What do you think of Fanfiction?

[Valka D'Ur]

You can read plenty of my work in the NES forum. And no, they aren't professionally published yet. I know what it means to not be ready, so I work harder and do more. Don't assume you know me. Where is your writing?

When it's ready, it will be posted. As for assuming I know you, that's exactly what you did with Timsup2nothin - automatically assumed his story is crap just because it's fanfic.

I don't do NES. If you have a self-contained, standalone story of yours I could read, I'd be interested to see it.

 

[Tarquelne]

I'm not sure I want to interrupt the pissing-contest, but I'd like to point out that putting together a new story, even with pre-made characters and settings, is a lot more work than putting powdered sugar on a store-bought pie.

For some people the "writing" part of writing seems amazingly easy. One word follows another in an entertaining, appealing way. Their plots and characters, however, may be rotten. For such people writing fanfiction wouldn't be very valuable practice.

OTOH, for anyone who's pretty good with creating plots and characters but finds the writing part of being an author troublesome, then fanfic could be great practice. It'd be better if they were "cooking from scratch," yes, but it'd still be great practice.


Ideally fanfic audiences would be too critical to accept the sloppy, lazy work that comes out of some fanfic authors.

But,
a) There's a fair amount of professionally published work that I'd call sloppy and lazy. An editor can only help so much.

b) Look at the franchises fanfic is often centered around. Of course the audience is tolerant of less-then-stellar writing.

So what? They like it, they make it, they consume it. Except at conventions and similar settings, fanfic people don't bother anybody who isn't dumb enough to wander into one of their caves or tunnels.

It strikes me as a much better hobby than most.

 

[Luckymoose]

When it's ready, it will be posted. As for assuming I know you, that's exactly what you did with Timsup2nothin - automatically assumed his story is crap just because it's fanfic.

I don't do NES. If you have a self-contained, standalone story of yours I could read, I'd be interested to see it.

I didn't say his work was crap. I said he would never develop the skills required to go to the next level by doing it. And as for NES, the one I write for the most is more of a shared universe storywriting thing. I take the art seriously. I want to improve, so I keep writing and trying to improve as best I can. I've written around a hundred thousand words this year so far, only about 30k of that has been NESing.

 

[Cutlass]

Fanfiction to me is lazy creative writing. You're not exploring your own characters, unless you change enough about the setting, plot, and characters to make them a unique experience, and if you do that just rename things and make your own novel. Like the person who wrote the 600,000 word My Little Pony - Fallout crossover. Why would you waste so much time on that?

I don't agree. Many professional authors have written professionally published works in someone else's universe. There have been 100s of Star Trek novels by dozens of authors going back to the 1970s. There are fewer Star Wars novels, but still a significant number of different authors. Including authors who had been commercially successful with their own works before writing Wars. Such as Timothy Zahn and RA Salvatore.

Robert Jordan, who you may know wrote a major fantasy series, one that lived on after Jordan himself died, many of his successful early published works were Conan the Barbarian novels. Robert E Howard started that series in the 1930s. Other authors who published in the series include Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner.

Valka has talked in the past how successful fantasy author Mercedes Lackey got some of her start writing fan fiction for Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. Lackey, as well as many other authors who have successful series, has anthologies of short stories published in the universe of those series. And most of those short stories are little more than fan fiction itself. Just fan fiction which has gained a commercial publisher. Eric Flint, the author of the popular fantasy series 1632, has had the universe he created there essentially taken over by fan fiction. I've been trying to get caught up on the series, but Flint himself says that to be really on top of what is going on you have to read all the published volumes of what is, in effect, fan fiction. At the same time, Flint changed the direction, somewhat, of David Weber's Honor Harrington series when he coauthored a couple of the books, and wrote some of the short stories for the anthologies on that series.

Years ago I read a series of books called Thieves' World. This was explicitly a project where the editors created a world for other authors to write short stories in. And often some of the authors would @$&(*^ with the characters created by other authors.

In short, shared universe stories are nothing new, and nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I didn't say his work was crap. I said he would never develop the skills required to go to the next level by doing it. And as for NES, the one I write for the most is more of a shared universe storywriting thing. I take the art seriously. I want to improve, so I keep writing and trying to improve as best I can. I've written around a hundred thousand words this year so far, only about 30k of that has been NESing.

And you know this how...? Did you just gloss over my examples of authors who started in fanfic and went on to become professional authors above and beyond tie-in material (which you have not yet responded to, btw, regarding your opinions of tie-in stories)?

Shared worlds... hoo, boy, did Harlan Ellison ever have a thing or three to say about those! One of the first things he called them was "anti-talent." If it's a shared universe, then you are using other peoples' material as at least a partial basis for your own, so you cannot claim to have invented an entirely new story all by yourself.

Honestly, I'm curious to see one of your 50,000+ word NaNo entries that you breezed through in just a few days flat.

 

[Luckymoose]

And you know this how...? Did you just gloss over my examples of authors who started in fanfic and went on to become professional authors above and beyond tie-in material (which you have not yet responded to, btw, regarding your opinions of tie-in stories)?

Shared worlds... hoo, boy, did Harlan Ellison ever have a thing or three to say about those! One of the first things he called them was "anti-talent." If it's a shared universe, then you are using other peoples' material as at least a partial basis for your own, so you cannot claim to have invented an entirely new story all by yourself.

Honestly, I'm curious to see one of your 50,000+ word NaNo entries that you breezed through in just a few days flat.

Shared world implies you work as co-authors. Not that you are using other peoples materials with no input. You have a very fanfiction view of it, when plenty of popular series are written as original content by more than one author. Off the top of my head I can point to Leviathan Wakes, written by co-authors. Is it not an original story because they collaborated on it?

I didn't breeze through them in a few days. I worked for a few hours a day for a month. Where do you get your facts from? I put in the work and hit my goal. Did you? Stephen King can write 2,000 words a day. Many authors write 2-3k words every day. It isn't hard to hit 50k in a month.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I didn't say his work was crap. I said he would never develop the skills required to go to the next level by doing it. And as for NES, the one I write for the most is more of a shared universe storywriting thing. I take the art seriously. I want to improve, so I keep writing and trying to improve as best I can. I've written around a hundred thousand words this year so far, only about 30k of that has been NESing.

There's an assumption here that I want 'to go to the next level'. I don't write because I consider it some sort of climbing game, and I don't write because I'm seeking a career. I write what I like, because I like to write, period. Despite your idea that fan fiction is such poor practice when I look at my writing over the years I can see marked improvements, so as practice it apparently isn't all that bad.

I'm happy you 'take the art seriously'. I suggest you will get further if you take yourself less so.

 

[Luckymoose]

There's an assumption here that I want 'to go to the next level'. I don't write because I consider it some sort of climbing game, and I don't write because I'm seeking a career. I write what I like, because I like to write, period. Despite your idea that fan fiction is such poor practice when I look at my writing over the years I can see marked improvements, so as practice it apparently isn't all that bad.

I'm happy you 'take the art seriously'. I suggest you will get further if you take yourself less so.

So you never want to improve at your hobby? Does a painter never wish to become a better painter? Why do you not take your hobby and interests seriously? No one said you have to chase a career. I do it because I love it. And because I love it, I want to become all that much better at it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So you never want to improve at your hobby? Does a painter never wish to become a better painter? Why do you not take your hobby and interests seriously? No one said you have to chase a career. I do it because I love it. And because I love it, I want to become all that much better at it.

'Better' is a pretty nebulous thing to become. Writing is an art, and art is always in the eye of the beholder. If a painter climbs into his attic and looks at the paintings he did ten years before that no one ever saw, then looks at the paintings he did last year and says 'those are better' and leaves them in the attic as well there is no saying his practice has done anything for him. Is a musician who sits in his room playing a guitar and striking every note perfectly 'better' than someone who plays passionately in front of a crowd and sometimes strikes one sour?

I measure my writing by one criteria...do I have readers who enjoy it? Some people think that means they need to be published because otherwise they won't have readers, but that isn't true. I'm not writing 'best sellers', but I do average about a hundred and fifty anonymous people reading my posted work every month. Some like it enough to say so, most just move on. I am satisfied.

I even got a check from google once for the clicks on ads on my website, so I can say I am a professional writer of fan fiction.

 

[Luckymoose]

I don't agree. Many professional authors have written professionally published works in someone else's universe. There have been 100s of Star Trek novels by dozens of authors going back to the 1970s. There are fewer Star Wars novels, but still a significant number of different authors. Including authors who had been commercially successful with their own works before writing Wars. Such as Timothy Zahn and RA Salvatore.

Robert Jordan, who you may know wrote a major fantasy series, one that lived on after Jordan himself died, many of his successful early published works were Conan the Barbarian novels. Robert E Howard started that series in the 1930s. Other authors who published in the series include Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner.

Valka has talked in the past how successful fantasy author Mercedes Lackey got some of her start writing fan fiction for Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. Lackey, as well as many other authors who have successful series, has anthologies of short stories published in the universe of those series. And most of those short stories are little more than fan fiction itself. Just fan fiction which has gained a commercial publisher. Eric Flint, the author of the popular fantasy series 1632, has had the universe he created there essentially taken over by fan fiction. I've been trying to get caught up on the series, but Flint himself says that to be really on top of what is going on you have to read all the published volumes of what is, in effect, fan fiction. At the same time, Flint changed the direction, somewhat, of David Weber's Honor Harrington series when he coauthored a couple of the books, and wrote some of the short stories for the anthologies on that series.

Years ago I read a series of books called Thieves' World. This was explicitly a project where the editors created a world for other authors to write short stories in. And often some of the authors would @$&(*^ with the characters created by other authors.

In short, shared universe stories are nothing new, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Shared universes don't have to be fanfiction, and usually at not. Star Wars or Star Trek are borderline, in my opinion, but editor created collaboration projects are nothing more than large scale co-authorships. Wild Cards from GRRM is an example of a collaborative project. It is not fanfiction, it is a serious effort created by a group of authors in their own setting. It is not using someone else's creation without permission or input, as fanfiction is. Fanfiction is pure fanservice, in a sense. GRRM runs Wild Cards and despises fanfiction for the very reason that people aren't creating their own stories. I agree with him. Collaboration is not fanfiction.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Collaboration is not fanfiction.

I don't think anyone said it was.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I find it hilarious that you are citing GRRM. There's a guy who has made it big writing fan fiction...as his own best fan. Take a setting and characters created thousands of pages before, dash them about in a number of plot lines, leaving most of those plot lines unfinished so you can publish another best seller next year where you may or may not conclude them...or even continue them. As a formula for making a fortune it's one of the best ever. As a platform to stand on denouncing fan fiction I find it ironic to say the least.

Please note, this in no way is a criticism of his work, which I do enjoy.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Shared world implies you work as co-authors. Not that you are using other peoples materials with no input. You have a very fanfiction view of it, when plenty of popular series are written as original content by more than one author. Off the top of my head I can point to Leviathan Wakes, written by co-authors. Is it not an original story because they collaborated on it?

I didn't breeze through them in a few days. I worked for a few hours a day for a month. Where do you get your facts from? I put in the work and hit my goal. Did you? Stephen King can write 2,000 words a day. Many authors write 2-3k words every day. It isn't hard to hit 50k in a month.

You kept harping on fanfic writers not being 100% original, and shared-universe authors are not being 100% original, even though they might be professionally published. What comes immediately to mind is the Merovingen Nights books. C.J. Cherryh created that world and the main settings, characters, conflicts, etc., and then invited other authors to create some more characters and write their stories using the overall background of the city of Merovingen. Some authors used other authors' characters to some extent, which resulted in the occasional mischaracterization and inconsistent speech patterns, but not enough to irretrievably spoil any of the stories.

So you never want to improve at your hobby? Does a painter never wish to become a better painter? Why do you not take your hobby and interests seriously? No one said you have to chase a career. I do it because I love it. And because I love it, I want to become all that much better at it.

Why do you think people don't take their hobbies seriously if they're content with where they are? My grandmother was a damn good artist, but for some reason decided to take lessons (she was self-taught). Her next painting was crap because she thought her way was somehow suddenly "wrong" - never mind the fact that she'd been creating wonderful paintings for decades. Thank goodness she went back to her own style; her last painting - of China Beach on Vancouver Island - was back up to her previous standard of excellence.

'Better' is a pretty nebulous thing to become. Writing is an art, and art is always in the eye of the beholder. If a painter climbs into his attic and looks at the paintings he did ten years before that no one ever saw, then looks at the paintings he did last year and says 'those are better' and leaves them in the attic as well there is no saying his practice has done anything for him. Is a musician who sits in his room playing a guitar and striking every note perfectly 'better' than someone who plays passionately in front of a crowd and sometimes strikes one sour?

I once had the experience of playing some old-time dance music on my organ, right after someone else had played the same piece. She was note-perfect, had impeccable timing... and the listeners were bored. There was no feeling to it, and I think a huge part of that was because this person learned to read notes and never learned anything by ear. I played the same song, and people got up and danced - which is the greatest compliment they could ever have paid me. I wasn't note-perfect - sometimes I made a slight slip and sometimes improvised. A Western Board examiner would have looked down her nose at it, but a person can't be in "exam mode" all the time. If art, whether music, writing, painting, etc., isn't fun, what's the point?

I measure my writing by one criteria...do I have readers who enjoy it? Some people think that means they need to be published because otherwise they won't have readers, but that isn't true. I'm not writing 'best sellers', but I do average about a hundred and fifty anonymous people reading my posted work every month. Some like it enough to say so, most just move on. I am satisfied.

Where are your stories posted?

I even got a check from google once for the clicks on ads on my website, so I can say I am a professional writer of fan fiction.

Gotta disagree here. Google paid you for ad clicks, not the actual content of your site. And if you start saying you're paid to write fanfic and the creator of whatever universe(s) hears of it, he/she would have every right to call in a lawyer and hit you with a take-down notice. The one thing they do not forgive is someone profiting from their copyrighted work.

Shared universes don't have to be fanfiction, and usually at not. Star Wars or Star Trek are borderline, in my opinion, but editor created collaboration projects are nothing more than large scale co-authorships. Wild Cards from GRRM is an example of a collaborative project. It is not fanfiction, it is a serious effort created by a group of authors in their own setting. It is not using someone else's creation without permission or input, as fanfiction is. Fanfiction is pure fanservice, in a sense. GRRM runs Wild Cards and despises fanfiction for the very reason that people aren't creating their own stories. I agree with him. Collaboration is not fanfiction.

I dare you to go to TrekBBS and say the bolded part. There are a fair number of professional writers who post regularly on that site, and they would skewer you without mercy for dismissing their work as borderline fanfiction.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Where are your stories posted?


Gotta disagree here. Google paid you for ad clicks, not the actual content of your site. And if you start saying you're paid to write fanfic and the creator of whatever universe(s) hears of it, he/she would have every right to call in a lawyer and hit you with a take-down notice. The one thing they do not forgive is someone profiting from their copyrighted work.

Follow link in sig.

And no worries, the 'professional' thing is just a joke. I know it and I'm sure Bethesda Softworks knows it. Each ad click is some fraction of a cent, and you don't get paid until (unless) you accumulate a hundred dollars. Back in the heyday of Arvil Bren's Journal it got about three hundred hits per day, and I reached the hundred dollar mark exactly once. I actually kept the check intending to frame it and now have no idea where it is.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Fanfiction is no more original than Rosencrantz and Guildinstern (too lazy to spell it correctly), King Lear, the Aeneid, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or a whole lot of other well-regarded literature. Taking in previously created works and re-crafting the characters, plots, and more to suit one's tastes is an old, old concept. Heck, if I remember correctly, the second half of Don Quixote was written when Cervantes found out about some other guy's Don Quixote fanfiction and got so pissed off at it he decided to write the "real" ending or something, so getting pissed off by fanfiction isn't a new concept either.

 

[Serutan]

I just found my notes for an old story I intended to do for NaNoWriMo... a crossover between Star Trek: Voyager and Trading Spaces (a reality show about home decorating).

Combine the Voyager crew marooned in a 20th-century TV show, a bunch of wacky interior designers stuck on a 24th-century starship, and Q sitting back to watch the ensuing chaos, this is one story I plan to have fun with!

That sounds suspiciously like the ST short story from the 70s where the TOS
actors got blipped into the real Enterprise (IIRC the title was 'Visit to a Weird
Planet Revisited'). I might add I rather liked that one, although I agree with the
assertion that in the general case fan fiction strictly
follows Sturgeon's Law.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I just found my notes for an old story I intended to do for NaNoWriMo... a crossover between Star Trek: Voyager and Trading Spaces (a reality show about home decorating).

Combine the Voyager crew marooned in a 20th-century TV show, a bunch of wacky interior designers stuck on a 24th-century starship, and Q sitting back to watch the ensuing chaos, this is one story I plan to have fun with!

That sounds suspiciously like the ST short story from the 70s where the TOS actors got blipped into the real Enterprise (IIRC the title was 'Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited'). I might add I rather liked that one, although I agree with the assertion that in the general case fan fiction strictly follows Sturgeon's Law.

You're referring to the story where Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley traded places with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

My story involves Q thinking Voyager could use some interior decorating changes, so he kidnaps the cast of Trading Spaces (an old TLC show) to do the honors, and zaps the Voyager crew back to the 20th century to do makeovers on the designers' homes, without benefit of replicators. It's not meant to be in the least bit serious, and I've been having fun deciding on what wacky changes will be made to the Bridge and Janeway's Ready Room.

 

[Luckymoose]

You kept harping on fanfic writers not being 100% original, and shared-universe authors are not being 100% original, even though they might be professionally published. What comes immediately to mind is the Merovingen Nights books. C.J. Cherryh created that world and the main settings, characters, conflicts, etc., and then invited other authors to create some more characters and write their stories using the overall background of the city of Merovingen. Some authors used other authors' characters to some extent, which resulted in the occasional mischaracterization and inconsistent speech patterns, but not enough to irretrievably spoil any of the stories.

Why do you think people don't take their hobbies seriously if they're content with where they are? My grandmother was a damn good artist, but for some reason decided to take lessons (she was self-taught). Her next painting was crap because she thought her way was somehow suddenly "wrong" - never mind the fact that she'd been creating wonderful paintings for decades. Thank goodness she went back to her own style; her last painting - of China Beach on Vancouver Island - was back up to her previous standard of excellence.

I dare you to go to TrekBBS and say the bolded part. There are a fair number of professional writers who post regularly on that site, and they would skewer you without mercy for dismissing their work as borderline fanfiction.

1. Collaborative fiction is not fanfiction. You know why? Collaborative fiction shares creative control between creators. Fanfiction is nothing but the work of unassociated fans writing material that is, under law, derivative. Fanfiction isn't as simple as taking similar themes or tropes and using them in your own work, it is literally taking someone else's creation and using it in your own ways.

2. I never said you need to take courses to improve. In fact, I don't believe a classroom can teach you how to write at all. It can show you how not to write. It can teach you methods to improve your plotting, outlining, perspective, etc. But it cannot teach you how to weave a story, to express emotion on the page. That can only be learned through writing a lot and reading wide. You also need social interaction and experience. The case of your grandmother is a disaster. They should have taught her how to properly mix paints for more colors or ways to improve shading, but not the basics on HOW to paint. She already knew how to paint, but she did not know many of the things an educated painter could help her on. I am currently preparing to apply to creative writing graduate programs, though I may simply do a doctorate in history instead, not for the classroom experience, but to be surrounded by other educated and skilled writers. That is what is important. That is what helps artists improve. Put yourself with skilled peers and share your work with them, ask for critique. You can never improve if you only show your work to people of lesser ability than you, or with similar views on storytelling.

3. Sure, link me to this BBS. I would love to tell them. Also, what makes someone a professional author? I've been paid for writing, does that make me professional?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

3. Sure, link me to this BBS. I would love to tell them. Also, what makes someone a professional author? I've been paid for writing, does that make me professional?

While you might be eager to go to some other forum and be offensive I think you are doing well enough here.

I've been 'paid for writing'...as a sports journalist (and yes I believe that is the very barrel scraping bottom of journalism...and I covered minor league hockey so I was pretty much the bottom of the bottom). I've also been 'paid for writing'...promotional flyers and other forms of ad copy, which certainly qualifies me as a professional marketer but probably not as a professional author.

Let's get to brass tacks. Other than the NES forum (which strikes me more as a forum game than a writing exercise, no offense to forum games or people who play them) where can we see some demonstration of your work that can justify your attitude of superiority?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Sure, link me to this BBS. I would love to tell them. Also, what makes someone a professional author? I've been paid for writing, does that make me professional?

http://www.trekbbs.com/index.php

You'll need to register in order to post. The relevant forum for this purpose would be what we call the "TrekLit" forum, where people discuss the novels, anthologies, and argue canon and continuity. There's a separate forum for fanfic, and a strict rule against posting story ideas in the TrekLit forum.

Were you paid for writing a book, story, poem, article, or other nonfiction? Or was it just a minor part of a different job?