Hiatus of my LJ hiatus.

[halimede]

I've had an original thought. I think. Maybe?

On The Difference Between Fanfiction And Original FictionOriginal fiction requires exposition about who these people are and what they are doing here, not to mention where 'here' is, and why I, the Reader, should care. Hopefully this information will be woven into the story seamlessly, but even so, a

Comments

[ephemera]

arse - just lost the reasonably worded reply.

Um - for examples you could lok at my early attempts at fic_requests - partly it's me failing as a writer, and partly me not knowing what all the cross curents were, so not working with them, and partly a reader expectation thing. [the recent example is the Kevin / chris request linked on the most recent recap, which is a pure 'me being crap' problem]

I think that approaching an original story, readers are more likely to be expecting to do some of the work - looking out for clues about character and context. Approaching a fanfic story, you may wall expect to be reading something familiar and your expectations shape both what you notice and how you construct the inferences.

Sometimes having a set of shared [or mostly shared] assumptions to work with - known physical characters, common characterisations etc - can be a huge strength - pwp's that aren't anon.bodies.tm, and all those stories that play off those expectations and assumptions.

AU's are an interesting boundry area, where you've got both criteria in action, establishing 'new' characters and worlds with the familiar expectations right there as well.

[halimede]

When I've got more time to read around I'll take a look. I might go back and ask you *which* type of clues you find readers are less likely to pick up on in fan v. original fic. I'm curious because mostly I find fanfic to be far more terse and subtle than most original fic. I'm always surprised when I turn back to profic how in your face the explanations can be, without anybody apparently slapping the author for being too neon-sign in their description.

Show don't tell seems to have come to mean 'always imply everything obliquely, never just *say* it' in fanfic --which is a writing approach I like a lot, FWIW. But that's another thought. :)

[ephemera]

I don't know - maybe it's my expectation that it's less needed that means I notice the honking great slabs of explaination that sometimes get dumped into fanfic? Not to say that there's not some really *bad* por-fic and original fic out there ....