What do you think of Fan Fiction?

Even it's fans have been saying 'It's just a bit of fun, what's the harm?' There is nothing wrong with something as a fun diversion, it's just not much to aspire to.

 

Urgh. The analogy isn't about qualifying the mechanics, it's about establishing the merit. It has the same purpose as Karaoke. It's not the same process. Obviously.

 

So, it's also the same as skydiving, watching movies, listening to music, and riding horses? They're all done for fun. Is that as deep as you're going with it?

 

It's fun but there's no greater purpose. You can't cash in on your previous sky diving later, you can't cash in on your fan fiction.

 

Yes there is. Practice. Seriously, does no one in this forum give any coin to the idea of practice? I see posts all the time to the tune of "Hey, I've just joined and I've never written anything, but I have a seven novel series split into a trilogy and a quadrilogy laid out in my mind that I know will be fantastic, any help?" We've all seen that post at least once a week. That's the venue with no purposeful end.

 

I did ...

 

Yeah, that's always crushing to see.

Back to the karaoke.... I'd love to write my own songs and be able to play them on guitar and sing them.... but I can't. Not well, at least. No one wants to hear me sing (but they can't stop me!!), and I'm a bad song writer. So I sing other peoples' songs when I'm home alone. No one has to know.

Some people would love to create their own world and write it... but they can't. So they write fanfiction.

Now fan fiction has a whole new realm of toxicity and just pure nastiness so I don't like it, but I can see the idea around it.

 

What?

 

There is an entire expanded Foundation series written by various well known, well received, science fiction writers. That's sanctioned fan-fiction. The Star Trek franchise of books is riddled with author names any science fiction fan would easily spot. That's sanctioned fan-fiction. You oversimplify the matter into a logical fallacy.

 

Fanfiction, as I said in my very first post, is a great place to start. Sites like Fanfiction.net are wonderful for helping you learn, and teach you, about writing for an audience. However, I see it as sort of like Ayn Rand: it's a good place to start, great place to pass through, but please don't end up there, it's not worth it I don't think.

That's my personal opinion though.

 

But they took the base Star Trek universe and built off of it. That's perfectly fine, but it's not purely original. There's still Spock and Kirk, or Picard, or whoever. They didn't create the universe themselves, they took parts of it and expanded it. As I said, that's perfectly fine.

 

Here we find some agreement. It reminds me of a story I remember reading at uni (author and title smoked into oblivion) but the gist was that the city relatives of a poor, rural black family had come to visit and look down their noses at their bumpkin kin. The story was from some point in the early 70's when there was a vogue for Nouveau Africanism, dashikis and other trinketry all the rage. The city relatives had come to raid the family home of things like hand-made quilts and such that were becoming fashionable and valuable. The quietest and least assuming of the young country women living in the house watching all of this with curiosity and seeing these relatives as alien to her as any white person. They take all the handmade quilts, even commenting that a few of them where not wanted because they were clearly machine stitched. The young woman watching the bizarre act unfold in front of her tells them, "Fine, I can always make more."

The city relatives saw the quilts as their treasures. The real treasure was the skill in the hands of the young woman sitting in the bare living room, not the individual quilts.

 

Damn, I read that same story in university. I wonder what the hell it was...

 

If aestheticism is all you are interested in then really I suppose there would not be any difference between fanfiction and more original fiction. However, for some including myself the pleasure of reading a text is not all I'm interested in, and this is where fanfiction falls short.

It isn't even an issue of sophistication, you can in theory have a sophisticated, very reflective work of fanfiction - actually I imagine it wouldn't be at all difficult. But the fact that it is at least based on details taken and appropriated from someone else, does mean for me the work is diminished - maybe not in a way that really matters. But it matters to me, it just doesn't feel like as complete as a work.

I'd happily read a great piece of fanfiction, that is blatantly fanfiction, so it's not the appropriation that really bothers me. One of my favourite works, one I think is one of the best literary texts ever written, Dante's Comedy, is basically Virgil fanfiction if you look at it one way. I don't mind that Virgil appears in Dante's epic at all, because it is will thought out. In theory this is also perfectly applicable to fanfiction - and I'm not even really saying it's not the case, but it very often isn't.

There is a difference, but I'm not honestly sure what it is.

I suppose the difference is how much we already know about the character. Taking one of the lesser heroes from Homer, or expanding on a lesser hero from Band of Brothers (if the highbrow reference would bother people) would be something I would be actually very interested in reading, because there is enough not there to fill in the blanks with your own creation. That is fine, that I have no problem with. Wide Sargasso Sea, famously, is basically Jane Eyre fanfiction. I've not actually read that book, but the idea of it might interest me, just not as much as something more original. I suppose the difference with Dante is, since we do not know what Virgil was really like, his poem remains unscathed, his conception of the afterlife starts Virginian for the first 3-4 Cantos but then goes and does it's own thing. It is an original work, it just has elements borrowed from The Aeneid.

Also, and this will sound snobbish so I'll just say it, what matters to me about fanfiction is the reputation of poor quality - something I have found to be accurate. It cannot be helped, since it is overwhelmingly done by amateurs, but still. This reflects badly on me, but I cannot feel very encouraging about a genre that has such known low average standards.

 

Yikes. Thanks for posting that. Quite an eye-opener.

 

Honestly, I think this is what's behind a lot of people's issues with fanfiction.

And there is a LOT of crappy fanfiction out there, no doubt.

I'd say there's a parallel to self-published fiction. No gatekeepers on either side, and a lot of crap gets through. Doesn't mean there's not some great writing being done, but it can be hard to wade through all the garbage to find it.

The point being, I don't think there's anything about fanfiction that automatically makes it crappier than original fiction. But the practice of posting pretty much everything (as well as posting works-in-progress, etc) does lead to there being a lot of low-quality work available.

 

Alas, I can be of no help. I was a wake-n-bake pot head in those days. The style I remember and theme in evidence screams Alice Walker, though. The fact that you read it too would also seem to imply a more well-known writer rather than someone obscure.

 

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker! That's the one I was thinking of, at least.

 

Ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner. I was wrong about who made mentioned of the girl being able to make more quilts. It was another player. Oh, Mary Jane...

ETA: This made me need to watch The Color Purple, @BayView . No matter how often I see it, it never fails to turn me into a sobbing, boogery mess. LOL The reunion of Netti and Celie, and the reconciliation of Shug and her father... Yeah, I'm still choked up.

 

A lot of writers, even those who endorse it, won't read fanfic because, legal and probability issues aside, they don't want the hassle of some fan screaming plagiarism. It's just bad publicity.

 

Random thought: I have seen many statements that fanfiction imitates the tone and style of the original. That is not always true. There is fanfiction of movies and TV shows, where there is no writing style to imitate. For the TV show I have the most experience with, I have read fanfics in pretty much every writing style imaginable. Those authors are developing their own voice. And even fanfiction of a book need not imitate the style.

@Ulramar
@minstrel

I get that the more effort you put into a work, the worse it feels when someone interferes with your work or insults it. I am trying to understand why one would interpret fanfiction as interference or insult. I do not expect an argument to justify it (since it is an irrational feeling, as is the motive for writing fanfiction), but I want at least a guess at how that psychological complex develops in the brain. (See my explanation of the motives for writing fanfiction for an example of how to make that kind of guess.) I am also curious about when in history did people start to develop that complex.

minstrel has provided plenty of analogies that help me understand what the "interference" part of the complex is: fanfiction "enters my house and crashes my party", it "mutilates my children", it is "a moustache on Mona Lisa", it is "walking into a movie set in a zombie costume", etc. I get that. If someone barged into my house and crashed my party, yeah, that would be pretty rude.

But I do not get why fanfiction would trigger that feeling. If someone crashes my party, then there is no longer a party. If someone walks on my rug with muddy boots, then there is no longer a clean rug. If someone writes a story about characters I invented, then the copies of my book still exist exactly as they did before, the people who read those copies still remember the book exactly as they did before, and anyone who picks up one of those copies and reads it will read exactly the same thing they would have read before. Where do you get this idea that your imaginary world somehow exists, that someone writing fanfiction is trying to enter it, and that it is never the same after that person enters it?

The only potential problem I can see is if the fanfic damages the reputation of the original work. Take it from someone who actually reads fanfiction and has interacted with many other fanfiction readers: that does not happen. People are good at keeping their thoughts about the fanfic separate from their thoughts about the original.

As for the "insult" part of the complex: I do actually get how that develops. It is built on a false assumption, but I get it. If someone writes a modification of your work and proclaims it is superior to what you wrote, then I can see how that can be degrading to your work. But the key clause in that sentence is "proclaims it is superior". Yes, there are "fixfics" that intend to correct the original, but those are the exception to the rule. In general, fanfiction does not claim to be better than the original; it is just a matter of "here is an interesting idea in addition to the original; take it or leave it". You would be surprised how good the typical fanfiction reader is at sorting through contradictory ideas and appreciating them all simultaneously without feeling the need to say "this alternative is right and that alternative is wrong".

Borrowing @Lemex's analogy: if someone writes a story in which Holden Caulfield fights in the Cuban revolution, then that is not necessarily saying "I interpret Holden as a revolutionary, and whatever JD Salinger says to the contrary is wrong." It is likelier saying "Holden has an interesting personality that could lead to some interesting events if he got swept up in the Cuban revolution. Here are some events that might happen. Do you guys think these events are as interesting and plausible as I think they are?"

Which relates to the reason why people write fanfiction. Honestly, there is no single reason. I presented a few of them in my last post, which seem to have been ignored. The point is that the motive does not necessarily progress like this:

"I want the satisfaction of being a writer" → "I must write something" → "I will rip off those characters so I have something to begin with."

Or even:

"I love those characters" → "I want the satisfaction of writing a story about those characters" → "I must search for an idea for a story about those characters."

Instead, it can progress like this:

"an idea for a story involving those characters suddenly entered my mind" → "this idea will bug me until I develop it further" → "I need to put my thoughts into words and to share them with others to get them out of my mind."

Granted, when fanfiction ideas have popped into my own mind, I have only ever outlined them and maybe written a few chapters -- I have never completed a fanfic. The reason is somewhat similar to minstrel's reason. For both of us, it is related to ego. My ego does not lead me to think I would disrespect an original work by writing fanfiction of it, but it leads me to doubt that writing fanfiction is worth my time. I cannot motivate myself to spend all that time on something that can only be appreciated by people who are already fans of the original. My stupid ego demands that I work on something that can have a life of its own and can reach the audience it deserves. But I am immensely grateful to the people whose ego did not prevent them from writing fanfiction.

I think that is a big philosophical difference between me and most detractors of fanfiction. I believe fiction exists to serve the observer, not the creator. The only way to answer "is this worth writing?" is to answer "will this be worth reading?"

That has actually been a difficult question for me at times. On one hand, criticizing fanfiction by the same standards of any other literature can lead to critical panning of some of the fanfics that are most worth reading. (One of my favorite fanfics is especially polarizing -- it is by far the most popular fanfic in its realm, but there is a near-consensus among "highbrow" fanfic readers (if there is such a thing) that it is shit. ) On the other hand, exempting fanfiction from criticism implies it is not worth the effort of criticizing.

Now that I have developed a more comprehensive understanding of what criticism is, I think fanfiction is worth criticizing, and I have constructively criticized quite a bit of fanfiction. But criticism of any literature has specific purposes. Answering the question "Is this book worth reading?" is not one of those purposes.

I agree for the most part. When I used to browse fanfiction, that is basically why I did so. I was just looking for fun material to tide me over until the next episode of the TV show.

But fanfiction occasionally surprised me by producing material that does deserve to be taken seriously. For example, my favorite work of fiction happens to be a fanfic. It is my favorite because it accomplished something for me that no other work of fiction has ever accomplished. It got me thinking in such a way that my life will never be the same. That is why I am so passionate about my current project, which is a non-fanfic novel about a character who is in the same kind of situation as the protagonist of the fanfic. I see this project not just as a fun diversion, but as a way to enable a universal audience to experience the same thing I experienced.

A work of fiction cannot be adequately judged as a singular package. It is composed of many ideas, any one of which can singlehandedly make the work of fiction worth observing and analyzing.

 

I once read a fanfiction about Harry Potter and somehow I forgot about it and mistook it for the real book.
It was so well written and so similar to the real thing that for over a year I thought something was canon that clearly wasn't and I could not make sense of the new book that came out as it didn't follow it.

Why am I mentioning this?
No idea.

 

Maybe it's egotistical, but the main reason why I don't want people in my world is:

It's mine.

People have been saying this all thread, but I want to explain what that means to me.

My writing, my current manuscript, it's not about the characters in the story (well it is, sort of), it's about me. I convey real emotions that I've felt, exaggerated versions of events in my life. For the characters, I took different phases in my life and broken them into pieces, and then made characters from those phases. Those characters are in every way me. The story itself, is in every way, me.

And I took them on a journey of self discovery. For them as they discovered a new world (and in turn they responded how I might in those different parts of my life, at one point the character almost blows his brains out, then laughs it off saying it's uphill from here. I never almost killed myself but for a while I wanted to, but then I laughed it off and I'm better now. That's me), and for me as I wrote the piece, letting it grow around me.

So for that part, it feels to me like I'm being violated. They don't know what those characters are, what they mean. They're not real, and all ideas have meaning. But they may not see that the one scene where that character almost blows his brains out as important. Maybe they write fanfic where that character does later kill themselves. That character is me. And the writer just killed me.

It's not official canon that the character dies. But the writer took that character's actions and said, "Hey, I could see them killing themselves!" As I said, that character is me. It's me in every possible way, and you just said I could kill myself. I spent a lot of time suffering from depression and it's not impossible that it could happen, but the fact that someone wrote that is what's scary.

I can't speak about why it would feel like it's crashing my party. I own all rights (to their fanfics too technically), so it's not like they'd run into my party and say "Hey come over here guys!" And then run out with everyone following, leaving me in the dust.

But I can say that my characters are my children.

I started with an idea. As I said, each one is me during a different phase in life. Then I said, "Here's how I can reinforce their ideology." I gave them the background. I envisioned their appearance. I gave them pasts, I gave them presents, and I gave them futures. I am their everything. I built the world around them, manipulating it to my choosing. I say jump and they have no choice but to obey.

If someone came into your house and punched your daughter, would you feel violated? They walked in and punched your daughter in the face. Who let them in? Why did they do that?

That's how I feel about fan fiction.

I was in the editing portion of my manuscript and I sent it out to friends to read. They come back to me and say, "Dude, if this ever gets popular, they're going to erotic-fanfiction the crap out of this."

What they were referring to were "Burning bonds". Pretty much handcuffs made of flame in the fantasy world. Just the idea of that is violating. I haven't removed the burning bonds and I do not intend to, but I don't want fan fiction if my work becomes popular. Maybe that'll change if it happens, but for now, no fanfiction please.

So to me, they're not just toying with my characters. They're toying with me. Maybe I'm overreacting, but that's how I see it.

 

I can understand your POV to a certain extent. And certainly you have every right to publicly say you don't want fanfic written based on your work. But "If someone came into your house and punched your daughter, would you feel violated? They walked in and punched your daughter in the face. Who let them in? Why did they do that?"? Seriously? If that's how you feel about your work, then you should not publish it. That's letting them in. Rather, lock your daughter up in the house. Because people will discuss your book, they will write articles about your book, they will discuss - outside a fanfic - what might have been, what could have been. There will even be writers who write original stories based on or inspired by your ideas. A lot of people will take aim at your 'daughter', with or without fanfic. That is part and parcel of being a published author, my friend.

 

To me, the walking in is writing. Looking in, hanging around, knowing my daughter and where I live, that's the reading. But walking in is entering the writing, pulling the story apart and putting yourself into it. Punching my daughter is... well... punching my daughter.