so important that it often defines the lives and possibilities of its characters…Place is the central defining factor of southern writing. There’s just simply more there, there.”

In writing THE RIVER WITCH, I knew Roslyn’s story would end up on the island – I knew she would go into a kind of exile. I imagined Roslyn’s need for a kind of isolation, and her need for great beauty, which led me to the Georgia Coast. I wanted it to be a place that would keep her off balance so she’d have to struggle to understand it and meet its demands. I needed a place that Roslyn believed was a complete departure. My character’s story is also the story of this environment and if you look at one, you will inevitably discover something about the other.

I’d written a good part of the first draft before Roslyn’s past and her childhood memories of Glenmary, Tennessee, began to surface. There, I found a people rooted for centuries in hard ground. Ancient mountains that would not be moved. Do you see these places? Then you see the people who inhabit them. I came to understand these were the characteristics at the core of Roslyn, this place defined all the ways she was at odds with herself, and as with everything else in the novel, these seemingly contradictory environments and cultures of Appalachia and Coastal Georgia would serve as mirrors for one another – just as the characters tend to hold up mirrors to one another. Some of this was written intentionally, but a great deal of it evolved with the story.

I’d always been fascinated by the idea that the Sea Islands shift and change, the idea of the alligators roaring season, the romance of the great live oaks, and then there was the element of superstition that lent itself to Roslyn’s haunting. The island was like going back to the mire from which we all emerge. I chose the island setting so she could fight her way back from her loss, physically and psychologically. That’s what Roslyn’s character ultimately faced – what each of us, ANY character ANY place, faces – a transformation that leads to resolution. She had to learn to shift and change to survive, just like the land beneath her feet. Her connection to place informs the reader of Roslyn’s internal journey through metaphor, but it also grounds the reader firmly in a compelling reality, one that every reader will envision for themselves. We are called to whatever away, away means home. To me, the true power of setting is that it gets to the heart of our human search for belonging.

Barbara Kingsolver said it best when she spoke of setting. “I have places from which I tell my stories. So do you, I expect. We sing the song of our home because we are animals…Among the greatest of all gifts is to know our place.”

Ready to sing your own song of home and address setting in your stories? Maybe it doesn’t come naturally? Here are four brass-tack techniques I use in my own writing:

1. Reveal setting through action – Let your description unfold as a character moves through the scene. Consider which details your character would notice immediately, and which might register more slowly. Let your character encounter those details interactively. Use action verbs to set the scene. But be selective and careful not to bury the scene in detail.

2. Reveal setting through a character’s level of experience – What your character knows will directly influence what she sees. Different characters will perceive the same surroundings in very different ways, based on their familiarity (or lack thereof) with the setting.

3. Reveal setting through the emotions of your character – What we perceive is profoundly influenced by what we feel. The same should be true for our characters. Filtering a setting through a character’s feelings can profoundly influence what the reader “sees.”

4. Reveal setting through the senses –

• Visual – we make decisions and take action based on what we see.
• Emotions are affected by what we hear (music, the sound of a person’s voice, the whistle of a train, tone of voice).
• Smell evokes memories (baking, perfume, new-car leather, the odor of wet dog).
• Touch evokes a sensory response.
• As in real life, “taste” images should be used sparingly and appropriately.

What techniques work for you when writing setting? Are there examples of setting that became its own character in novels you love? What are your thoughts on a sense of place in fiction and its bearing on the journey to a resolution for a character? Share them here!

About Kimberly

Kimberly Brock is the author of “The River Witch” and recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award 2013. Her short works can be found in the anthologies Summer in Mossy Creek, and Sweeter Than Tea. Formerly a special needs educator and actor, Kimberly is a regular contributor to several blogs dedicated to the craft of writing. She serves as the Blog Network Coordinator for She Reads, a national online book club, actively spearheading several women's literacy efforts through the She Reads Gives Back campaign. She is a certified Pilates instructor and owner of Kimberly Brock Pilates. She lives in the foothills of north Atlanta with her husband and three children, and is currently at work on her next novel.

by Shannon Donnelly

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” – Stephen King, On Writing

There are three huge flashing signs that are the marks of an inexperienced writer. Inconsistent and overuse of punctuation is one of them, overuse of adverbs is another, but the one that really makes a novice stand out as still learning the craft are the “writerly words.”

These are the words thrown in to show off—to make the reader pause and stop and marvel at the writer’s clever turn of phrase. These are words put on the page without thought as to if you’re breaking viewpoint to put that word into that sentence. And, guess what, that stop means the reader’s been thrown out of the story—the writer’s sacrificed story and character for a word or a phrase. For being clever. How do you know if you’re doing this?  And, more importantly, how do you get out of this habit?

1-Read your work aloud. If you’re embarrassed, send the family off to the movies, lock the bedroom door and sit with a glass of water and a print out and read. Mark the sentences you need to fix—don’t fix them now, just read. Aloud. To yourself. If you stumble over a word or a phrase, mark it. If you stumble over how to pronounce something, mark it. If you run out of breath due to a rambling sentence, mark it to be fixed. You’ll be amazed how much you catch with one reading.

2-Look at every word and ask: “Would this character know this word, and would he or she say or think this?” When you put a word into a character’s mouth or thoughts and that word doesn’t fit, you’ve just broken viewpoint. Another writer will know this—a reader will just feel the story or character is “off.” Now an artist might think a sky is “azure” but would a truck driver think that? Probably not. A woman might know another woman is wearing a designer dress, and might even know the designer if she’s also fashion conscious, but a rancher who lives in the middle of nowhere probably wouldn’t know one suit from another. It’s all about getting those pesky details right.

3-Get yourself a couple of trusted readers. I recommend having a couple of readers who are writers, and a couple who are just readers (writers read differently than readers, and you want input from each). Have them simply mark or tag anything that gives them trouble—again, you don’t need fixes, you just need them to mark places where they’ve been thrown out of the story (where they’ve become aware that they are reading, and not experiencing a story). Really, really look at every place any reader marks—and if you get two people marking the same spot, you’ve got fixes to make.

4-Read a lot of great writers. You will absorb style. You want to read the best stuff, because you want to write that, too. Take apart great writing—look at the punctuation, look at word choice, look at the balance. Look at the voice used. Don’t just read for pleasure, read to learn from the best. And I urge every writer to read widely—don’t settle for just one genre or one author.

5-Take out every clever phrase that just makes you want to preen with pride. This is otherwise known as “kill your darlings” because that’s how hard this advice is to follow. You will rebel at this advice—you will think, “But that is my voice and my style.” Trust me on this—you want your story and characters to be the stars. You want readers to fall in love with them—and look for you as an author because your stories and characters are so great. I’ve been here, too. I fall in love with something and I do not want to take it out, but every time I do, I end up with a stronger story. And better characters.

6-Copy the greats. Very important—this copying is to learn, and doesn’t mean you can steal someone else’s words. Do not put anyone else’s words into your fiction—that is plagiarism. But, to learn, go ahead and take a page or two from a favorite book, and take the writing apart by retyping it. This helps you take the writing apart—you start to see how things are constructed. Then delete or trash those words and that file—they aren’t yours, so don’t steal them. You are using them to learn your craft. Look at how the narrative and dialogue are put together, but then let your mind absorb it and turn it into your own style.

7-Listen to King’s advice—make it your priority to keep the ball rolling. Readers want great stories—which is why someone who isn’t a great writer can hit the best seller list. It’s about the story; it’s about the characters. Don’t make your focus the great description, or the clever phrase, or the cute word that seems so different it startles the reader. Keep the ball rolling—keep the story going.

Shannon Donnelly Bio

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, RWA’s Golden Heart, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written."

She is the author of the Urban Fantasy “Demons & Warder” series, featuring Burn Baby Burn and Riding in on a Burning Tire, as well as her Regency Historical romances, which have been in the stop selling Historical romances on Amazon.com. Her SF/Romance, Edge Walkers, is currently on sale for .99 at Amazon.com for the month of November.