The grinding of gears on the "How to Write Better Fan Fic" panel at Chi-TARDIS has an obvious source: the differences between professional writing and amateur writing
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The single hardest thing for a writer to do is drop-kick their ego out the window and take hard feedback. I don't mean rudeness - just the kind of penetrating observation that can have you throwing out the whole thing, starting over, and hopefully getting it right this time. (Lloyd Rose has just done this to me with Accelerated Dragon. Argh.) In the case of fanfic, hardcore critting may be worse than useless - for example, if someone's writing just for a laugh or as a form of socialisation, tossing in a feedback grenade (however courteous) would be wildly inappropriate. For a professional writer, though, nothing is more helpful.
Something which did come up on the panel is the marvellous freedom of fanfic - the writer has no limitations of form or content or budget. It's something I enjoy hugely when I have a chance to write fanfic, but it does come with a price: if you can get away with anything, then you can get away with anything, if you see what I mean - there's a danger, IMHO, of being like a kid who always gets any toy they ask for. A fanficcer who wants to improve their work has got to impose their own discipline and set their own challenges.
Something which did come up on the panel is the marvellous freedom of fanfic - the writer has no limitations of form or content or budget. It's something I enjoy hugely when I have a chance to write fanfic, but it does come with a price: if you can get away with anything, then you can get away with anything, if you see what I mean - there's a danger, IMHO, of being like a kid who always gets any toy they ask for. A fanficcer who wants to improve their work has got to impose their own discipline and set their own challenges.
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You've only got to see how much Big Finish's output has improved since they got a lot stricter on running time etc.
Limitations are good.
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