Bisky's Twitterling's Scribbles! discussion

I'm writing today and in one of the scenes the characters, having seen the movie Aliens together, quote a line that Ripely says to Newt.

Then I sat and thought about it and wondered, can you do that, as long as the source is mentioned?

Or can you just get sued...

I know the do it on TV all the time. But... That's TV.

You can do that, esp if it's just the one line. Good luck with the writing! :)

Just don't want the book taken down at somepoint because of one line :p

Only thing you have to worry about is with Song lyrics. Titles, quotes, and lines or 'references' like that work under the fair use act for copyright. It's why you can have so many inside jokes with TV show writing and such.

It gets muddy with song lyrics though because songwriters and labels are really protective of their material and a song is a significantly shorter piece of written work.

Intertextuality is always a good thing. I don't think you'll get sued, the creators of the show you mention will rather be happy to have had an influence on you. Then, of course, it depends on how much you quote.

You can do it. My books are filled with tv and movie references.

Ahh I wasn't sure :3 Thanks for letting me know.

And thanks Random about the song lyrics. I knew that was different but I wasnt sure why :]

Can you mention song titles? I get that lyrics are off limits, but can I say that my character was singing 'Do you want to build a snowman? (eg.)

I think you can mention song titles only because I remember reading it alot, then again that was in trad published books :x

Titles of any kind are totally okay to use :)

Bisky wrote: "I think you can mention song titles only because I remember reading it alot, then again that was in trad published books :x"

I know Stephen King uses references to songs quite a bit, and sometimes even uses lyrics in epigraphs.

Stephen King doesn't need to worry about copyrights. I'm sure his publisher is taking care of it all and if you're as good as King is, I bet the artists don't mind at all. I've heard that it can cost anything from 100$ to thousands of $ to have the rights to publish a few lyrics. Sometimes if you're lucky, they will give you the rights for free, but you CAN'T do it without the rights owner's permission.
As for titles, I don't remember. All I know is that after reading that article, I didn't take any chances and didn't put lyrics nor title but just a slight reference to the song, just enough for readers to know what I mean, but no more. Better safe than sorry. :/

Fair use covers most examples. I've actually read the copyright law, though it has been a while.