Stay outta her sandbox!
Link To her own blog
Author Diana Gabaldon tells her fandom off, and closes the door to her sandbox.
Monday, May 3, 2010
FAN-FICTION AND MORAL CONUNDRUMS
OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.
Now, if I understand the arguments presented in favor of it, they run like this:
1) But I/we aren’t trying to make any money out of it!
Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. And you can’t use someone’s copyrighted characters for your own purposes, no matter what those purposes are. Really. I’m not making it up; this is International Copyright Law.
2) I want to write, but I don’t know how to make up characters, and it seems less scary to use some that already exist, and just make up stories for them. You know…it’s practice!
I have a lot of sympathy for people who want to write. I used to want to write, and I had no idea how to develop characters. Oddly enough, the notion of using someone else’s characters never occurred to me. I just tried to do it on my own. Surprise! It worked.
Suck it up, guys. If you want to write, write-and write your own stuff. It _does_ take courage, but that’s the only way to learn how, believe me.
(Now, if you truly think you can’t write something without using someone else’s characters as a crutch…well, OK. But if that’s really your motive, then you should keep the results to yourself. Not post them on websites as “your” work.)
3) But I enjoy the feedback I get-and lots of people say they enjoy what I write!
Of course you enjoy positive feedback; so does anyone who writes anything. The question is-are you getting positive feedback because you’re a really good writer…or are you getting positive feedback because some fans are so hooked on the characters that they’ll read anything involving those names (whether the writing accurately reflects those characters or not)?
One real easy way to find out. Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned.
4) But nobody would read stuff I wrote if it wasn’t about characters they already like!
Possibly true, possibly not. Depends on how good a writer you are, and how you go about displaying your work once you’ve written it. But-allowing for the moment that this argument holds water-what you’re saying is that a) you deserve an audience, no matter what, and b) you’d prefer to exploit someone else’s talent and hard work, rather than go to the trouble of making your own way.
Now, it’s possible to do this without being illegal, if you feel you just can’t get noticed on your own merits (and that being noticed is worth whatever it takes): you just do it with characters that are no longer under copyright. I.e., characters whose author is dead, and has been dead for…it was 75 years, last time I looked (copyright exists for the author’s life plus 75 years). So if the author of your characters died before 1935, you’re home free!
And some writers do this to good-or at least profitable-effect. Note PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, for instance, or the many (many, many, many) imitators of Sherlock Holmes.
Some of these writers are great, and they produce really good stories. Some of them….oh, well. SCARLETT, anyone?
I actually have some empathy in this regard, because I once wrote comic scripts for Walt Disney-using, of course, the Disney characters. I wrote for Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse, and the others. I know what it is to use an existing character that you didn’t create, but use them creatively within the parameters already laid down for them. It’s fun. [g]
The difference is-it’s not illegal, and you aren’t abusing or offending the original author. Carl Barks (may his name be engraved in gold) created Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the nephews; Walt Disney created Mickey-I didn’t. BUT the Walt Disney Corporation owned the copyright to those characters (still does, for that matter), and therefore had a perfect right to hire me to write stories for them-and I had a perfect right to write those stories _and_ make money from them (seventeen dollars a page was the going rate back then).
Likewise, if you want to write stories for the Silver Surfer or Superman, go talk to Marvel or DC, and see if they’re taking new submissions or would let you write a sample script. People write new TV scripts for Dr. Who and the Start Trek variants all the time-they have to. If you want to rewrite JANE EYRE as explicit Victorian erotica (and I read a very imaginative book of pornography that did _just_ that: AN ENGLISH EDUCATION, it was called)-more power to you.
But writing stories about characters whose creators are not only alive and kicking, but actively writing about those characters _themselves_...sorry, guys, it’s just not on.
5) I like the social aspects of being in a group of fan-fic readers and writers.
Well, again-who _doesn’t_ like being in a group of people with common tastes, interests, and ambitions? But so far as I know, almost all popular authors have groups of online readers who like to discuss their books, characters, etc.-and I don’t know any author who doesn’t value and encourage such groups.
If you want to talk about Jamie, Claire, etc., I can direct you to a number of long-established, long-running, _very_ friendly Outlander discussion groups who will be thrilled to welcome you…in multiple languages. [g]
Likewise, there are a lot of writers groups, all over the web. I only know one, personally, to recommend, but that’s because I don’t personally belong to any-the one I know is the Writers Workshop, in the Compuserve Books and Writers community. [http://go.community.compuserve/Books] I’ve not been a member of this workshop myself, but it’s been running for many years and I _do_ know a lot of the people who run and participate in it, and have heard nothing but good stuff about it.
6) But I just looove your characters! And isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
Weeeelll…let us just say that there’s a difference between someone dating red-haired men, and the same someone trying to seduce my husband.
7) But you write so slowly! We get impatient for new stuff!
Guilty as charged. [g] BUT….
A) If I whipped books out once a year, they wouldn’t be the _same_ books. It takes time, effort, and thought to tell stories and develop characters the way I do. (This is, btw, one reason why fan-fic versions of popular characters so often seem superficial; they lack the depth that the Real Thing has-the writer has merely grabbed at the broadest impression of the character, not built them in complex layers.)
B) Still, I understand the urge to take a story that’s fired your imagination and carry it on or explore other avenues that it might have taken. ¬_Everybody_ does this, when they’ve seen a movie or read a book that captured their imagination-I mean, who _didn’t_ take a moment to contemplate what it would have been like if Elizabeth Swann had kissed Jack Sparrow instead of staying with Orlando Bloom? Giving people intriguing possibilities is one of the hallmarks of good fiction. But what you do in the privacy of your own imagination is a matter of total freedom; what you do in public is not.
C) Besides, that’s one of the reasons (aside from just liking to spread the word about great books that I personally like) I keep The Methadone List. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have anything else to read, while you wait. [g]
OK, those are-I think-the principal arguments usually put forward in favor of fan-fic. Beyond the specific arguments against the concept remains the unfortunate fact that a terrible lot of fan-fic is outright cringe-worthy and ought to be suppressed on purely aesthetic grounds.
Now, I don’t go looking for fan-fiction written about my characters; in fact, I try _not¬_ to see it. But now and then someone sends me a link to a site displaying it, and because of the danger of precedent and implied consent (see below), I (or my agent) has to go ask the site-owner to kindly remove pieces dealing with my characters. So I’ve seen a certain amount.
Some of it’s just lame: poorly written pages of adjectival description, or a rambling attempt at historical fiction using people who just happen to be called Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall, but otherwise bear no particular resemblance to my people-or a try at taking an existing situation from one of my novels and either re-writing it or expanding on it. This is usually the result of well-meaning people who really _are_ learning to write, and using my characters as exercise. It’s still not legal, and I don’t like it, but it isn’t nearly as skin-crawling as the ones who equate fan-fic with personal porn.
About that “privacy of your own imagination” thing….[cough] While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion.
As I say, I’ve unwillingly read a certain amount of fan-fic involving my characters, and about three-quarters of it is graphic, badly-written (of the “his searing touch blazed its way up the silken skin of her thigh to the secret depths of her ecstasy” type) masturbatory fantasy. I mean….ick.
Now, look. Human beings are hardwired to be interested in sex. We just _are_. Any kind of sex, performed by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Bad sex, good sex, poorly depicted sex, elegantly drawn sex…it doesn’t matter. We have a genetic compulsion to _look_. We’ll look at _anything_ having sex, human or not.
Ergo, including sex is by far the easiest way to get someone to look at something. I assume that that’s one of the reasons fan-fic authors so frequently write sex scenes or slash stories. (The other reasons are their own business, and I’m not going there.)
But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.
I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family-why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?
Right. Moving right along here, let’s close with a footnote regarding the legal considerations. If I learn about fan-fic and _don’t_ make any protest, I might at some point lose all control of what’s done with and to my characters. Practitioners could point to the fact that I knew about this stuff and didn’t object over a long period of time, ergo, I must think it’s OK, and so they’re doing nothing wrong, having my implied consent. That’s a specious legal argument, but I’ve seen it made-and the last thing I ever want to do is have to defend my right to my own characters in court. I'd do it, but I sure wouldn't like it.
I mentioned moral conundrums above. Here’s one for you:
Recently, a couple of people have drawn my attention to a person who’s been posting on various boards about fund-raising for an uninsured friend named Stacie who has breast cancer. Her (the poster’s) idea for fund-raising is to auction off a custom-written piece of fan-fic, involving Jamie Fraser and Emmett someone (who I _think_ is from Twilight; I sort of hope it’s not the willowy young “bottom” from the TV show “Queer as Folk”…). She hastens to note that it won’t be slash, but will otherwise take the bidder’s tastes into account-and of course, all proceeds will go to Stacie’s hospital expense fund.
She did not, naturally, ask ¬_me_ about this. What would I have to say about it?
Well, the question here, of course, is-what _do_ I say about it? Do I write to this person and tell her to cease and desist, and too bad about Stacie, thus seeming heartless? Do I give this manipulative project my blessing, thus opening the door to an endless parade of piously disguised fan-fic “charity”? Make it clear that I disapprove of what she’s doing, but stop short of forbidding her to do it, and turn a blind eye if she does?
I’m not exactly asking for a vote here [g], because it’s my concern, and I’ll do what I think is right in the circumstances-but I’d be interested to know what y’all think.
my response:
Now - if you don't want people playing in your sandbox - than okay. I can respect that. They are your characters and your story, so if you ask me to stay out. Okay. But realize that when you do this - i'm not only going to stop playing in your sandbox, but i'm going to stop watching you play in it too.
Because that's what your doing.
You're parading around this awesome thing you have. And yes, it's yours, you are allow to. Your parading t around, and showing it off, and you have all the neighbor hood kiddies running to see it, and be in awe of you and your shiny toy.
but day after day, after you have finished. you take your toy, and you love it away. We can look at, but we can't play. It's okay - it's your toy. you're allowed.
But eventually. we're gonna get tired of watching you play, and we're gonna move on - because it stop being fun after a while. It becomes the same-old, same-old and why should we keep coming back - you're not letting us get involved.
we have no investment in you or your stories. and when we try - you scorn us, and ridicule us, and in all that, you never once GET IT.
as for your other posts... I have to go to work.
If I have some time when I get back - I might try and tough up on them. Otherwise, i'm gonna go back to play in the sandboxes of creators who do like me, and are nice about sharing, and actually seem to want me around.
Author Diana Gabaldon tells her fandom off, and closes the door to her sandbox.
Monday, May 3, 2010
FAN-FICTION AND MORAL CONUNDRUMS
OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.
Now, if I understand the arguments presented in favor of it, they run like this:
1) But I/we aren’t trying to make any money out of it!
Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. And you can’t use someone’s copyrighted characters for your own purposes, no matter what those purposes are. Really. I’m not making it up; this is International Copyright Law.
2) I want to write, but I don’t know how to make up characters, and it seems less scary to use some that already exist, and just make up stories for them. You know…it’s practice!
I have a lot of sympathy for people who want to write. I used to want to write, and I had no idea how to develop characters. Oddly enough, the notion of using someone else’s characters never occurred to me. I just tried to do it on my own. Surprise! It worked.
Suck it up, guys. If you want to write, write-and write your own stuff. It _does_ take courage, but that’s the only way to learn how, believe me.
(Now, if you truly think you can’t write something without using someone else’s characters as a crutch…well, OK. But if that’s really your motive, then you should keep the results to yourself. Not post them on websites as “your” work.)
3) But I enjoy the feedback I get-and lots of people say they enjoy what I write!
Of course you enjoy positive feedback; so does anyone who writes anything. The question is-are you getting positive feedback because you’re a really good writer…or are you getting positive feedback because some fans are so hooked on the characters that they’ll read anything involving those names (whether the writing accurately reflects those characters or not)?
One real easy way to find out. Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned.
4) But nobody would read stuff I wrote if it wasn’t about characters they already like!
Possibly true, possibly not. Depends on how good a writer you are, and how you go about displaying your work once you’ve written it. But-allowing for the moment that this argument holds water-what you’re saying is that a) you deserve an audience, no matter what, and b) you’d prefer to exploit someone else’s talent and hard work, rather than go to the trouble of making your own way.
Now, it’s possible to do this without being illegal, if you feel you just can’t get noticed on your own merits (and that being noticed is worth whatever it takes): you just do it with characters that are no longer under copyright. I.e., characters whose author is dead, and has been dead for…it was 75 years, last time I looked (copyright exists for the author’s life plus 75 years). So if the author of your characters died before 1935, you’re home free!
And some writers do this to good-or at least profitable-effect. Note PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, for instance, or the many (many, many, many) imitators of Sherlock Holmes.
Some of these writers are great, and they produce really good stories. Some of them….oh, well. SCARLETT, anyone?
I actually have some empathy in this regard, because I once wrote comic scripts for Walt Disney-using, of course, the Disney characters. I wrote for Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse, and the others. I know what it is to use an existing character that you didn’t create, but use them creatively within the parameters already laid down for them. It’s fun. [g]
The difference is-it’s not illegal, and you aren’t abusing or offending the original author. Carl Barks (may his name be engraved in gold) created Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the nephews; Walt Disney created Mickey-I didn’t. BUT the Walt Disney Corporation owned the copyright to those characters (still does, for that matter), and therefore had a perfect right to hire me to write stories for them-and I had a perfect right to write those stories _and_ make money from them (seventeen dollars a page was the going rate back then).
Likewise, if you want to write stories for the Silver Surfer or Superman, go talk to Marvel or DC, and see if they’re taking new submissions or would let you write a sample script. People write new TV scripts for Dr. Who and the Start Trek variants all the time-they have to. If you want to rewrite JANE EYRE as explicit Victorian erotica (and I read a very imaginative book of pornography that did _just_ that: AN ENGLISH EDUCATION, it was called)-more power to you.
But writing stories about characters whose creators are not only alive and kicking, but actively writing about those characters _themselves_...sorry, guys, it’s just not on.
5) I like the social aspects of being in a group of fan-fic readers and writers.
Well, again-who _doesn’t_ like being in a group of people with common tastes, interests, and ambitions? But so far as I know, almost all popular authors have groups of online readers who like to discuss their books, characters, etc.-and I don’t know any author who doesn’t value and encourage such groups.
If you want to talk about Jamie, Claire, etc., I can direct you to a number of long-established, long-running, _very_ friendly Outlander discussion groups who will be thrilled to welcome you…in multiple languages. [g]
Likewise, there are a lot of writers groups, all over the web. I only know one, personally, to recommend, but that’s because I don’t personally belong to any-the one I know is the Writers Workshop, in the Compuserve Books and Writers community. [http://go.community.compuserve/Books] I’ve not been a member of this workshop myself, but it’s been running for many years and I _do_ know a lot of the people who run and participate in it, and have heard nothing but good stuff about it.
6) But I just looove your characters! And isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
Weeeelll…let us just say that there’s a difference between someone dating red-haired men, and the same someone trying to seduce my husband.
7) But you write so slowly! We get impatient for new stuff!
Guilty as charged. [g] BUT….
A) If I whipped books out once a year, they wouldn’t be the _same_ books. It takes time, effort, and thought to tell stories and develop characters the way I do. (This is, btw, one reason why fan-fic versions of popular characters so often seem superficial; they lack the depth that the Real Thing has-the writer has merely grabbed at the broadest impression of the character, not built them in complex layers.)
B) Still, I understand the urge to take a story that’s fired your imagination and carry it on or explore other avenues that it might have taken. ¬_Everybody_ does this, when they’ve seen a movie or read a book that captured their imagination-I mean, who _didn’t_ take a moment to contemplate what it would have been like if Elizabeth Swann had kissed Jack Sparrow instead of staying with Orlando Bloom? Giving people intriguing possibilities is one of the hallmarks of good fiction. But what you do in the privacy of your own imagination is a matter of total freedom; what you do in public is not.
C) Besides, that’s one of the reasons (aside from just liking to spread the word about great books that I personally like) I keep The Methadone List. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have anything else to read, while you wait. [g]
OK, those are-I think-the principal arguments usually put forward in favor of fan-fic. Beyond the specific arguments against the concept remains the unfortunate fact that a terrible lot of fan-fic is outright cringe-worthy and ought to be suppressed on purely aesthetic grounds.
Now, I don’t go looking for fan-fiction written about my characters; in fact, I try _not¬_ to see it. But now and then someone sends me a link to a site displaying it, and because of the danger of precedent and implied consent (see below), I (or my agent) has to go ask the site-owner to kindly remove pieces dealing with my characters. So I’ve seen a certain amount.
Some of it’s just lame: poorly written pages of adjectival description, or a rambling attempt at historical fiction using people who just happen to be called Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall, but otherwise bear no particular resemblance to my people-or a try at taking an existing situation from one of my novels and either re-writing it or expanding on it. This is usually the result of well-meaning people who really _are_ learning to write, and using my characters as exercise. It’s still not legal, and I don’t like it, but it isn’t nearly as skin-crawling as the ones who equate fan-fic with personal porn.
About that “privacy of your own imagination” thing….[cough] While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion.
As I say, I’ve unwillingly read a certain amount of fan-fic involving my characters, and about three-quarters of it is graphic, badly-written (of the “his searing touch blazed its way up the silken skin of her thigh to the secret depths of her ecstasy” type) masturbatory fantasy. I mean….ick.
Now, look. Human beings are hardwired to be interested in sex. We just _are_. Any kind of sex, performed by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Bad sex, good sex, poorly depicted sex, elegantly drawn sex…it doesn’t matter. We have a genetic compulsion to _look_. We’ll look at _anything_ having sex, human or not.
Ergo, including sex is by far the easiest way to get someone to look at something. I assume that that’s one of the reasons fan-fic authors so frequently write sex scenes or slash stories. (The other reasons are their own business, and I’m not going there.)
But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.
I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family-why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?
Right. Moving right along here, let’s close with a footnote regarding the legal considerations. If I learn about fan-fic and _don’t_ make any protest, I might at some point lose all control of what’s done with and to my characters. Practitioners could point to the fact that I knew about this stuff and didn’t object over a long period of time, ergo, I must think it’s OK, and so they’re doing nothing wrong, having my implied consent. That’s a specious legal argument, but I’ve seen it made-and the last thing I ever want to do is have to defend my right to my own characters in court. I'd do it, but I sure wouldn't like it.
I mentioned moral conundrums above. Here’s one for you:
Recently, a couple of people have drawn my attention to a person who’s been posting on various boards about fund-raising for an uninsured friend named Stacie who has breast cancer. Her (the poster’s) idea for fund-raising is to auction off a custom-written piece of fan-fic, involving Jamie Fraser and Emmett someone (who I _think_ is from Twilight; I sort of hope it’s not the willowy young “bottom” from the TV show “Queer as Folk”…). She hastens to note that it won’t be slash, but will otherwise take the bidder’s tastes into account-and of course, all proceeds will go to Stacie’s hospital expense fund.
She did not, naturally, ask ¬_me_ about this. What would I have to say about it?
Well, the question here, of course, is-what _do_ I say about it? Do I write to this person and tell her to cease and desist, and too bad about Stacie, thus seeming heartless? Do I give this manipulative project my blessing, thus opening the door to an endless parade of piously disguised fan-fic “charity”? Make it clear that I disapprove of what she’s doing, but stop short of forbidding her to do it, and turn a blind eye if she does?
I’m not exactly asking for a vote here [g], because it’s my concern, and I’ll do what I think is right in the circumstances-but I’d be interested to know what y’all think.
my response:
Now - if you don't want people playing in your sandbox - than okay. I can respect that. They are your characters and your story, so if you ask me to stay out. Okay. But realize that when you do this - i'm not only going to stop playing in your sandbox, but i'm going to stop watching you play in it too.
Because that's what your doing.
You're parading around this awesome thing you have. And yes, it's yours, you are allow to. Your parading t around, and showing it off, and you have all the neighbor hood kiddies running to see it, and be in awe of you and your shiny toy.
but day after day, after you have finished. you take your toy, and you love it away. We can look at, but we can't play. It's okay - it's your toy. you're allowed.
But eventually. we're gonna get tired of watching you play, and we're gonna move on - because it stop being fun after a while. It becomes the same-old, same-old and why should we keep coming back - you're not letting us get involved.
we have no investment in you or your stories. and when we try - you scorn us, and ridicule us, and in all that, you never once GET IT.
as for your other posts... I have to go to work.
If I have some time when I get back - I might try and tough up on them. Otherwise, i'm gonna go back to play in the sandboxes of creators who do like me, and are nice about sharing, and actually seem to want me around.