I NEVER thought I'd see the day that Fan-Fiction would be promoted in School Library Journal! In the August 1st edition there is an article titled 'When Harry Met Bella: Fanfiction is all the Rage. But is it plagiarism? Or the perfect thing to encourage young writers?'
Here are some highlights:
... While fanfiction may seem new, it’s actually old.
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Read more... )
I'd argue, though, that fanfic goes even further back than that. Think about the ancient Greek poets/playwrights - Aeschylus, Homer and the like. They were for the most part retelling myths in new and creative ways. Those myths must have been told first by someone, and again by someone else. Actually at festivals you'd probably have the smae story told by different playrights year after year, and I can imagine last year's guy getting a whiff of some character he introduced being built upon or completely written out and how he thought that affected the story.
The big difference to my mind is that published writing means I know someone's stories without knowing that person. So I am playing with the creation of a complete stranger. And that makes the dynamic difference, and I don't think society has quite caught up with the fact that we now have a class of professional writers (as opposed to scribes). But the basic principle of fanfic seems to go back to the beginning of human history, at least IMO.
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While I see what you're saying about the ancient Greeks, I do think that's a little different because as you said it's a 're-telling' of the same myth. They aren't changing it to fill in a gap in the story or to expand on what might have happened afterward, etc. At least as far as I know... I really don't know a lot about the ancient Greek playwrights! :)
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