Can my character briefly allude to Harry Potter?

PamelaC · Oct 14, 2018

I'm in the process of planning a novel for NaNo, and it's basically taking the premise of Harry Potter and re-imagining it with a 30-year old witch heroine in the place of an 11-year old wizard hero. Can my heroine notice and remark on the similarities between her situation and Harry Potter? Can she say something like, "What kind of Harry Potter sh*t is this?" Could she snidely refer to a wizard in my story as a "Dumbledore wannabe"? Or maybe call him "Dumbledork"? Can she shout, "Fifty points to Gryffindor!" when celebrating a personal victory? Or would allusions like this be a no-no?

Brightdreamer · Oct 14, 2018

For NaNoWriMo, anything goes; you're writing a rough draft for yourself. If the HP references help get the juices flowing and keep them flowing, go ahead and use them as spacefillers while you get the feel of your tale, your world, and your characters.

If you have plans to publish... keep references to a bare minimum, maybe one or two to get the point across, unless you're doing a flat-out HP parody (and even then, laws protecting parody aren't airtight; you'll want a publisher with a solid legal team, Just In Case.) This is something an agent or editor could more readily answer, but it's generally not a great idea to drop too many references to licensed products. (Even disregarding potential legal issues, reminding your readers of a similar premise written by someone else might make them notice faults in your own take more readily...)

But, again, NaNo is supposed to be about you writing a draft to prove to yourself that you can write a draft, not you writing a Barnes & Noble-ready finished product to hit shelves by December. Do what makes the words come, and know you'll be revising.

BethS · Oct 15, 2018

PamelaC said:
Or would allusions like this be a no-no?

Allusions are fine. They give clues to your MC's mindset and world view. I know a book (Finding Fraser by K.C. Dyer) where the whole premise of the story is a character looking for her own version of a fictional hero (Jamie Fraser from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which is not only currently in print, but still being written).

What you don't want to do is overdo the allusions, or copy events straight from the HP stories, or do anything that edges over into plagiarism. But as long as the references are purely allusions, then I think you're fine.

PamelaC · Oct 15, 2018

BethS said:
Allusions are fine. They give clues to your MC's mindset and world view. I know a book (Finding Fraser by K.C. Dyer) where the whole premise of the story is a character looking for her own version of a fictional hero (Jamie Fraser from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which is not only currently in print, but still being written).

What you don't want to do is overdo the allusions, or copy events straight from the HP stories, or do anything that edges over into plagiarism. But as long as the references are purely allusions, then I think you're fine.

Ha! I need to read that book. Love the Outlander series (the books anyway, the TV series is meh).

I definitely won't overdo the allusions. I'm thinking just once, when she's freaked out about what's going on, she'll mention it. It'd almost seem unnatural for her not to mention Harry Potter given the similarities of her situation (finds out she's a witch, invited to some magical school). Although the similarities end there as hers is a "Charm School" and combines honing her witchcraft with actually polishing her social skills to prepare her for life at court in a magical kingdom where, if all goes to plan (not her plan initially, but everyone else's), she'll charm the king and become his queen.

Anyway. Thanks!

Cyia · Oct 15, 2018

Your character can read HP, go to a HP movie, mock someone by calling them a total Hufflepuff, ask them if their scar matches the a London Underground, or call them Weasley because they've got bright red hair and many siblings. You can't send them to Hogwarts or have one of the HP characters go an adventures with your own.

For myself, I've used mentions of Umbridge, by mentioning an overly pink principal's office that was thankfully devoid of cats and torture devices, and mentioned that a character assumed her neighbor's mistress ran a school because Mcgonagall was the only "mistress" she had ever heard of. Both allusions in mainstream novels by major publishers, and neither even suggested dropping them.

Hope that helps.

PamelaC · Oct 15, 2018

Brightdreamer said:
For NaNoWriMo, anything goes; you're writing a rough draft for yourself. If the HP references help get the juices flowing and keep them flowing, go ahead and use them as spacefillers while you get the feel of your tale, your world, and your characters.

If you have plans to publish... keep references to a bare minimum, maybe one or two to get the point across, unless you're doing a flat-out HP parody (and even then, laws protecting parody aren't airtight; you'll want a publisher with a solid legal team, Just In Case.) This is something an agent or editor could more readily answer, but it's generally not a great idea to drop too many references to licensed products. (Even disregarding potential legal issues, reminding your readers of a similar premise written by someone else might make them notice faults in your own take more readily...)

But, again, NaNo is supposed to be about you writing a draft to prove to yourself that you can write a draft, not you writing a Barnes & Noble-ready finished product to hit shelves by December. Do what makes the words come, and know you'll be revising.

Thanks for the help! It looks like I'm good to go with what I have in mind. As for publication, I'm making it a goal to at least self-publish this in the future. As you say, NaNo is all about words on the page, and that's the first hurdle for me to tackle. I'm not getting any younger and we aren't promised tomorrow, so I figured I better get on with this if I want to realize my dream of publishing a novel.

PamelaC · Oct 15, 2018

Cyia said:
Your character can read HP, go to a HP movie, mock someone by calling them a total Hufflepuff, ask them if their scar matches the a London Underground, or call them Weasley because they've got bright red hair and many siblings. You can't send them to Hogwarts or have one of the HP characters go an adventures with your own.

For myself, I've used mentions of Umbridge, by mentioning an overly pink principal's office that was thankfully devoid of cats and torture devices, and mentioned that a character assumed her neighbor's mistress ran a school because Mcgonagall was the only "mistress" she had ever heard of. Both allusions in mainstream novels by major publishers, and neither even suggested dropping them.

Hope that helps.

It definitely does! Thanks! Your examples of what can be done are exactly what I had in mind. And I'm seriously thinking it will only be a one-time mention, very brief, and that's it. As another poster said, I don't want to keep reminding my readers of the mega-hit series that spawned a blockbuster movie franchise and world-class theme park in my humble little NaNoWriMo-turned-self-published-e-book. It'll be a natural observation/comparison for my heroine to make regarding her peculiar situation, and that's that.

Thanks!

Thomas Vail · Oct 15, 2018

BethS said:
Allusions are fine. They give clues to your MC's mindset and world view. I know a book (Finding Fraser by K.C. Dyer) where the whole premise of the story is a character looking for her own version of a fictional hero (Jamie Fraser from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which is not only currently in print, but still being written).

What you don't want to do is overdo the allusions, or copy events straight from the HP stories, or do anything that edges over into plagiarism. But as long as the references are purely allusions, then I think you're fine.

Although the other thing this has the possibility of doing is dating your story. HP's kind of one-of-a-kind lightning in a bottle status makes it less of a problem than most, but it's very easy for pop culture references to go stale if you're trying to set something in a 'general contemporary' setting, instead of specifically 2018/2001/1985/whatever. As acknowledged above, it's also possible to pull people out of the story is done with a heavy hand.

angeliz2k · Oct 15, 2018

Cyia said:
Your character can read HP, go to a HP movie, mock someone by calling them a total Hufflepuff, ask them if their scar matches the a London Underground, or call them Weasley because they've got bright red hair and many siblings. You can't send them to Hogwarts or have one of the HP characters go an adventures with your own.

For myself, I've used mentions of Umbridge, by mentioning an overly pink principal's office that was thankfully devoid of cats and torture devices, and mentioned that a character assumed her neighbor's mistress ran a school because Mcgonagall was the only "mistress" she had ever heard of. Both allusions in mainstream novels by major publishers, and neither even suggested dropping them.

Hope that helps.

Hey, now. I'm faintly offended on behalf of my friends who are Hufflepuffs! Just kidding, of course! But Hufflepuffs get no love. And we Slytherins are SO misunderstood.

Anyway, I feel like HP will continue to have cultural weight for a VERY long time, well after we're dead. I feel like in a century from now, it will still be familiar, like Lord of the Rings is today.

PamelaC · Oct 15, 2018

angeliz2k said:
Hey, now. I'm faintly offended on behalf of my friends who are Hufflepuffs! Just kidding, of course! But Hufflepuffs get no love. And we Slytherins are SO misunderstood.

Anyway, I feel like HP will continue to have cultural weight for a VERY long time, well after we're dead. I feel like in a century from now, it will still be familiar, like Lord of the Rings is today.

Yeah, I don't feel like there will be a time within our lifetimes and well beyond when people will say "Who?" if Harry Potter is mentioned. I think once a character has a theme park, he's pretty much a permanent part of our culture. Now, someone who's never read the books or seen the movies or been to the park might not have any clue about some more obscure references to all things Potter, but the name Harry Potter is almost (probably not quite) as famous as Mickey Mouse.

BethS · Oct 16, 2018

Thomas Vail said:
Although the other thing this has the possibility of doing is dating your story. HP's kind of one-of-a-kind lightning in a bottle status makes it less of a problem than most, but it's very easy for pop culture references to go stale if you're trying to set something in a 'general contemporary' setting.

I think HP is going to be known and read for a while to come. It will likely outlast most of its contemporaries, including the ones the allude to it.

Gateway · Oct 16, 2018

PamelaC said:
I'm in the process of planning a novel for NaNo, and it's basically taking the premise of Harry Potter and re-imagining it with a 30-year old witch heroine in the place of an 11-year old wizard hero. Can my heroine notice and remark on the similarities between her situation and Harry Potter? Can she say something like, "What kind of Harry Potter sh*t is this?" Could she snidely refer to a wizard in my story as a "Dumbledore wannabe"? Or maybe call him "Dumbledork"? Can she shout, "Fifty points to Gryffindor!" when celebrating a personal victory? Or would allusions like this be a no-no?

Why not. In Guardians of the Galaxy they referenced Kevin Bacon.

PamelaC · Oct 16, 2018

Thanks to everyone for the help with my question. I have another one, and I don't want to start a new thread for it, so I hope someone sees this question.

A few years ago, I thought I was so clever because I came up with the idea to have vampire pirates called "vampirates". So, as usual, I Googled to make sure no one else had come up with this idea. Turns out there's an entire series of books called Vampirates (son of a @#$!)

I want to have some vampirates in my NaNo novel. Is that cool? Especially if I call mine vampyrates? The person that wrote the Vampirates books doesn't have sole rights to that word or that type of mash-up character, right?

ETA: The vampyrates in my novel are not central characters. They're just part of the inhabitants of my magical world, and they attack the ship my heroine happens to be on at one point.

BenPanced · Oct 16, 2018

Again, it's fine for NaNo but if you intend to publish the work in any way, you'll want to change "vampirates" to something else (but not "vampyrates"). IANAL but somebody else has already used the term and the concept so you'd probably be safer if you changed it.

PamelaC · Oct 16, 2018

BenPanced said:
Again, it's fine for NaNo but if you intend to publish the work in any way, you'll want to change "vampirates" to something else (but not "vampyrates"). IANAL but somebody else has already used the term and the concept so you'd probably be safer if you changed it.

Really? I find that surprising. I thought of "vampirates/vampyrates" before ever realizing someone else had also thought of it and written books about it. But that's why I asked.

Maybe if I don't use the term myself, but have my heroine come up with it? For instance, the pirate ship is drawing close, the crew of the ship she's on recognizes who it is and what's about to happen and start advising the passengers to get below decks, etc. Maybe my heroine is curious. "I've never seen an actual pirate before." To which the captain of her ship might say something like "Not just pirates. Vampire pirates." And my heroine's response. "So, they're vampirates?" (Obviously a poorly written exchange, but just to get the point across about using the term.)

Brightdreamer · Oct 16, 2018

PamelaC said:
Really? I find that surprising. I thought of "vampirates/vampyrates" before ever realizing someone else had also thought of it and written books about it. But that's why I asked.

Maybe if I don't use the term myself, but have my heroine come up with it? For instance, the pirate ship is drawing close, the crew of the ship she's on recognizes who it is and what's about to happen and start advising the passengers to get below decks, etc. Maybe my heroine is curious. "I've never seen an actual pirate before." To which the captain of her ship might say something like "Not just pirates. Vampire pirates." And my heroine's response. "So, they're vampirates?" (Obviously a poorly written exchange, but just to get the point across about using the term.)

IMHO (and don't take this the wrong way), this seems like high-order nitpickery. NaNo is rough-draft material, not take-it-to-the-publisher material. A line here, a line there... odds are it'll all sort out in revisions, and if it doesn't, your agent or editor will deal with it, as it seems to have no bearing on the actual plotline. (If your plot literally hinges on one passing comment, Something Isn't Right.) Holding yourself up over throwaway lines like this... it's how stories don't get written, drafts don't get finished, and dreams don't get pursued. Nitpicking leads to procrastination, which leads to giving up. And you haven't even written the first draft yet.

Seriously - come November, just let the words flow.

(Pertaining to the issue, I'm sure other people have thought of "vampirates" before, and will since. If you don't make it a key, recurring term in your story, using it once isn't likely to be a problem, but this is something you'll probably want to ask an editor or publisher or agent about. A lot depends on how long it takes for you to finish and market the story, and how popular the Vampirates series proves to be to invite comparison/potential Issues; I gotta say I really don't see it a lot at the library, not like I still see Harry Potter, so it may be a comparative flash in the pan.)

PamelaC · Oct 17, 2018

Brightdreamer said:
IMHO (and don't take this the wrong way), this seems like high-order nitpickery. NaNo is rough-draft material, not take-it-to-the-publisher material. A line here, a line there... odds are it'll all sort out in revisions, and if it doesn't, your agent or editor will deal with it, as it seems to have no bearing on the actual plotline. (If your plot literally hinges on one passing comment, Something Isn't Right.) Holding yourself up over throwaway lines like this... it's how stories don't get written, drafts don't get finished, and dreams don't get pursued. Nitpicking leads to procrastination, which leads to giving up. And you haven't even written the first draft yet.

Seriously - come November, just let the words flow.

(Pertaining to the issue, I'm sure other people have thought of "vampirates" before, and will since. If you don't make it a key, recurring term in your story, using it once isn't likely to be a problem, but this is something you'll probably want to ask an editor or publisher or agent about. A lot depends on how long it takes for you to finish and market the story, and how popular the Vampirates series proves to be to invite comparison/potential Issues; I gotta say I really don't see it a lot at the library, not like I still see Harry Potter, so it may be a comparative flash in the pan.)

Thanks for your response. I hear you regarding the nit-pickery. I think I just like the vampirate mash-up term and still consider it "my" idea because I hadn't heard anyone use it when it came into my head years ago, and I'm just bummed that someone else got there before me. I guess it's not the end of the world if I can't refer to my vampire pirates as vampirates, and it's definitely not in any way vital to the story. And I realize this is "just NaNo" and it doesn't matter in that context, but the goal is to write something that will be published eventually, whether that's by traditional means or self-publishing an e-book. So, in that regard, I want to avoid glaring things that are definitely not going to fly in a published work. But at the same time, you're absolutely right that it doesn't matter at this point and can be fixed later. Thanks for the reality check.

BethS · Oct 18, 2018

PamelaC said:
Thanks to everyone for the help with my question. I have another one, and I don't want to start a new thread for it, so I hope someone sees this question.

A few years ago, I thought I was so clever because I came up with the idea to have vampire pirates called "vampirates". So, as usual, I Googled to make sure no one else had come up with this idea. Turns out there's an entire series of books called Vampirates (son of a @#$!)

I want to have some vampirates in my NaNo novel. Is that cool? Especially if I call mine vampyrates? The person that wrote the Vampirates books doesn't have sole rights to that word or that type of mash-up character, right?
.

Umm, probably not. At the very least, if the reader is aware of the Vampirates series, it will come off as unoriginal. Better to come up with something different. The Brotherhood of the Brigands of Blood? :greenie

You could play with all sorts of word combinations with that, or with other words.

P.S. Also what Brightdreamer said. Don't get hung up on this now.

Myrealana · Oct 18, 2018

PamelaC said:
Really? I find that surprising. I thought of "vampirates/vampyrates" before ever realizing someone else had also thought of it and written books about it. But that's why I asked.

Maybe if I don't use the term myself, but have my heroine come up with it? For instance, the pirate ship is drawing close, the crew of the ship she's on recognizes who it is and what's about to happen and start advising the passengers to get below decks, etc. Maybe my heroine is curious. "I've never seen an actual pirate before." To which the captain of her ship might say something like "Not just pirates. Vampire pirates." And my heroine's response. "So, they're vampirates?" (Obviously a poorly written exchange, but just to get the point across about using the term.)

Why not? As long as you're not hanging your plot on it.

"So, they're vampirates?"
"We're not calling them that."
*sad face*

(Obv. you write it out normally and not in 'net speak.)

Maybe you keep it, maybe you don't. Either way, you don't have to make sure that you source every single quip your characters come up with. You can rest assured that a brief mention of something isn't infringement.

Edit - I missed the earlier post where you said that you WERE going to use the vampirates/vampyrates more extensively than one line. On that, I have to fall back on the NaNo excuse. Start out with whatever flows well. Change it later if you have to.

The main thing is, though, that it's NaNo. It's the time to put all your ideas on the page. That's the whole point of NaNo. Don't edit yourself in NaNo, and don't expect that you're going to come out with a finished book. Expect some of it to be slop and go for it.

starrystorm · Oct 18, 2018

I agree that perhaps it's best if you think of a new name and just call them pirates or vampires, and then hint at the opposite. Like they get attacked by pirates and MC notices they have fangs.

PamelaC · Oct 19, 2018

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the vampirate/vampyrate thing. I've discarded the idea. The pirates are just going to be wizard pirates...called magickeers (as opposed to privateers or buccaneers). Problem solved. There was no real reason for them to be vampires anyway. Glad I asked though!

BethS · Oct 19, 2018

PamelaC said:
wizard pirates...called magickeers

maggiee19 · Oct 19, 2018

If you are writing for NaNoWriMo, and you are not going to show the manuscript to anyone else or submit it to an agent or anything, you can literally do whatever you want, but if it's something you are going to show to a beta reader or an agent, or both, if I were you, I wouldn't do it.

Editing to add why I wouldn't do it if you were showing it to somebody. It's because fans are immediately going to compare your story to Harry Potter, and depending on what you write, you could be accused of plagiarism. At least that's my reason for not doing it. If you are writing something similar to Harry Potter, but a totally-different story, (30-year-old wizard instead of eleven-year-old, etc.) and you don't make any allusions to Harry Potter at all, depending on your execution, you will be on the safe side. If I were you, I'd be very careful. That's just me.

D. E. Wyatt · Oct 19, 2018

Thomas Vail said:
Although the other thing this has the possibility of doing is dating your story. HP's kind of one-of-a-kind lightning in a bottle status makes it less of a problem than most, but it's very easy for pop culture references to go stale if you're trying to set something in a 'general contemporary' setting, instead of specifically 2018/2001/1985/whatever. As acknowledged above, it's also possible to pull people out of the story is done with a heavy hand.

To be fair, some people never update their cultural references. I'll still occasionally drop an 80s or 90s reference on somebody, lol.

Can my character briefly allude to Harry Potter?

PamelaC

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist

BethS

PamelaC

Cyia

Rewriting My Destiny

PamelaC

PamelaC

Thomas Vail

What?

angeliz2k

never mind the shorty

PamelaC

BethS

Gateway

You Are My Density

PamelaC

BenPanced

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

PamelaC

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist

PamelaC

BethS

Myrealana

I aim to misbehave

starrystorm

PamelaC

BethS

maggiee19

D. E. Wyatt