McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Fanfiction - Good or Evil?

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Dayna Barter:
Hi all, first time post, so hopefully I won't inadvertently break any forum laws or anything.


--- Quote from: ethyachk on June 27, 2006, 12:52:12 PM ---Fanfiction is something you should write, you should cherish, then keep to yourself that you ever wrote it and likely burn it, just to make sure. Sometimes having a platform to start from is a great spring board into writing. But never let fanfics see the light of day. Please. Won't somebody think of the children?

--- End quote ---

This is pretty much where I come down on it too, ethyachk.  I'm not a published author (yet, hopefully) either.  What writing a fanfic did for me was to reawaken a passion for writing that I had let fall by the wayside in the rush to make a living, etc.  Through writing that, I got the blood flowing to those writing muscles again, and I experienced the rush of not only starting a piece, but actually finishing it.  It was a wonderful experience.

That having been said, I agree that those things don't really need to see the light of day.  The fanfic served its purpose, and now it can rest on its laurels and gather dust and not go out in public to embarrass me or the poor author whose yard I played in.

Ghoulfish:
I don't mean to offend anyone but in my opinion the fan fic writer is just being lazy.

I would rather read a story filled with original ideas and charactors than a person copying an already amazing author. I also bet that some authors find it annoying when their ideas get screwed up in fan fic.

These are just my opinions I'm sure fan fic writers are nice people I would just rather read original material.

becroberts:
I can't speak for other fanfic authors but personally, I've found that writing fanfiction has been a real help in producing original pieces. The original stuff I started writing at sixteen was absolutely terrible, but when I hit the Internet and discovered online fandoms (mostly anime), writing fanfic helped tremendously. I've found what works for me in terms of plotting strategies, obtained plenty of practice at pacing dialogue etc. Now that I'm working on a couple of novels of my own, I write very little fanfic, but I'm happy to have had the experience.

Whether fanfic is worth writing or not depends very much on what you want to get out of it. If all you want to do is throw a few characters together in a bedroom scene that would make Anita Blake blush, then so be it. Some people like the characters/plot/setting of a story and want to make them work for them. In my case, it's often that I feel there's a scene missing somewhere in the original media, and I feel the urge to fill in the blanks. (Between chapters 5 and 6 of 'Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within' springs to mind.) I've written for some pretty obscure fandoms but there's usually at least a tiny audience out there, and I admit that yes, I do enjoy getting feedback from them. Who wouldn't? I don't feel ashamed of what I've written, and if I do it's usually for technical reasons rather than remorse for the content.

Wow, that was a long first post for me...

Qualapec:
I love fanfiction. I've written everything from Aliens, to Dukes of Hazzard, to a crossover between the two of them. I haven't written any Dresden Files fanfiction and I don't really intend to.

I'm not doing any harm. I'm not making money off of it. And I certainly don't mean to insult the origanal creators of said fiction.

It has helped massively with my writing in general. I haven't yet written anything with original characters but my storylines have the tendency to be original enough.

So yes, I wouldn't write the way I do without it.

~She-Wolf

TigerKat24:

--- Quote from: becroberts on July 21, 2006, 10:33:14 PM ---I can't speak for other fanfic authors but personally, I've found that writing fanfiction has been a real help in producing original pieces. The original stuff I started writing at sixteen was absolutely terrible, but when I hit the Internet and discovered online fandoms (mostly anime), writing fanfic helped tremendously. I've found what works for me in terms of plotting strategies, obtained plenty of practice at pacing dialogue etc. Now that I'm working on a couple of novels of my own, I write very little fanfic, but I'm happy to have had the experience.

--- End quote ---

Me too. Fanfiction let me learn about the pure craft of writing, like pacing, dialogue and the actual mechanics, without having to deal with worldbuilding and characterization and all that. Probably why all my critiques say my writing's great but the plot sucks. ^.^ But seriously, I think it's a great learning tool for a young writer. I wouldn't put it out in the big wide world, though, because you're not playing in your own house, and it's impolite to invite other people to mess around in someone else's.

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