I don't get fan-fic

Cafe Society
21

I think it’s more about the fan rather than the fic. Fanfic bores me, except for the occasional one obviously written for absurdism, and even then, of course, it has to be done for a show/book I like.

I don’t get this idea of fanfic being an opportunity to write without having to make up your own characters and setting. When I write, the most enjoyable part is making my characters and themes and settings come to be. Using pre-existing characters takes all the fun away. As far as I’m concerned, the least interesting part of writing is when I have to make my characters do stuff. Huh… maybe I should just write for Aqua Teen Hunger Force then.

Actually, I have, on occasion, written very short pieces of fanfic, but they were only exercises to see how closely I could imitate someone else’s style. Nothing I’d invest myself in.

Actually, I now have an idea.

I can’t write anymore because this is usually the point I give up on reading fanfic.

22

I’ve attempted 'fic a time or two (even back before I was online, before I knew there was any such word as “fanfiction,” and the whole concept was something I thought I came up with). It’s a lot harder than it sounds to make it good. The bad part is, some folks don’t even try.

party_guest: Ah, but for some, the process of writing fanfiction STILL necessitates “characters and themes and settings come to be,” since many feel that canon writers unfairly portray particular characters, or when they (shudder) make up their own. After all, even in the longest canon, there are plenty of minor characters, backstory, and personality depth left unexplored or unrevealed. (Not trying to convince you one way or another, just explaining.)

As for me, I read it (on some occasions) because, among the mounds and mounds of craptacular stuff, I occasionally, occasionally find something really good, that I enjoy enough to think of as part of a canon I love, or else is vastly entertaining in its own right (and I realize that that entertainment might not have been inspired or created had it not been for a fanfic). Those moments make it worthwhile for me. But YMMV.

23

(Oops, sorry, party store. :P)

24

I have nothing against fanfic (I once submitted a Star Trek novel to Pocket Books, for instance, at the request of the editor), but I do agree with the OP: it’s an easy way out. The hard work has been done for you, and all you need to do is a variation on a theme. It’s pretty much a dead end as far as writing is concerned.

It’s the literary equivalent of a paint by numbers kit. You really don’t learn much from it, and if you’re serious about your writing, you’ll need to move away from it to learn all the things you need to know, but which fanfic already has handed you.

25

A couple of other viewpoints, from someone who admittedly has never written fan-fic, and has read only minute quantities.

Is it lame or pathetic to enjoy creating a watercolor painting, but not aspire to selling one’s art?

Or to be content making movies for public access television and not aspire to Hollywood?

Or to act in a community theater production and not aspire to Broadway?

Or to sing in a church choir and not aspire to be a soloist (let alone aspire to be a star)?

Or to enjoy cooking gourmet meals for your family and not aspire to be chef of your own restaurant?

Or to play in a recreational softball league, or pick-up basketball game and not aspire to be a pro-athlete?

Or fly a small airplane (like Broomstick has been doing) and not aspire to be a pilot for the airlines, flying big airplanes?

Or climb a mountain, but just an ordinary mountain, not aspire to climing Mount Everest?

If the answer to some or all of these questions is “no”, then why is the writing “equivalent” lame?

And the other point of view, which got typed while I was off doing other things, but not quite in my words. Writing fan fic seems to me to be a form of writing with a low threshold of difficulty. I might think about writing a great novel, but then I think “I’d like to write a story about a girl who communicates telepathically with a dragon” but how do I make it not sound just like Pern? Fan fic solves that problem. It can be Pern, or Hogwarts or wherever. Rather than having to start from scratch, one can start with a world someone else has dreamed up and build on that. Fanfic isn’t an invention of the internet–but it proliferates on the internet, because it is easy to share and see what others have done. Especially if one is not convinced that one will ever have something worth trying to sell.

So, yes, it is arguably lame–but the mistake you may be making is in not thinking of it as an end in it self, a knowingly limited form of writing, a way to pass time that otherwise might be spent in other meaningless tasks. There are people for whom writing fanfic led to writing original fiction and then to being published (Lois McMaster Bujold, for one) but there are others who may never be interested in dealing with the commercial side of writing, who nevertheless enjoy creating a story, and who may find more audience, or find themselves less intimidated by connecting someone else’s dots, then by staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Does that help?

26

While there are a handful of fanfic authors who went on to be published, the vast, vast, vast majority of published authors did not start in fanfic (and those that went on to be published generally did so after they stopped writing it).

You can get a lot of pleasure doing paint-by-numbers, certainly. But don’t mistake yourself for an artist until you start doing your own work.

27

  1. Being published is not the end-all, be-all of becoming an artist. Some people, like myself, who write original fiction as well as fanfic, have no intention of publishing any of our works. We write, draw, create for the love of the process of creation, not out of a hope of making money.

  2. Asking why we don’t just write original characters in an original setting defeats the purpose of asking about fanfic. Fanfic is about using other people’s characters or exploring their universe. That’s the point. If we wanted to write original fiction, we would. In fact, many writers do. Writing fanfic doesn’t somehow preclude someone from also writing original fiction.

  3. I’ve read some spectacular fanfiction. If you judge all fanfic from the dreck you see at fanfiction.net, then yes, you’re going to have a low opinion of the overall quality of writing in fanfic. It’s not difficult, however, to find fanfic of good quality, and some of it really and truly surpasses the source material. I won’t speak for my own writing – I’m a mediocre author at my best – but I enjoy reading good fanfic because it’s good fiction period.

28

You bet it does.

There are suckers born every minute and I would sell out in a minute for a piece of that pile.

But I would never write fanfic. Getting paid makes all the difference. If you don’t understand that, you’ll never understand the difference between fans and pros.

That’s not at all the same thing as slamming fans for fanfic, just acknowledging that there’s a huge gulf that most fans don’t comprehend and that this gulf sometimes leads to problems, misunderstandings, and hard feelings. Most fans write fanfic because they are incapable of writing living characters of their own. Some may think they can, but only other fans ever agree. Media fanfic is even cheesier, er, easier, because the characters come already-inhabited. There are exceptions to this, as there are with all things, but the percentage is small.

Being a fan is fun, and living temporarily in a fun world even funner. But please never mistake fans and pros. They’re two totally different animals.

29

I’ve written fanfic, and for me the appeal is exploring tantalizing possibilities that were created in one episode and then forgotten. With Star Trek, the number of unexplored potential story-lines is immense. As a run-down of my six-story arc:

Part 1: Transporters. How widely are these used in the day-to-day operations of the Enterprise-D? What if they were abused?

Part 2: Anti-matter. How is it transported and are there dangers in doing so?

Part 3: How exactly did the Klingons restructure after Praxis? Was General Chang the only Klingon warrior trying for war?

Part 4: How does Barclay get from the Enterprise-D to helping Lewis Zimmerman with his emergency medical hologram program?

Part 5: Further exploration of Part 3, including the fate and history of Tallera.

Part 6: The remnants of the Maquis, the fate of Ro Laren.

I’ve thrown in a number of continuing elements so no single story is completely stand-alone.

30

I suppose that I should preface this by noting that I have a high tolerance for dreck – I’ve ready every Terry Brooks novel in existance, and stayed with Tom Clancy all the way to Red Rabbit. But I really do enjoy reading fanfic. A large part of it for me is definitely the “love of the character” thing mentioned earlier. I truly am addicted to Harry Potter.

However, there really are some excellent fanfics out there. Humourous ones are often the best because they don’t take themselves too seriously and you don’t have to be as careful about the characterizations. Still, there are some good serious ones too. There was one particular haunting one that I liked, that only would have worked as a fanfic. It was short story and it only worked because of the established backstory that it built from. To have rewritten it to stand alone would have required establishing that backstory first, which would have taken far too long, and then the ending would have left the reader feeling totally cheated for really emphasising with the characters only to have it all blow up at the end. As a short fanfic, it worked because it wasn’t canon.

[aside]I have to say, though, as soon as I finished Half-Blood Prince I wasn’t happy, because I knew that we were about to see a deluge of crapping horcrux-chasing stories. Sure enough, I must have read at least 5 in the past two months, and they’ve all been terrible.[/aside]

31

Yeah, ITA. I love making up characters and designing their relationships and plotting out their backstories. If I could make a living doing just that I totally would. Fanfic would rob me of the best part of fiction writing.

I do get the idea about wanting more time with characters you love, but to me, most fanfic doesn’t stay true to the characters. The writer bends the characters the way they want them to go, and screw continuity. There are characters I truly love, but I think I love them within the context of the original work, sort of appreciating the work holistically. I don’t think of these characters existing outside of their “canon,” because that’s where they’re meant to be. I figure that the writers know what they’re doing; they don’t need any help from outside sources. Also, as a writer of original fiction I am a little sketched out that someone would dare to remove my original characters from the context of their book. Maybe it’s different with TV shows and series books since they go on and on and on, but fanfic based on one-shot books and movies just seems… weird to me. YMMV of course.

That said, I would jump at the chance to write a book, TV show, or movie with the same characters/world as something I love, as long as I was being paid for it. But I guess that is because I am a pro, or at least trying to be one.

32

[QUOTE=Eureka]
A couple of other viewpoints, from someone who admittedly has never written fan-fic, and has read only minute quantities.

Is it lame or pathetic to enjoy creating a watercolor painting, but not aspire to selling one’s art?[/qupte]

Nope. But I’d say it would be lame to make a color copy of an existing watercolor painting and then add your own brushstrokes to it for the purpose of holding yourself out as an artist.

33

Lame to write it? Nope, everyone should have a hobby and writing is good. Lame to share it on the internet for others to read? Hmm, maybe.

Any of the fan fiction I’ve read has been really bad, and if anything has rather spoiled the subject matter for me. I find it troubling that these characters I like and care about are running about saying and doing these dumb things. Even if it is only in the head and fiction of some inconsequential fan. Keep your rotten plots and stilted dialogue to yourself, I say.

I’m sure there is some good fan fiction out there, stuff that’s well written and doesn’t mess with the characters. But that’s the minority.

34

The writing equivalent to a “no” answer to your questions is writing original work and not having it published. Many people do it. I’ve done it since I was in elementary school.

And here is the problem. I can understand perfectly the concept of fan fiction as a way to spend extra time with characters you’re fascinated with. I am no stranger to becoming obsessive about a particular work. But to kid yourself that fanfic is an “easy” form of writing? That’s ridiculous, and if that’s the belief that fanfic writers hold, it may explain the large amount of shitty fanfic out there.

If you want to do fanfic well, it’s not easy. I said in my previous post that coming up with ideas was the fun part of writing. And because of that, talk to anyone with an interest in writing, and you’ll find that they don’t lack ideas. It’s working out how to translate your original idea into a finished product that is the tough part. If you think you can cut corners by jumping on someone else’s idea, you’re doomed to fail, because for a fanfic to be enjoyable, you really need to know the author’s technique and characters inside out. You need to know exactly what a character would say in a given situation, how he or she would react and how to write that so it reads well and is in a style that fits with the original author.

And if you can do all that well, why the hell aren’t you pursuing your own ideas? And don’t tell me you don’t have any. If you’re that good an author you should have plenty of ideas for your own work.

Leaper: I see what you are saying, but I still think what you are describing is essentially an extension of one’s own fandom rather than one’s writing. And there’s nothing wrong with being a super-geeky fan; there are a number of things I geek out with, but unless you’re Tom Stoppard writing “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the value of fanfic is in the writing rather than in the fandom.

35

Hmmm… timely reason for me to think about this, as I’ve just started working on a major fanfic for NaNoWriMo.

First off… fanfic was never something I really expected to write. I read a little Buffy fanfic, thought it was an interesting idea but not really something that appealed to me. Then I had a huge fanfic storyline begin to develop in my head that nagged at me and wouldn’t leave me alone until I committed it to prose. That’s been the pattern from then on really.

As many have pointed out, it’s a way to expand on the fandom and create new storylines with the characters that you have grown to love. In my current fandom, Roswell, there’s also a strong drive to ‘fix’ what went wrong with the show… Roswell is generally acknowledged by its fans as a group of strong characters that had a lot of potential, and then the characters and the show were ruined by producers who never really understood what all of the fans loved about the fandom – a brief ‘golden age’ that came together more by luck than by the creative vision of the show’s creators.

Definitely I think that writing fanfic has been good practice in the art of writing for me. Creating original and compelling characters is a very small part of writing prose fiction, and even this I get some practice and experience in with writing fanfic - I introduce some minor characters to interact with the ones from the show - (No ‘Mary Janes’ thanks, but that’s another topic entirely,) and I get to figure out a lot about what makes the characters from the fandom work and what sort of things I’d have to keep in mind if I wanted to create original characters with the same sort of impact. I also get to practice dialog, description, narrative, creating new plots, maintaining strong characterization, developing thematic elements - just about every other technical facet of writing.

One thing that has to be stressed is how much fanfic writing is about community. For most amateur writers, creating characters that are compelling enough to get people to immerse themselves in the work, and getting any readers at all willing to give them some responses, have to be big challenges. A strong fanfic fandom community works towards solving both problems – there is a willing pool of readers looking for new material and already invested in the characters.

I think the comparison to a watercolor picture, meaning no offense, is wide of the mark. Writing fanfic is more like taking the scene or subject of an existing painting as your subject and beginning your own picture.

YMMV, getting off the soapbox now.

[sub]takes the two cents sitting on the table and scampers off into the distance[/sub]

36

I’m sort of in the position of being a professional fan-fic writer. A few years ago I was invited to write some short stories for a series of licensed Doctor Who anthologies.

Writing this kind of thing is really only separated from fan-fic by the fact that I’m more restricted in what I can do (no using well-known characters for whom a license must be paid, for example), the story gets edited before anyone sees it, and I get paid at the end.

While fan-fic has been responsible for some of the worst literary atrocities ever committed to the internet it is not inherently a bad thing. The people who place themselves in the stories, or make Kirk and Spock homosexual furry lovers or who want to “correct” the original author’s mistake in never getting two characters together for the hot monkey sex will, inevitably, give it a bad name.

On the other hand it does make it possible to tell succinct stories that can thrive on their own merits without having to resort to filling in a lot of background. It can allow a piece of a few thousand words the depth of something twice the length because people already know the set up.

Some have asserted that any work that is not entirely original is worthless. I disagree.

Take, as an example, the case of an author who writes a sequel to one of their own stories. Particularly in the case of certain long-running series that never seem to end this pretty much falls foul of the same criticisms as fan-fic for originality. I’ve also read an anthology of stories by famous authors invited to return to their signature universes for one more short story. I fail to see how far different this is from fan-fic.

Many of the great works of literature commit similar sins - basing themselves on older stories or stealing them wholesale.

Fan-fic is like any other piece of literature. It can be bad, or it can be good. Which it is is up to the author and is not a function of its source.

37

I don’t disagree. I just am inclined to suspect that the average writer of fan fiction adds more original content than your discription suggests–and I suspect that the average writer of fan fiction does recognize that what he or she is doing is not equivalent to what the creator of the universe did in creating that universe. But, given that I am not that familiar with the world of fan fiction, perhaps I am making silly assumptions.

38

I never heard the term fan-fic before this, but would Brian Herbert’s prequels to “Dune” be considered as part of this? I LOVED “House Harkonnen” and “House Atreides” - learning more about characters I admired - or despised in the original work was great.

39

hear, hear!! As someone pretty familiar with the fanfic world, I’d say that your assumptions are pretty reasonable ones.

40

Well, I guess I’ll just never understand the difference between fans and pros, then, because I don’t see how this statement makes a lick of sense. I have no familiarity with fanfic, but say for whatever reason I decide to write a story about Batman, because I really like Batman and I think Batman is the coolest thing ever. (Bear in mind, this is entirely hypothetical.) I have not been paid for my effort, which was motivated solely out of my affection for the character.

But wait! Somehow my story finds its way into the hands of an editor at National Publications, and they enjoy it so much that they offer to pay me a whole dollar. How has this increased the originality of the story all of a sudden?

I find it hard to believe that no gainfully employed comic book writer ever attempted to script a story about established characters before recieving money for their efforts. Isn’t this how one gets work in these sorts of franchises? I’d always been under the impression that it was necessary to show some of your work before you get hired. Is it your professional opinion that the best way to get a job writing Batman stories is to make sure the scripts you submit for consideration don’t include Batman?

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and assert that money does not define originality.