Fanfic

[jhetley]

This topic keeps popping up like an internet ad, newsgroups and journals and such, so I thought I'd use it as space-filler here and see if I can stir up trouble.

I put a lot of time and effort into my characters and worlds. I'd like to get the maximum pay out of that time and effort. I don't know whether fanfic adds to or subtracts from the bottom line. But the concept makes me queasy.

Okay, this is where the men in the white coats ask me to come along quietly. That time and effort thing -- after I've lived with characters for a year, two or three or more in the case of connected books, those characters become _people_ to me. Real people with real personalities and histories, living real lives somewhere out there in another universe. I've written stuff that got cut out of the published edition, and as far as my backbrain is concerned, it still happened.

I'm often nasty to my characters. After all, torturing characters is part of an author's job, part of playing God. But somehow, having some _stranger_ playing God with my characters, my victims, making them do and say stuff out of character, STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED, turns me off in a big way. It feels like a violation of the character's integrity.

Not gonna call it "rape" because of PC considerations, but it _feels_ similar in kind if not in degree.

On the gripping hand, having one of my stories mean that much to a reader, be that real, there's no denying it would be a boost to the ego. Just don't let such perversions loose in the world and we'll get along.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I know there is some very well-written fanfic out there but then my thoughts always turn to "why not take that skill and do something original with it?"

A fair number of people eventually do. Lois McMaster Bujold is probably the most well-known, but there are a lot of contemporary genre authors who got started by writing fanfic. Marion Zimmer Bradley stated, in the introduction to one of her "Sword and Sorceress" anthologies, that several of her earliest stories were "shameless pastiches" (her own words) of authors she admired. Fanfic is a good way to practice the craft of storytelling -- structure, plotting, dialogue -- in a known setting with known characters. Then, if you want to, you can go on and start getting into the area of worldbuilding and character generation, rather than trying to develop all those different skills from scratch at the same time.

Another viewpoint: fanfic writing is a hobby. Some people want to go on and become professionals in their hobby area; others are content to do it for fun and non-profit; still others would find that trying to make money at it would destroy the fun. I don't think you have the right to tell a hobbyist, however skilled, that s/he should turn professional. I'm a pretty decent musician, but although I've written some original material, I mostly play songs written by other people. If you said something like the quote above to me about my music, I'd tell you to go to hell.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

First of all, I'm not sure how you make the leap between "original" and "professional." There are many, many writers out there who haven't gone professional who are writing solely original stuff. It's only in the last few years that I've met a lot of fanfic writers who thought of it as a way to learn to write. I do hope nobody gets the idea that the majority of writers start off using other people's work, because the vast majority that I know certainly don't.

I don't think playing cover songs is quite the same thing as fanfic. A better comparison would be painting; taking a painting from an artist who has worked on the craft for years, tearing it up to make a collage, and saying you were learning to become a better artist that way, or that it was just a hobby.

I'm not quite sure why people get so het up over a creator's feelings about his or her work and get so terribly offended by the writers who don't want their work fanficced. It seems odd that people somehow feel they have a proprietary right to something created by someone else. Yet outside the realm of the arts that sort of thing doesn't wash...I'm infertile and want a baby, that doesn't mean I get to kidnap yours and change the name and raise it as my own.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I think fanfic and music may live in different classes that overlap slightly. Music has always been performed by many more people than the composer/songwriter. The Beatles, The Doors, and others of the 60s rock generation were actually an inovation in writing much of their own stuff. Elvis didn't write "Hound Dog," for example -- he wasn't even the first to record it. Music _is_ performance, with those notations on paper incomprehensible to much of the audience. A novel or short story is an object, with the performance (hopefully) occuring in the reader's head...