Jim Hines speaks about Fanfiction

[sartorias]

Over here at his LiveJournal.

The take-away is that writers write.

(Curiously enough I recently read a YA novel that converses with fan fiction, by Rainbow Rowell, called Fangirl.)

Comments

[kalimac]

Sure, fan fiction can be good, bad, or indifferent, just like any other fiction. That a vast amount of it is perceived to be bad is due mostly to the low entry barriers. If an unknown writer posts a story about her original characters, perhaps nobody except her friends will be likely to read it. But if it's about Holmes or Star Trek or Harry Potter characters, then maybe a great number of people will read it, because that gives a starting point. (That's one way in which Jim is wrong: fan fiction can be easier to write. You have a ready-made set of characters and a milieu.)

My own objections to fan fiction have been grotesquely misread, but let's see if I can put them here with more success:

1) Publishing (not writing: publishing - and putting it on the open web is publishing) fan fiction based on the work of living authors who have expressed their disapproval of fan fiction of their own works, though perhaps not illegal, is stunningly rude and impolite towards the author whose work you love

[sartorias]

I enjoyed some Tolkien fan fiction back in the late sixties, when I was desperate for the experience to be renewed, and when I was a teenager, so my critical skills were even sparser than they are now. But I haven't read much since because yes, they don't have the Tolkien spark--I feel the same way about the published Jane Austen stuff. (None of which floats my boat, though I try them occasionally.) Actually, I've read much better Austen fan fiction than the published stuff

[lenora_rose]

It seems, as you say, decidedly more polite to leave an author's work alone if they publicly object. And there are certainly no words for being anything less than polite or kind to the creator of a work you care for enough to wish to riff on when they object to that particular form of appreciation. (There are plenty of reasons one could be rude to the creator of a work you admired, but they don't have ANYTHING to do with their policy on derivative works

[kalimac]

That's a very good point. What it really amounts to is that it's hard to do this well, and that's certainly true.

[serialbabbler]

Hmmm... I wonder if trying to create fiction that imitates, but also extends, the original uses some of the same skills as trying to create an original artwork in the style of somebody famous. ("Original forgery" is such a nice oxymoron. I like that much better than "fake painting". Heh heh.)

In which case, yeah, that requires a heck of a lot of talent. I certainly couldn't do it.

[lenora_rose]

The web blog Makign Light has often had threads full of games of people writing scenes from one story in the style of another ("Lord of the Rings in the style of pick-you-own-writer" or "Marlowe in the Style of Marlowe" (where one was Kit and the other Philip). I looked on in awe, especially with the poetry ones. But I could never feel right joining in. Pastiche, at least conscious pastiche, is not my thing.

I've been known to say I write original fiction because it's easier (for me).