Author Topic: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?  (Read 13450 times)

Offline trboturtle

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #30 on: June 28, 2012, 06:29:49 PM »
There are several things to remember:

1) Most fanfiction is written for enjoyment of the writer and a few others and will never reach the quality of "professional" writing.

2) There is a lot of crap disguised as fanfiction out there and sometimes you want to scream in frustration as the writer has no idea about what they're doing.

3) If you see that an anime fanfiction is rated as a lemon, that means it has SSC and is NSFW.

4) There is WAY too much Dragonball (37,145), Inuyasha (103,915), and Naruto (304,210) fanfiction stories out there (Numbers from Fanfiction.net)  ;D

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Offline the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #31 on: June 28, 2012, 06:31:27 PM »
I disagree that fans do not "get it" well enough to write a fanfic if its too complex.

I don't necessarily mean if it's too complex, at all.  (Though don't start me on Homestuck fandom.) I mean more, there's a lot of fanfic out there that takes any number of interesting relationships at very precise levels of emotional weight and realisms and turns them into.. banging the Barbie dolls together. (Rather a lot of Aubrey/Maturin fanfic tends to be a particularly vile quagmire in this direction, frex.)

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And I have yet to find many stories that completely satisfied me

I've found quite a number that have, myself, which is pleasing. And the ones that don't... I am usually motivated to move on from, or sometimes to write something that is to some degree a response (at the level that The Forever War is a response to Starship Troopers), but actually trying to "fix" or expand one someone else's universe doesn't do it for me.  At the end of the day, it's not my baby, and the brood of stories I have of my own are quite demanding enough.

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Good writers are not immune to making bad choices, usually messing up a good thing when their egos begin to inflate and they believe everything they write is golden.

I think you may be using a different definition of "good writer" from me, here.

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Fanfic, to me, is quite the compliment to a writer, that the author's story is so well thought of that people want more.  It doesn't mean the fanfic writer didn't like the story and wrote his own story to subvert the original.  Quite the opposite in most cases.

I would see subverting as kind of more respectful, actually. At least it's indicating that you've given the source material some critical thought, rather than just wanting to turn out more of the same.

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I have run into a few people who don't read fanfic because they don't want to get "confused" over what's canon and what is not...which seems rather bizaare to me, as these people are very well-versed in the stories, and I would think they are highly aware of what actually took place in the original work.  It's their perogative, but a rather flimsy excuse.

One of the fundamental things here seems to me that, certainly IME writing and in the experience of pretty much everyone I know who writes, there's a great deal more detail about the world in a writer's mind and notes, however they manage that, than shows up in the actual novels.  (We have plenty of WoJs alluding to things which have not made it into the DF novels or stories, for example.)  And no matter how well a fan knows a published text, they can only extrapolate from the above-water portion of the iceberg.

(That latter para in the context of fanficcing works of individual authors; again, shared universes like Star Trek feel to me to be in a different space.  I'm not drawn to Star Trek fanfic because I find that universe morally unpleasant and kind of dull - and as literary responses go, thinking about the Prime Directive as a piece of morality one finds unpleasant is an acknowledged major influence on Iain Banks' Culture novels, which i am far happier to have in the world than a comparable volume of additional Trek fanfic.)
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #32 on: June 28, 2012, 07:45:11 PM »
I don't necessarily mean if it's too complex, at all.  (Though don't start me on Homestuck fandom.) I mean more, there's a lot of fanfic out there that takes any number of interesting relationships at very precise levels of emotional weight and realisms and turns them into.. banging the Barbie dolls together. (Rather a lot of Aubrey/Maturin fanfic tends to be a particularly vile quagmire in this direction, frex.)
This made me think of something almost on topic that I want to share anyway.  For those of you who dont watch much Anime, there is a deaded phenomenon called the Filler Arc, that we all despise.  Let me explain:  the majority of anime's out there began as Manga's, which is a fancy way to say weekly serial comic book.  This is generally the testing ground, and the popular ones are taken and animated.  But in some cases the manga continues on a weekly basis, same as the anime.  And since neither miss more that a handful of weeks each year (no half year seasons over there), and the anime can usually cover much more material in a 1/2 hour episode than the manga would each week, the Anime will eventually catch up to the Manga.  When this happens they will either branch completely, or the anime will enter the dread realm of the Filler Arc.  This is where a secondary team are given the task to fill the screen with something their audience might find somewhat entertaining, while everyone waits it out for the Manga, and the original Creator of the whole thing) to gain some distance over the anime.  What this means is a few weeks, months, or even years (damn you naruto) where there is basically an imposter puppetting the characters (like barbie dolls), but completely ignoring the ongoing character developments, and being unable to do anything that will have a lasting impact since they cannot disagree with what the mange will have done, once they get back to the real story lines.  It makes a mess of the timelines, and defaults all the characters back to the same interactions and development they had at the very beginning. 

Yarg, I say!

ok, what were we talking about?

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One of the fundamental things here seems to me that, certainly IME writing and in the experience of pretty much everyone I know who writes, there's a great deal more detail about the world in a writer's mind and notes, however they manage that, than shows up in the actual novels.  (We have plenty of WoJs alluding to things which have not made it into the DF novels or stories, for example.)  And no matter how well a fan knows a published text, they can only extrapolate from the above-water portion of the iceberg.

(That latter para in the context of fanficcing works of individual authors; again, shared universes like Star Trek feel to me to be in a different space.  I'm not drawn to Star Trek fanfic because I find that universe morally unpleasant and kind of dull - and as literary responses go, thinking about the Prime Directive as a piece of morality one finds unpleasant is an acknowledged major influence on Iain Banks' Culture novels, which i am far happier to have in the world than a comparable volume of additional Trek fanfic.)
This is why I love it when a world releases a tabletop RPG, because it it gives the author a chance to release as much of that extra material as possible (barring spoilery stuff) in a way that they dont always have time or opportunity in the main works.  Thats assuming the author works closely with the RPG dev team and confidently call it cannon.  Star Wars did this, DF has.  Ive seen some others with RPG rulebooks like WOT, but that was a generic writup on top of a basic d20 system, it really didnt give you anything that wasnt already fully explained in the books.  And then there are things like Forgotten Realms novels where you can almost hear the dice rolling when the do certain things, and they would go to great lengths to explain away changes that were made for game balance.

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Offline The Deposed King

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #33 on: June 29, 2012, 07:08:10 PM »
I guess there's nothing wrong with Fanfiction, so long as its legal, as mentioned before etc.

Personally if I wasn't writing independent works, I would write fanfic with the intent to get into a continuing world, as those mentioned, Forgotton Realms, Warhammer, etc.  If not I would probably not write it.

I'd rather write my own stuff and tend to have a slightly negative feeling about mucking around in another author's world without express permission.   But that's mostly just me.  Same as I don't like reading series books out of order or reading prequels.


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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #34 on: June 29, 2012, 07:15:24 PM »
it is what ever you are confitable with and want to write
(oviusly as long as it is legal )
i have read so very good fanfic in the made an art section
but have never written any my self
but would like to see if i could try one day

Offline trboturtle

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #35 on: July 02, 2012, 12:40:43 AM »
Battlecorps.com is always looking for writers -- Of course, you have to really know the Battletech universe and the fiction style they're looking for. But if you have both, and can write a good story, they're always looking for new writers (THat's how I got started... ;D)
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Offline FishStampede

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #36 on: September 06, 2012, 11:34:06 PM »
You're asking this on the forums of a guy who put an elaborately disguised Pokemon vs. Zerg fanfic on the best seller list? People always bring up 50 shades, why not Codex Alera? Going back further, any retelling of Arthurian mythos, or anyone who writes a new version of the Odyssey is essentially doing fanfic. Just because the ideas are not original doesn't mean it isn't "real writing."

I think the only problem is when people try to cleave too close to canon, particularly with ongoing series where as new information develops, they end up altering their vision to fit with the new material. That puts great constraints on your creativity and often causes logical knots as people try to change their work to reflect changes in another work.

I'm actually rewriting a fanfic of mine into an original work. What I'm doing is definitely "real writing," at least to me. At this point it still bears a lot of resemblance to the original piece, but it's rapidly evolving into something new. I'm no longer worrying about making it fit with canon because it's not the same. The fact that it was once a fanfic was just a good way to get started.

Offline Aminar

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #37 on: September 09, 2012, 05:37:17 PM »
You're asking this on the forums of a guy who put an elaborately disguised Pokemon vs. Zerg fanfic on the best seller list? People always bring up 50 shades, why not Codex Alera? Going back further, any retelling of Arthurian mythos, or anyone who writes a new version of the Odyssey is essentially doing fanfic. Just because the ideas are not original doesn't mean it isn't "real writing."

I think the only problem is when people try to cleave too close to canon, particularly with ongoing series where as new information develops, they end up altering their vision to fit with the new material. That puts great constraints on your creativity and often causes logical knots as people try to change their work to reflect changes in another work.

I'm actually rewriting a fanfic of mine into an original work. What I'm doing is definitely "real writing," at least to me. At this point it still bears a lot of resemblance to the original piece, but it's rapidly evolving into something new. I'm no longer worrying about making it fit with canon because it's not the same. The fact that it was once a fanfic was just a good way to get started.

People bash Fifty Shades for being primarily porn, what fanfic is really known for, and for being a bad example of how to BDSM(apparently)  Alera just has concepts borrowed from other places, something far more acceptable.  And I can't even really call Alera based on Pokemon.  We sse them act like Pokemon like twice.  It's more like X-men vs Zerg vs Furries.  But it has a good story and original enough worldbuilding.

Offline Dom

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #38 on: September 28, 2012, 07:12:01 PM »
So, the initial question...

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Fanfiction: is It Real Writing?

The answer is "yes".  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  Just look at other forms of media...is a photographer any less an artist, even if the model she is photographing is wearing clothes someone else designed?  Is a classical musician--who, after all, is just interpreting Mozart and Bach and all the rest and not actually producing new original works--not a musician?  Don't be silly.  Thus, fanfiction is "real" writing.  In fact, when you get to TV show script writing and comics writing, all you're doing is playing in someone else's worlds anyway.  The Avengers and the three Batman films recently were pretty popular as I hear it. ;)

It's just that, in this world with the laws we have surrounding transformative works, it's damn hard to make a living out of fanfic based on novels unless you happen to do fanfic of a work that's out of copyright, like the Wizard of Oz series (which inspired the novel Wicked, which inspired the musical Wicked), or you have the drive to get into a shared world.  (Although John Scalzi recently managed it, with Fuzzy Nation...he wrote the fanfic, then approached the original author's estate and got permission to publish it.  Lucky him!)  Since it's difficult to sell fanfic, and it's derivative, people like to think it's not real writing.  Also, fanfic has a low barrier to entry, money and skill-wise, so it gets a plebeian reputation, because a lot of newbies show just how little they absorbed in their school English classes, and the other half write a lot of porn, which is fun at first, but eventually gets tiring and often squicky.  So it gets a bad rep.

I write both original fiction and fanfic.  I started writing original fic when I was 10 or so, and continued that until my mid-twenties.  I did do fanfic in my head at that time, but generally didn't write it down.  Then in my mid twenties, I began doing a lot of Dragonriders of Pern fanfic  (see D. M. Domini on AO3 and fanfiction.net).

Writing original fiction taught me a lot about worldbuilding from "scratch", and character building from scratch.  When I began writing fanfic too, I was able to bring those qualities into fanfiction from the start.  However, one thing I was struggling with in original fiction is planning and long-term execution--the world and character building take up SO much brain time it's unbelievable, and it's very easy to get stuck on that.  With fanfic, you DON'T have to spend all that time world building.  You don't even have to describe the characters much--you rely on the reader having read the original series.  And this, for me, makes writing fanfic incredibly easier--AND also allowed me to, for once, focus my efforts on plot, and setting up scenarios.  I can't tell you how much this has helped me hone my skills in this area, and how much it's helped my original fiction...once I became less scared of outlining in my fanfic because I had brain cycles left to spare for it (I really, REALLY didn't want to box myself in, in my original fic!) it's let me progress on the original fiction.  So doing both has been win-win for me.  Also, with the fanfic, I've started to learn to deal with criticism, and how to measure the worth of a negative comment.  Some people are talking out their asses, but others have good points and give good input.  It's nice to learn how to deal with both.

There's good fanfic out there, there's bad fanfic out there.  I think fanfic is an awesome learning tool.  I don't think, if you want to be a writer, you should ONLY focus on fanfic because, again, the setup of fanfic is that you don't HAVE to world build, you don't HAVE to create characters from scratch and those are good skills to have too.  But I'd never say a fanfiction writer isn't a real writer, or that it's worthless, or that all fanfiction is drek.  It's not.  It's not that black and white.  It's just, as a reader getting into fanfic, you are exposed to the Slush Pile you generally are insulated against in the pro book world , so it's easy to say it's all crap.  I'm sure agents and publishers can tell stories of just how much bad original fiction THEY see and pass on all the time. :)
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Offline Cyclone Jack

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #39 on: October 25, 2012, 03:50:09 AM »
Of course it's 'real' writing. Every narrative is important, if only to the author.

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Offline the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #40 on: October 25, 2012, 02:25:47 PM »
Of course it's 'real' writing. Every narrative is important, if only to the author.
One word after another is how stories get made. Never let anyone tell you different.

I'm not sure being that solipsistic is a win condition; writing purely and utterly as works for you si all well and good if it's therapy, but if you want to connect to people and possibly even make a career of it, a degree of paying attention to the outside world is kind of essentialled as well.
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Offline meg_evonne

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #41 on: October 25, 2012, 02:47:49 PM »
Wow, a visit from Cyclone Jack. Welcome back. (Long walk about this time. :-) )

Yes, fanfic is writing. I don't wish to read any myself, but as CJ says, one word after another... It isn't a bad place to begin. In fact, it was my 2nd DF fanfic that I looked at and realized, "Wait. This isn't half bad." After further contemplation and being inspired by JBs writing blog, I decided to become a writer-writer. I joke that it would have been an easier life if JB had just used my ideas and let me get on with mine. Instead, it has been an incredible journey.

So yes, of course, it is writing. Have at it, but be challenged to move into your own worlds, be challenged to expand your horizons, and be challenged to learn, learn, learn.
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Offline Compass Rose

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #42 on: October 25, 2012, 04:35:41 PM »
Yep, fanfic is writing. It's just that most of the time you can't make a profit on it. For Avery long time the majority of fiction was more or less fanfic. Endless stories spun off from the Authurian mythos, the Sage of Roland, and the Christian Bible. And if you ate demanding that creating your own universe / world is part of the definition of 'real writing' then all historical and current world fix, especially centering on real people, sorta gets classified as fanfic! And we don't even have to postulate AU as many historical fiction books include events that really happened, not just 'possible recreations' as the babble calls it. Heh - 'Gone With The Wind,'  'Cleopatra,' etc classified as fan fix...lol!
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #43 on: October 25, 2012, 05:19:58 PM »
Not to mention anything that takes place in a shared universe, like Star Wars novels, Darkover, Forgotten Realms, anything comic book related, etc.  These are all essentially approved and published fanfics.
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Offline lynde4

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Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« Reply #44 on: December 31, 2012, 07:04:51 AM »
I started writing with AU fanfiction and found it wonderful for building writing skills. I used a well known fictional universe and played with the characters, adding plenty of my own. It gave me practice and confidence. And courage. Because about halfway through the series, I discovered I had no more use for a canon character. None. So I killed her. The reactions I got were all positive, possibly because I handled the surrounding characters in ways those characters would have reacted, maybe the community realized that I couldn't do anything more with that character. But writing AU fic, also gave me more mobility with the scenes and characters, which was important, because the fanfic idea started with a what if scenario. What if such and such had happened instead of. . .? It worked out nicely, in the end.