Fan fiction vs. original writing
I've been thinking about both sides of creative writing and wanted to spew out my thoughts and opinions in text form. Cuz LJ is soooo the place for illuminating discussions XD
Fan fiction can be both harder and easier than original writing, depending on how you approach it. On one hand, you've already got the characters, basic plots, and settings prepared for you. You don't need to agonize over naming characters and places and giving them personalities and deciding on how they look; that's all done for you. With original writing, all of that you have to come up with on your own. You can certainly be inspired by other people/characters/places/etc, but when you get into writing the actual story you need to come up with everything else going on. Fan ficiton gives you this already and lets you have fun with everything.
The tough part about fan fics is that if you get the personalities wrong, people will call you out on it. If you write Sesshoumaru (Inuyasha) as a lovey-dovey, flower-picking, poetry-writing, loud-mouthed comedian, readers (i.e. ME :P) will weep and beg you to give them their character back. If you write Usagi (Sailor Moon) as a deep, insightful, thoughtful, perfect, time-travelling warrior.....well, that'd be less annoying than her actual character, but prepare for flames regardless. Keeping everyone in-character is insanely hard if you don't study them religiously or attempt a novel-length fic without knowing the characters. This is why the fics that I've written that I post are very short and focus on only one or two aspects of a character/plot; I'm awful at keeping people in-character because I'm a perfectionist. This is why I've never even attempted a Labyrinth fic :(
Original writing gives you the freedom to play around with personalities and speech patterns and dialogue and such; you made them, so they'll do whatever you bloody well want them to ^_^
I know I had more to say on this, but I forgot most of it already just typing all that out XD; I'll edit this with anything else that I can think of.
Fan fiction can be both harder and easier than original writing, depending on how you approach it. On one hand, you've already got the characters, basic plots, and settings prepared for you. You don't need to agonize over naming characters and places and giving them personalities and deciding on how they look; that's all done for you. With original writing, all of that you have to come up with on your own. You can certainly be inspired by other people/characters/places/etc, but when you get into writing the actual story you need to come up with everything else going on. Fan ficiton gives you this already and lets you have fun with everything.
The tough part about fan fics is that if you get the personalities wrong, people will call you out on it. If you write Sesshoumaru (Inuyasha) as a lovey-dovey, flower-picking, poetry-writing, loud-mouthed comedian, readers (i.e. ME :P) will weep and beg you to give them their character back. If you write Usagi (Sailor Moon) as a deep, insightful, thoughtful, perfect, time-travelling warrior.....well, that'd be less annoying than her actual character, but prepare for flames regardless. Keeping everyone in-character is insanely hard if you don't study them religiously or attempt a novel-length fic without knowing the characters. This is why the fics that I've written that I post are very short and focus on only one or two aspects of a character/plot; I'm awful at keeping people in-character because I'm a perfectionist. This is why I've never even attempted a Labyrinth fic :(
Original writing gives you the freedom to play around with personalities and speech patterns and dialogue and such; you made them, so they'll do whatever you bloody well want them to ^_^
I know I had more to say on this, but I forgot most of it already just typing all that out XD; I'll edit this with anything else that I can think of.