How do you avoid legal issues with authors if you’re writing a fan fiction story on a website?

Like, if you write a story using characters from a published book on a website such as FanFiction.net, how can you avoid legal issues?
What can you do?
I mean if you’re using the characters from a book or movie.

Disclaimers.
They can be something as simple as ‘I don’t own so-and so; don’t sue’ to huge, five-line monstrosities. You see them all the time on places like fanfiction.net, and even on sites that aren’t fanfic specific (storywrite.com, for example, which is primarily original work), you’ll have the occasional person’s fanfic written where they state that the characters, plot, whatever don’t belong to them.
Just make sure to state clearly that whatever you don’t own doesn’t belong to you, and for a good measure, add the original author’s name and the title of the series/story that you ripped off of. On certain sites, they may inform you that a certain author does not want fanfictions made of their story, so just watch out for those. Other than that, you should be in the clear.

This entry was posted in fan website. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to How do you avoid legal issues with authors if you’re writing a fan fiction story on a website?

  1. f0ur2one says:

    You can’t use anyone elses matieral at any time without their express consent or you will be guilty of plagerising and will be sued big time.
    References :

  2. HK says:

    Give credit to the author, and say that the story line is not yours to begin with.
    References :

  3. Tiffany says:

    Yeah. Give credit to the author.
    References :

  4. the.prekkendile says:

    Disclaimers.
    They can be something as simple as ‘I don’t own so-and so; don’t sue’ to huge, five-line monstrosities. You see them all the time on places like fanfiction.net, and even on sites that aren’t fanfic specific (storywrite.com, for example, which is primarily original work), you’ll have the occasional person’s fanfic written where they state that the characters, plot, whatever don’t belong to them.
    Just make sure to state clearly that whatever you don’t own doesn’t belong to you, and for a good measure, add the original author’s name and the title of the series/story that you ripped off of. On certain sites, they may inform you that a certain author does not want fanfictions made of their story, so just watch out for those. Other than that, you should be in the clear.
    References :

  5. Bella Cullen says:

    with Fanfiction.net, its not really a big deal…because the whole point of the site is to write stories using someones elses worlds and characters. One thing many Fanfiction authors do is to put this in their author page or at the beginning of their authors:

    Disclaimer: There characters belong to (authors name). I’m just borrowing them….

    References :
    Always on fanfiction.net