I have stated clearly my position and you keep misrepresenting it in your defense. Yes, my stated position is that writing fanfiction in general is a form of lazy writing that does not promote growth as a writer. You're trying to rile me up, but it won't happen. I refuse to be angry with fellow writers, even if they do art I do not support or find useful. I came here to state my views, and have. You are choosing to slap back with no substantial argument besides "you don't know fanfiction."
You never did answer my question of how much you've actually read, or if you bothered with the short video I posted. By this I conclude you haven't actually read that much and are posting from the vantage of your nose firmly pointing up.
I said fanfiction is lazy and weakens the writer. I never said it makes you a poor writer, only that it isn't a great tool for developing yourself as a writer. You, again, are taking my words and twisting them to fit your own defenses. I can give you numerous examples of musicians who become actors, that doesn't make it the norm. Stop trying to point out a handful of people who are the exception to the rule as being the rule. In general, fanfiction writers do not become anything more than fanfiction writers and in general they never challenge themselves beyond fanfiction. Original fiction writers do challenge themselves, and they may never be published for it, but at least they were writing their own settings, characters, and plots.
Way to deliberately miss the point. First, you don't get to dictate what I can and cannot post here.
Second, musicians becoming actors is not the same as amateur writers becoming professional writers. Musicians becoming composers is the example you should have gone for to make it comparable.
Third, I may have named only a few names, but the ones I named are among the cream of the crop of those who started in fanfic but went on to become pro. There are many more I did not name, including a whole slew of people who got their start because of Marion Zimmer Bradley mentoring them from their fanfic days to their early days as anthology contributors to becoming full-fledged writers in their own original universes.
Fourth, you are making the assumption that all fanfic writers want to be professionals. You need to understand that while there are probably a lot who do, there are even more who view writing fanfic as a hobby - a creative hobby like any other creative hobby that's enjoyable and produces an end product that other people enjoy, and that's all it's ever meant to be.
One of my favorite fanfic writers specializes in Chakotay/Seven of Nine fanfic (source material:
Star Trek: Voyager). I enjoy her stories, and she has quite a following on fanfiction.net. But considering that she's a university student in the UK, who is studying Mandarin and other courses to do with Asian studies, I doubt that becoming a professional fiction writer is among her immediate goals. For her, this is a hobby.
Actually, I'm reminded of the scene in
I, Claudius where Empress Messalina competes with the head of the Guild of Prostitutes to see "who can wear out the most men in one night." Scylla tells the onlookers who are mocking her: "The difference between this great lady and myself is that my profession is her hobby.
My hobby happens to be gardening, for which I don't expect to be paid."
Not that I'm saying fanfic writers are prostitutes(!), but you hopefully get the idea that one person's profession can be another person's hobby.
Fifth, I'm not trying to rile you up. I'm trying for an honest discussion without you sticking your nose in the air, your fingers in your ears, and chanting, "LALALALALALALA, I'm not listening, my mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts!"
I apologize you two are so deep in the fanfiction circles that you're incapable of seeing my point of view without lashing out. I have not raised my voice or looked down on you. I have told you the truth. I would prefer it if you'd stop telling lies on what I've said. Obviously this thread was created for fanfiction lovers, and thus the prompted question isn't a question at all. Obviously alternative views are unwelcome here. I will leave you to it. You should know there are not many people as tolerant or genuinely friendly as me when it comes to this divide, of writing and the craft in particular. By being hateful towards me, by lashing out, by putting words in my mouth in defense of your chosen method of writing without recognizing mine, you have only caused a greater rift between communities. I dislike conflict. So I refuse to be part of it any longer. I'm not banging my head against a brick wall to see if it budges. I've got writing to do.
Luckymoose, that has to be one of the most sanctimonious, most offensive things anyone has ever said to me in this forum.
NOBODY has to apologize for me. If I need to apologize for something i said, I'm quite capable of recognizing that, and doing it for myself.
And yes, you damn well have looked down on us, by tarring us with your "writing fanfiction makes you a weak writer" brush. Did my playing and adapting various waltzes and polkas make me a weak organist? Did it prevent me from composing my own original pieces?
NO, IT DID NOT.
What it did do, and what writing fanfic does, is provide inspiration for
practice. The only way a writer gets good is by actually writing, and fanfic is as good a source/inspiration for practice as anything else. It's not the fact that Person X is writing a Star Trek story that's important, it's that Person X is learning to plot, write dialogue, develop characters, write descriptively, and so on. All of these are essential skills for any writer to know.
It is really damned presumptuous of you to claim that a fanfic writer can never learn these skills just because they're learned via fanfic.
I like fanfiction as a way of seeing how other people interpret certain characters in a story. Everybody comes into a work of fiction with their own lens, background, and catalog of experiences through which they are going to interpret the story and its characters. In that sense I find it interesting.
To give an example a few months ago I started reading various post-Hogwarts Harry Potter fanfiction and it was absolutely fascinating the way various people interpreted (or in some cases clearly misinterpreted/misrepresented) the various characters of the HP universe to suit their own needs. In one story Harry turns into an angsty depressed wreck because the author interpreted him as a bearing the world on his shoulders, another took the canon fiery/independent Ginny and turned her into a disgusting, unreadable twee mess while Harry was suddenly transformed into a Mary Sue perfect wizard who could do anything and everything. Sometimes it's a form of comedy in that the author just plain reads the character in a totally strange seemingly apocryphal way, sometimes it's clear the author is working through some very personal stuff through these characters they're clearly passionate about, and sometimes the author can give you a totally different perspective on a character that you'd never considered before. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was interesting from that perspective (and from various other people-watching-related perspectives). One fanfiction I read gave a slightly alternative to JK Rowling's canon of Ginny and Harry just kind of falling together as if by destiny after book 7 and instead that perhaps Ginny would want to do things for herself and be independent rather than just shackling herself to Harry at age 18 and never really escaping from his shadow. That's an interesting take on the relationship that I don't think I would have ever considered.
I can absolutely see where Lucky is coming from. To write fanfiction in some senses is to chain yourself to a set of rules. The other problem is that fanfiction is often associated with Mary Sue-dom and raw wish fulfillment. Admittedly when I read fanfiction I don't do so because I'm seeking out a great work of art or good prose or an artful story. A lot of fanfiction is very poorly written (definitely not all; there is some exceedingly well-written stuff out there). At the same time a fundamental aspect of modern literary theory is that the author does not "own" their universe, nor its characters in an intellectual sense. There is no "correct" reading of a character or story. An author can have his or her own opinion about the characters in their book, and that opinion will almost certainly hold a great deal of weight among fans of that piece of art, but that interpretation is not the end all be all. Ultimately the character and the story rest in the hands of the audience, and I think that fanfiction is a celebration of this axiom. That so many people can all read the same story and yet take completely different concepts, notions, and interpretations away from it is the strength of the medium.
So I guess I like fanfiction more in a people-watching/social experiment/interpretation sense than an actual interest in quality of writing or story.
There are not many times when I've wholly approved of a post of yours, but this is one.
Most of my fanfic is in
The Crow: Stairway to Heaven universe. My take on those characters differs greatly from most other Crow: STH fanfic I've seen. I started writing fanfic for that series before it was even half through its initial run on TV, and I recall being annoyed at how canon shredded some of what I thought were good stories. But I threw out (figuratively) what no longer fit, and adapted the rest to what was possible and what was plausible. In some cases it gave me ideas I never could have had otherwise. I'm Canadian and the Vietnam War isn't something that's part of my country's collective psyche, so linking it to the series never occurred to me. But after the episode "Brother's Keeper" in which we learn that Eric Draven was a war orphan adopted by an American soldier and his wife, a whole other batch of ideas started coming.
