Screenwriting : Using a psudeo-name..? by Ruby Kleinschmidt

Perhaps this is a question for Roald Dahl. Just another question to piggy back on yours .. Is there an issue with receiving legal payment for a piece if it's written under a pseudo name / Nom de Plume ? Wx

That would be a question for an attorney...I think. Anyway my thoughts on it are 1. you should have a contract with your publisher in your legal name and your Nom de Plume so there is no mistake. 2. publishers would write the check to your legal name or you wouldn't be able to deposit them.

I don't think it's a legal question - I think the concern is being stereo-typed, typecast, or remembered as "isn't she the children's books writer?" On the other hand, Leo Tolstoy; James Baldwin; T.S. Elliot; John Updike; Upton Sinclair; Ernest Hemingway; Aldous Huxley; Gertrude Stein; ee Cummings; Toni Morrison; Ian Fleming; Graham Greene; and Oscar Wilde - to name just a baker's dozen - also wrote children's lit. Maybe it's more of a modern "branding" type-of thing your writer friend is concerned about. If that's the case...and you are tending to lean that way....go with your "Porn Star Name' on the adult stuff. You know...your first pet's name as your first name, and the first street you lived on as your last name. In my case....that's "Fifi Wallace". Hmmm....no thanks....I think I'll stick with my real name in both fields of writing.

Pseudonym. And Roald Dahl is an awesome example since he wrote JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and things like LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER (made into a great Hitchcock Presents episode) and other crime & horror fiction... and wrote a James Bond film. All under his own name. But Bill brings up a going point, about "self branding" (which isn't as painful as it sounds). When people pick up a book by the late Don Westlake, they expect a fun crime caper that will keep them laughing. When people pick up a book by Richard Stark, they expect a brutal crime drama. When people pick up a book by Tucker Coe, they expect a brooding private eye mystery that focuses on the darkness within all of us. When people pick up a book by Sam Holt, they expect an insider's look at the TV world as a backdrop to a roman a clef mystery where you try to guess who each character really is... and all four of those are the same writer. Readers (and even publishers) expect certain writers to write certain stories and if you write something unlike your other work they may be disappointed, only because they had expectations. So sometimes it makes sense to have one "brand" for childrens fiction and one "brand" for adult fiction... Except you are probably getting the cart way ahead of the horse. You haven't been typecast yet, right? And one childrens book isn't a brand... it's just one book. If you have written a stack of childrens books, that's another story. And nobody uses pseudonyms in screenwriting because residuals are tied to your credit. You can register a specific pseudonym with WGA to use if you don't want credit on the film... so Robert Towne uses his dog's name. But you really want to get those residuals (especially if they screwed up your script) and you want to build your brand (no one in Hollywood actually watches movies, so they have no idea if that film you wrote was any good or not... just that you got a credit on it) and everyone understands that screenplays go through the big meatgrinder anyway and come out the other end nothing like the screenplay you wrote.

I was thinking about using a pseudo name for the children's books, not as a screenwriter. But I also know to be published in any genre gives more credibility in all other genres. But I thought it was worth the question.

Stephen King uses a pen name for certain work; so does Joyce Carol Oates (when she's writing pot-boilers vs literary fiction). Should you, Ruby, use a different name for kiddie books? YES!

Thank you..!!

My pleasure, Ruby. Good luck with your projects ---- and protect your "BRAND."

The only people who seem to make a success out of writing under a pen-name are established authors. And it's let out of the bag pretty early on who the writer actually is so I question the value. Would J.K. Rowling's "adult" book have sold more if people didn't know it was her that wrote it? Would Stephen King fans really buy Richard Bachman books if they didn't know it was Mr. King writing them? I doubt it. I have three very different books. A biographical account (Access Denied), a horror (The Roots of Evil) and my latest, a series of travelogues (Omonolidee). Someone did suggest to me that I should use a different name for each. But I took advice from Clive Barker when I asked him a long time ago if he'd ever use a pen-name and his answer was a most definite "no". His point being that you spend so long working on whatever you're working on, that to deny yourself the recognition of it is somewhat wasteful. It's hard enough, especially for a new author, getting recognised as it is. So compromising your identity is somewhat fruitless.

That's the one great thing about being named Andrew Smith. I can switch from Teddy Bear Picnic to Teddy Ripper - and you are going to have a hard time pinning me down.