A concept we often talk about when critiquing someone’s fiction is the “willing suspension of disbelief.” The phrase was coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when he said that if a writer could infuse their tale with a human interest and a semblance of truth, the reader will react to even the most fantastic tale as if it were real. The semblance of truth means, among other things, that events within the story don’t feel out of place. Once we have accepted that frogs can have a passionate debate about the nature of government, for instance, we are not at all surprised when later in the tale a stork expresses a different opinion. The suspension of disbelief is broken if the writer introduces incongruities or forces the reader to stop following the tale to try to understand a confusing phrase. One friend often phrases it as, “bounced me out of the story.”

There is a flip side to this concept of being bounced out of the story. It is implicit in the relationship between a reader and a story that when one first opens a book (or opens a reading app, et cetera) the reader is ready to give the story the benefit of the doubt. Which isn’t to say that a reader is obligated to keep reading if they don’t enjoy the story or it becomes confusing or whatever. It just means that for the first sentence or so the reader will accept what is being offered.

Different readers have different definitions of that initial willingness to accept the story. I once had an English teacher insist that a good story shouldn’t begin with a compound, complex sentence. An arrogant smart aleck student in the class¹ pointed out that the classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, opens with a single very long sentence:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

One reason that opening works is because it doesn’t sound, in one’s head, like a run-on sentence. It has almost a musicality to it that builds and builds as it goes along. My favorite bit is the “we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

Somedays when I read the news, I find myself convinced that we’re all going that other way and in a handbasket of colossal proportions.

But occasionally that handbasket induces a few giggles. Such as #CockyGate: This Romance Novelist Trademarked the Word ‘Cocky’: And now she’s threatening other writers with legal action if they don’t change their book titles and The #CockyGate Trademark Kerfuffle. The article gives more details. An intellectual property lawyer working with the Romance Writers of America has filed a petition with the Trademark office to invalidate the trademark on the word (and it is possible this will work; but the system has been inconsistent).

The notion that someone could trademark an adjective and forbid other people using that word in their stories (or even just the titles of stories) is a chilling one. I hope that, like the “space marine” trademark issue from five years ago, that this trademark bully will be stopped.

Because that’s what this is: bullying. The cocky author has been sending cease and desist messages to any other romance author who has used the word in a book title, including books that were first published long before she started writing herself. She’s been threatening to issue takedown notices to Amazon (just like the space marine trademark bully did years ago), which can result in lost sales as well as messing up their review and ratings histories, even when Amazon re-instates the listing. Also, some books were taken down when the cocky author contacted Amazon directly without first sending a letter to the author. The RWA and their lawyer has since contacted Amazon, to ask them to stop taking action on any cocky romance books until the legal matter is resolved. Fortunately, the books were restored.

It’s also a likely case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is the notion that incompetent people aren’t able to recognize their incompetence. In this case, I say that in part because of how the cease and desist messages are worded. Rather than having an actual lawyer draft the letters (which would cost money), she is writing her own, and her messages include the statement, “my lawyers have advised me that I will win all the monies you have earned on this title, plus lawyer fees will be paid by you.” Which clearly is not a statement a competent lawyer would make. The lawyer might say that if she prevails in a lawsuit that she might be entitled to the money earned and so forth, but they would never say they were even guaranteed to prevail.

And someone has already posted a parody book called, Too Cocky for the Law: Cockier Than the Rest (Cocky Legal Book 1), and have included the word cocky and many synonyms in the description. I have heard that the proceeds of the book are going to help with the legal fees of the trademark challenge, but I wasn’t able to confirm that.

I have been very tempted to create a parody e-book with the title Cocky Space Marine, but since I have crazy deadlines at my day job and a couple of fiction writing deadlines also looming, I really shouldn’t… even if the story almost writes itself…

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Footnotes

1. It was me, all right.