McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Fanfiction - Good or Evil?
Amber:
While I'm not a published author, the thought of someone playing in my world that I created... taking characters that I crafted... it makes my blood boil.
(I don't like it when bands cover music, either :p )
Jon Crenshaw:
Personally, with few exceptions, I hate fan-fic. (Some, I must admit, however, is very good--(V. Secret Diaries, for ex.)
Let me ammend that--I do not like fan fic. Comedic undertakings, however, are another story. (see V. Secret Diaries, above)
That being said, a useful tool in learning your own writing style would be to write similarly to another author, without stealing characters, settings, ideas, etc. (IE, write a story in the style of King, Butcher, Doyle, etc.)
But fanfic? yuck.
Jon Crenshaw:
--- Quote from: Amber on June 26, 2006, 05:01:54 PM ---
(I don't like it when bands cover music, either :p )
--- End quote ---
Ah, but there's a marked difference between a fanfic author and a band that plays covers:
The band pays licensing fees to have the right to play the music.
Amber:
--- Quote from: Jon Crenshaw on June 26, 2006, 08:05:51 PM ---
--- Quote from: Amber on June 26, 2006, 05:01:54 PM ---
(I don't like it when bands cover music, either :p )
--- End quote ---
Ah, but there's a marked difference between a fanfic author and a band that plays covers:
The band pays licensing fees to have the right to play the music.
--- End quote ---
That's a recorded cover distributed for profit... sort of the equivalent of Star Wars and other licensed fan-fic.
I'm talking about when you go to a concert, and someone says that they're gonna do a song from the 70s, only they've modernized it ;)
I guess my stance on fan-fic comes from this: All authors steal from other authors. It's the nature of the beast, in a way, to see something and go, ooo, I like that. I'm gonna make it better. You then take it, change it, give the characters different names, and set the idea in a different place. Why play in someone else's sandbox when you can build your own?
*shrugs* JMO.
FredG:
I've written some X-Men fanfic, usually places where I felt the "soap opera" nature missed a couple of scenes.
And, as a writer, it's a shortcut. I can write a character's name, and many of the character's traits are already established, just there. I don't need to spend any time SHOWING that Cyclops is a stiff control-freak; I don't need to TELL the reader that. I can just make him walk in to the scene when I need an authority figure to frown a lot. There can be more to it than that, but IMNSHO, a lot of fanfic writers use that crutch to help work out their own plotting, pacing, and other craft issues without having to work on characterization at the same time.
And there's a built in audience. It's terrifying to write something, and ask someone else to read it and hope that they like it. If you write a fanfic, you're guaranteed readers.
-FredG
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