Is FanFiction Any Less Legitimate Than The Source Material.

[Worgen]

Certainly there are people who agree with this view. But there is a market for this kind of writing

There's a "market" for it? As in people pay money for fan fiction? That surprises me.

I guess I see it like this: Real writers, as in writers who care about making the best possible writing they can don't write fan fiction. Fake writers, as in writers who want people to notice their writing abilities but don't want to put in the effort to do their best, write fan fiction.

Now, I'm not denigrating fan-fiction writers with this distinction. They're not bad people, they're just not devoting themselves to writing quality. Which... really is fine. The world is full of failed writers, people who think they're incredibly clever and have something to say to the world but can't find an angle to get the world to pay attention or can't put together something of enough quality to stand out. That's fine. I'm a failed writer. I have coworkers who are failed writers. I'm also a failed painter, a failed graphic artist, and a failed musician. We all have a creative impulse to one degree or another, but most of us do not have the time, dedication, or financial support to really dedicate ourselves to perfecting a craft. We don't need to be stifled just because we can't work professionally. Writing in the confines of another person's world gives us structure and direction enough to scratch the writing itch such as it bothers us. There's no shame in that. I never did fan-fiction myself, but I used to do a lot of genre fiction, stories set in MMORPG worlds posted on forums back when MMORPGs didn't have enough game to them to have stories of their own.

But we've got to acknowledge that putting words on a page is not enough to make you a writer, and fan-fiction is inherently inferior to independent writing. I do actually know two successful writers. Neither of them wasted much time writing fan-fiction. As for my own forays into genre-fiction, the big problem with what I did was that I never received meaningful criticism. Other people on the website either ignored it, or lauded me with vague claims ("You're great!") that never give insight into what I need to do better. Good artists of any stripe need to be self-critical, and I don't think fan-fiction encourages this. It's too much about building self-esteem and not enough about teaching the writer to make something they're proud of.

And in case people think I'm being too hard on fan-fiction, keep in mind that I'd still rate a lot of fan-fiction and genre fiction over the professionally-written non-fiction that I routinely see published on the Internet. Taking the time to learn a fictional world so intimately that you can imitate it's author takes way more work than ranting about personal opinions without support or insight, spamming Top-10 lists, writing "news" reports that are just re-statements of someone else's news reports, or any of the other lazy practices that dominate our world of hungry-for-daily-content websites.

A lot of fanfiction is crap, but a lot of everything is crap. But, there are some fanfictions out there that are amazingly good, that beat out most published work easily, in fact, some fanfiction writers get published.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-of-Cliffside-ebook/dp/B009PNTLLW/

This book was written by a fantastic fan fiction writer.

 

[Rariow]

To put it in video game terms, I see fanfiction in kind of the same light as a mod or a romhack. Sure, you've done your thing, and you've been creative, but I'm still hard-pressed to see it as your work. You're using the building blocks set up by another person to make something. Let's take the example of one of the most thriving fanfiction communities, that of Harry Potter. Say you read a piece of fanfiction centering on Harry's third year at Hogwarts, where the writer explores Harry feelings of gratitude towards the older Weasleys for treating him so well and being worried about him. This could be an extremely effective piece of writing, and kudos for that, but so much of the work has been done for you at this point that I'd feel hard pressed to be too impressed with it. Sure, Harry's feelings towards Mr and Mrs Weasley aren't explored too much in the books, but there's been a plethora of character backstory, setting details, and relationships set up that are vital to getting this to work.

When you're writing something long, say, a novel, the difficulty is in setting up all these things whilst keeping the plot moving forward and keeping the reader interested. You've also got to worry about how these things will affect future events, and set up callbacks and calls forward to keep everything relevant. If you're writing something short, like a short story, you've got to worry about picking and choosing what parts are relevant to the particular story you want to choose, and make sure you get maximum bang per word so you have time to actually get these tidbits to form a story.

With fanfiction, you don't have any of this stuff. The hard part of the writing process is removed, and you're left with just the easy bit, getting the people to do the things. You can get the people to do the things as well as you want, but you're still bypassing the stuff that makes original work actually impressive to me. The reasons why Harry would feel a way about the Weasleys treating him well are already laid out for you.


Don't get me wrong, fanfiction isn't something I condemn. It's a great way to get your feet wet if you're interested in writing, allowing you to play around with the "fun" part of the writing process before you actually have to do the work. There's fanfiction that I actually really like. I chose the example I did above for a reason, the Harry Potter community is home to some really great pieces of fanfiction that allows me to revisit this world I really like without reading the books for the millionth time. But at the same time the fact that it's great is not nearly as impressive to me as how good the books are, and I feel even a mediocre original work is more legitimate than a really phenomenal fanfiction.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Can I just say how nice it is to have a good conversation about this stuff without the thread devolving into angry ranting back and forth?

I totally don't respect your opinion and you're a massive poopyhead! So there!

All jokes aside, I agree. The term "OTP" gets a little too much good press, for instance. Hit Tumblr and you'll find SuperWhoLockers that are so adamant about fusing their fandoms of choice together that they reject anything and everything canonical in nature. I'm sorry, but your so-called One True Pairing that makes you feel all fuzzy inside is as likely to happen as I am of being struck by lightning while receiving the Nobel Prize from Elvis Presley's zombified hands.

There's "modding" an established setting, and then there's butchering it to make it say and do things it wouldn't realistically serve as a proper environment for. SuperWhoLockers who do what they do out of sheer entertainment aren't dangerous or even particularly offensive, but the main danger of anything fanfiction-esque in nature is of growing so invested in what you do that you become willing to crush the established canon to suit your views.

Take, for instance, Harry and Hermione not ending up together. The fans complained, even J.K. Rowling herself admitted that Potter and Granger were terrific couple material - but the damage had been done. I'm not sure anyone would have appreciated an author requesting a re-edition of a published work just to fix that one tiny diegetic detail. I've read some pretty strange things from people online, including comments from people who were so crushed that specific pairing didn't turn out as expected that they rejected Deathly Hallows outright.

That's just... a tiny bit excessive.

 

[Angelblaze]

Well, again this depends on your definition of legitimate.

I, as a fanfiction writer that wants to write their own original content, can tell you: it depends on the source + the attitude of the readers.

For characters like Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, etc, there is no real 'source' just different, varying interpretations.

For characters like the Team Fortress 2 main cast, there is a source of 'design' and even in-game character personality but the adventures, romances and plots can often be switched out with different characters/names and designs and you'd have a totally different story since TF2 (for me at least) isn't too big on the interconnected relationships of the characters with the exceptions of the 'official' shorts and small quips of in-game dialog.

For characters like Happy Potter and Iron Man, you've reached a different level. The characters there have their own story, personality and (fleshed-out) relationships. So you've reached a place where there's already an established 'canon' if you would, limiting what would be 'In character' for said characters.

I'd write more on the subject but, as a writer, I'm tired of having this argument and there's been too much drama as of late regarding multiple subject matter that I'm involved in.

 

[Vault101]

Yes that's certainly true. I write for myself although if I ever wanted to actually publish anything? God that would be a nightmare. I'm not any kind of consistent in how I crank things out so if it was a series I'd need to be close to final proofs for maybe three books in advanced and going without an editor even in this age would be unthinkable to me. Thoughts like that make me want say I'll outline everything and have someone unearth all the stuff long after I've died. Haha.

I mean if you can self publish to make some quick cash from erotica or crank out what ever "flavor of the month" is big right now then more power to you

but for me the very idea of going for trends rather than my "special snowflake" specialness (heh) is...unthinkable...and ultimatly why would I bother in the first place? I've seen time and time again writers say "write what you want becuase no one can predict where the market goes" which I think suits me just fine

I'm also pretty "eh" about self publishing...I'm not sure I'd want to go there if I ever finish a novel (I'm nowhere near that point) and I think it does present the "slushpile" problem which is why I avoid it as a reader

[quote/]And I suppose I don't want to discourage you from writing something if you've got a feel for it. Hell I don't know, you could be the next Frank Herbert, there's no way for me to know. I guess that only stemmed from my own frustration as a fantasy reader, trying to find something good when there's just so much physical and digital content to go through. And even websites like GoodReads don't even seem to be all that helpful. It doesn't tell you for example, what demographic is rating it in what way. So you'll get things like glowing reviews for something that really should only be read when you're in your teens. [/quote]
or something that shouldn't be read at all (tigers curse) the thing about goodreads is people will go for what they like and overate it....I still use it as a useful guide, but take it with a grain of salt

speaking of fantasy theres one floating around now called "Queen of the tearling" which is aparently good

 

[diligentscribbler]

No.

Fan fiction no matter how innocuous or heartfelt comes from the place "I can do this better than the author", that puts me off no matter how it's spun it.

This actually has already occurred in comic books.

No, just no.You mean Dc/Marvel, Comics and Dc/marvel are not one and the same and you'd do well to observe that.

 

[rorychief]

EDIT: And it looks like rorychief sniped me.

Is sniping someone lingo for a sneaky thing? Or is it when you quote someone and replace the quote with /snip/ ? so you've snipped/sniped them. I don't know what I did or if I'm a dick for it or not.

 

[rorychief]

1."our notion of genius, a romantic isolated figure, is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one?s mastery of information and its dissemination."
2."art is not about itself, but the attention we bring to it."
3."We are products of editing. Not Authorship"
4."Language and ideas flow freely between people Despite the law."
5."It's not plagiarism in the digital age, it's repurposing."
6."Copyright law has to give up on its obsession with "the copy""
7."(The law) should instead regulate uses, like public distributions of copyrighted work that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster."
8."Nothing is original, Creativity is just connecting things"

?Shia Laboeuf's views on authorship (specifically that its oppressive to him creatively) during a 2014 interview and in the midst of his baffling meta phase where he was living by his everything belongs to everyone convictions by speaking almost exclusively in unaccredited quotations.

Thought it was quite funny if not terribly strictly relevant, This fool's 'fanfic' was atypical in that it was a case of a powerful and very visible personality trying to turn a profit by plagiarizing the work of a relatively obscure and less successful artist. The power/visibility dynamic between most fanfic writers and the authors they take from usually can't be as abusive as this because most have little to no power to make the original artist suffer.


(Original quotes belong to 1. Kenneth Goldsmith, 2. Marcel Duchamp, 3.George Ward, 4. Gregory Betts, 5.Kenneth Goldsmith again, 6.Lawrence Lessig, 7. Lawrence Lessig again, 8. Steve Jobs. Himself a famed paragon for acknowledging others work as their own)

 

[FolloweroftheApoetic]

No.

Fan fiction no matter how innocuous or heartfelt comes from the place "I can do this better than the author", that puts me off no matter how it's spun it.

This actually has already occurred in comic books.

No, just no.You mean Dc/Marvel, Comics and Dc/marvel are not one and the same and you'd do well to observe that.

I think it happened in mythologies too. Bunch of different people adding too the same stories and similar stories as the years press on and the old authors die and the story still continues to morph and change and then Disney bought the rights to Greek mythology and George Lucas wrote the bible.... wait I'm off topic.

 

[Gatx]

There's two different trains of thought here with the term "legitimate," and I think well all know that, no, fan-fiction is not "legitimate" in the legal sense, but not one does it to turn a profit anyway (with the exception of Japan at least) but as far as literary legitimacy goes, it's completely subjective. People would argue that the source material doesn't have literary merit and we all know that to completely deny any kind of genre fiction any merit just because of it's status as genre fiction is foolish, so I think the same is true for fan fiction.

If we turn away from the idea of fans writing weird stories with self-insert characters, or writing about pairings and what not, and go to the elemental definition of fan fiction as fiction made by fans about established characters/set in an established universe, then you have plenty of examples of good fan fiction. Do you think that some of the writers and artists who work at DC and Marvel weren't fans of those characters when they were aspiring kids? The original creators of Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Speed Racer, etc. weren't the ones behind the creative reigns of the most modern iterations of those franchises.

Look at Neil Gaiman's short story A Study in Emerald, which is a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft crossover story written by neither Doyle nor Lovecraft, and say that that's not a darn good story.

 

[DementedSheep]

Legitimate as in?

I assume you don't mean canon since that's pretty clear. Its not canon unless the author or whoever owns the IP says it is. It can be your personally preferred version of events but it's not canon no matter how well it fits and you should not be able to make cash from it without permission.

A legitimate form of writing? I mostly see it as practice writing or for fun TBH. You're building on existing things. You skip over a lot like the the world building and don't necessarily have to come up with all your own characters, tone, style of story ect. Then again I suppose being able to work with character and a world that isn't yours but still managing to keep the feel of the characters and world the same and keep the character consistent (instead of having them do what you would *want* them to do) is a skill on it's own. I still don't know if I would consider it equal to building your own world and characters but it's fun seeing multiple authors play around with same set of character and world can be interesting and fan fiction isn't inherently lower quality to anything original.

 

[Bashfluff]

Derivative works will always take something from someone else. That doesn't mean that they are any less good or worth reading. In the best of cases, good fanfiction can elevate the source material to new heights. Fanfiction has no restriction or deadline. The people who write it can have a level of dedication that the original writers lack--though this is not always the case on either side. Do you have to do less work? That depends on the story. I've written things where I just whipped up a random character based on an archetype and used the real world as a setting.

There comes a point when you have to realize that just about all writing is derivative in some form or another, from its structure to its characters to its setting to its tropes. On top of that, some pieces of writing will require more work to write than others due to the setting. Do we look down on works of writing that take a little less effort because of that? No, of course not. Do we look down on writing for the use of tropes provided it's done well? Of course not. Just look at Star Wars.

What irks me is that people think that fanfic writers put no effort into the world and into the characters. In a story, characters have to change in one way or another. Are you going to tell me that characters are all so original, that worlds are all so unique that using the ones others have made is that huge a leap from what others do and requires no effort? No.

And the best fanfiction elevates a world. It makes it seem bigger. It makes the reader ask questions or brings up new facets about the world that the original works don't have the time to go into.

It seems, then, looking down your nose at fanfiction as a lesser form of art is hypocritical. Good writing is good writing. Do fanfiction writers take shortcuts? Yeah. So do writers of original works. Everyone builds on what came before them and upon established tropes, characters, settings, and themes. What makes a good piece of fanfiction is the same thing that makes a good piece of writing: how you use them!

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

A lot of online fan fiction is abysmal. The legitimacy would depend if the story in question uses the source material to explore interesting ideas within that same universe (a la the sequel progression from KoTOR to KoTOR II).

Sherlock Holmes underwent quite a few fan iterations when Doyle decided to axe the series, and I imagine some of them were alright.

Inherently though, no. Fanfiction has no legitimacy because the chaotic nature of whether or not it uses the canon in an interesting manner that more importantly results in a successful venture strips away any inherent value, as it could just as easily be a sycophantic Mary-Sue story about the main character being a stage for the author to project onto.

 

[sumanoskae]

No work of any sort should have it's legitimacy defined by it's source.

All fiction is fan fiction; the hero with a thousand faces has a thousand faces for a reason. The the first artistic muse for humanity was reality, and soon that gave birth to other muses in the form of art itself. But it all traces back to the same source.

Just as human nature has not fundamentally changed, the mirror we hold to it through art remains the same.

Star Wars is an original work, yet it borrows concepts and characters from countless sources. To exalt originality for originality's sake is to willfully ignore the derivative nature of art, and to ignore what makes a work of art powerful; do not forget that some of the most powerful stories ever written are based on real events; they are by definition unorignal. We must first interpret the outside world in order to reflect upon it.

Inspiration is derivative by definition.

We regard works of art with fondness when we can see ourselves within them. Sometimes we see that reflection from a different angle that changes our perception of it, but we are always seeing the same thing.

There is only one concept for a great story; a cast of characters behaving in accordance to human nature within a logically cohesive setting.

Do not chase originality. Originality simply describes an idea not yet experienced; this can promise only novelty. Instead seek truth, seek work that with grace and passion reflects upon the human condition. Seek stories that are told because they were too great, too terrible, or too beautiful to be contained, that were made because their makers were full to bursting, and could not contain their words, be they words never once before spoken or said a thousand times over.

A world where we can no longer marvel at the beauteous sunrise because we have been transfixed by it before would be a grim one indeed.

"In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same" - Legend of Galactic Heroes