Hi Probably a bad time to be asking questions with all the activity around the OWC. But if anyone has any thoughts on pen names I would be interested in hearing them.

It has struck me that I may end up with quite a few scripts floating about the Internet with my full name and contact details on them and am beginning to wonder whether that is a good idea or not. I am of the opinion that I probably would like to start using a different name for my writing but wondered what other people thought of that? Does anybody else us a fake name? (I guess nobody is going to answer that one if they did!) anyone thought about it before? Why did you decide not to? What would you think of anyone who decided to start using a pen name? would you think it dishonest or weird or anything like that?

There are a combination of reasons why I am thinking of this but it all boils down to the fact that it seems that there is little place to hide on the internet and I am nowhere near confident yet in my writing to have people who know me stumble across any of my work. Old friends, new friends, skeletons from my closets, people I know through business etc.. Something happened to a regular contributer at SS a little while ago that first put this idea in my head and got me thinking.

Anyway thoughts would be welcome,

Cheers.

When I was younger, if I was writing a drama or romantic comedy, I'd use a pen name.  Also for any poetry (actually, songs turned into poems), I'd use that name also.  So, basically, anything that sounded like a pussy wrote it, I'd use a pen name.  I've kind of outgrown it, though.  Now if somebody makes fun of me, I'll be beat them up or sleep with their girlfriends.  (All right, I've never beaten anybody up for making fun of me, but I've slept with their girlfriends because they did less.)

And, just for fun's sake, my pen name is incorporated into my Simply Scripts name.

I write under the name A. B. Steel.
My real name is Austin Bennett, and my boyfriend's last name is Steel.

Actually, we both go by B. Steel. His first name is Ivan.

The issue I see with a pen name would be with copyright. If you put something out under a pen name you'd want to make sure you've got copyright under your real name first, otherwise you'd have very little recourse if you got ripped off. In fact you should copyright your work regardless, but definitely do it if you're going to circulate it under a pen name. Unless, of course, the work you’re circulating is nothing more than a writing exercise. Which brings me to the OWC ; I wonder how many of those would be protected by copyright? My bet would be very few. It would be a shame if someone got shafted.    

Quoted Text I wonder how many of those would be protected by copyright?

Anything written is copyrightable, regardless of intent.

I don't know about contact details on scripts but people join facebook, myspace and such everyday and that's the ultimate in being out there in terms of your identity.

Of all the people on earth, you have a small chance of ever having a problem goes but at the same time if you achieve any level of success you do not want people to know where you live.

The internet is all about being anonymous.

My suggestion would be to do what ABSteel does and just use your initials and last name.  I think that's about as much anonymity as you'll need.  And since your name is rather common, you could even get away with dropping your first name to an initial and using your middle and last name (example: I would be J. Patrick Hood).  Most people don't know my middle name (I'm assuming it's the same with you) and there's gotta be a couple thousand J. Hood's out there -- and even more for your last name.  Also, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't screw you with the copyright because your full name is still on the script.  

As for your contact information, just put your name and email adress on your script and if they want to contact you, they can just email you and you can work from there.  And you can even go so far as to make up a new email just to put on your scripts.

I'm sorry if this is pretty useless information, but everyone knows I write, so I gave up being anonymous a while ago and in result I'm probably not very good at telling others how to do it.

I only put my email address on the scripts that I post. Anyone reading my script via the internet likely has an email account.  

Cheers for your responses folks,

I think I probably will go for the initials idea and play around till I find the right combination, I probably should have done it to start with.

You could always copyright it under your name, but then share it under a pen name.

Either way, it's the same exact script.

That's what counts.