Sunday, March 1, 2009

New Project: Worst Pirate Ever

An idea came to me yesterday while I was sitting in a Hunter-Safety class with my son. I jotted it on my hand so I wouldn't forget it, then promptly forgot it. This morning I was washing my hands while making breakfast and it caught my eye . . . .but it was almost too faded to read. I panicked for a moment, but it did come back to me after some frantic turning-over and tossing aside of all the dusty junk in my head. Today I sat down to write a one-paragraph synopsis for My Bride to read and ended up with several pages of synopsis, notes, and character sketches. I think maybe I've really got a story here if I can execute it. Missy agrees that it's not terrible, although she did suggest that it needs a love interest.

My original concept was aimed at a picture book for very young children, (thus no real use for the love interest) but I think this is going to end up a novel. At the moment I'm thinking it will be aimed at the pre-teen audience, but that could change again. In any case, I was thinking along those lines, and when she said it, it seemed pretty clear what was missing.


Update:
Aw, crud. After I typed this post, I thought I'd better look around and see whether my tagline is in use in other places. Apparently, "Worst Pirate Ever" is a popular t-shirt by Roman Dirge. It seems that there's no book or graphic novel to go along with it, though, just a great image of a pirate skeleton that has clearly met with misfortune. My idea doesn't involve skeletons or the like, and it's a full story--I'm thinking novel--so I think I can safely say it doesn't infringe on his work at all. And apparently there's a line in Pirates of the Caribbean where one character says to another, "You are, without a doubt, the worst pirate I've ever seen in my life." I don't remember it, but OK. It's out there. I don't see how my story could infringe on it, since none of the other elements of POTC are in there except humor and pirates.

I can actually think of a way or two to do the story without that phrase, but that was what popped into my head to get the whole thing rolling.

8 comments:

J.R.Shirley said...

Excellent. Looking forward to it.

Anonymous said...

The POTC line is...

(Norington) "You are without a doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of."

(Capitan Jack) "But you have heard of me."

Any way, this sounds promising. Let's see those character sketches if you're not trying to keep us in suspense.

You never mentioned you were an artist/writer.

Anonymous said...

Keep it going. I'd like to read it. Who knows, it may take a new form when you get it roughed out.

Anonymous said...

A quick question to an intellectual property attorney confirmed what I thought. You can use that as the title of your book, no problem.

As always, consult your own attorney. This is not legal advice, but you will find it to be true.

Unknown said...

If it's to be a kids story.... I'd go with this alternative for a title...

"Poor Pirate Peterson"

;-)

Anonymous said...

I was planning a series of short films under the title 'Worst Psychic Ever'. The main character would get advice, go and apply it and meet some horrible fate. The coda of each episode would be the psychic hearing/reading about or seeing the results, shrugging and moving on with her life.

Correia said...

Legally, as far as book titles go, you can have the exact same title as something else, it can't just be a ripoff of the other work.

Take any catchy phrase, and you're bound to find a book somewhere with that.

(oh, and you can make serious bank off of the teen/adolescent market right now)

Anonymous said...

酒店小姐
酒店兼職
禮服店
酒店經紀
酒店兼差
酒店打工
酒店上班
假日打工
台北酒店經紀
童裝批發
童裝批發
酒店喝酒
暑假打工
寒假打工
酒店
酒店經紀人
酒店現領