Saving the Universe with Luke and Han

[sistermagpie]

So you know that writer guy, what's his name? The one who wrote for Diagnosis Murder and other shows and hates fanfiction with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns? I think his blog is called something like "A Writer's Life" but every time I see it linked it seems like bitterwriter.com. Anyway, he's got another thread up where he went to

Comments

[teratologist]

It's funny, because I always thought that if you grew up and were still making up adventures in your head, that was exactly when you did become a writer. I wonder what motivates him to write, if it's not saving the universe intra-cranially?

[sistermagpie]

It felt like there was a real need to draw a line between silly imagining and ART or something, though I just don't think they're that different. Imagine if somebody had convinced George Lucas to stop wanting to save the world with Buck Rogers. There would have been no Luke and Han for this guy to stop dreaming about!

Just to play devil's advocate...

[ginzai]

It's an interesting topic, really. I can easily understand how writers could be made uncomfortable with fanfiction because of how easily people can get things wrong. Little details that the reader might not have picked up on can be crucial to a writer. I haven't read the BitterWriter's blog, but it sounds less like he's commenting on imagination (and by having it being automatically a loser) and more on a reader's need to be a part of things.

And that, to an extent, I can understand. Several years ago, I had a girl contact me regarding a fanfic I'd written. She'd liked the idea and wanted to write a story based off of it. I agreed and the story she produced vastly changed my concepts, while still be identifiable as being based off my work. Without a doubt, my own story was a trite nonsensical piece of emo-flavored garbage, but I was astounded by how wrong her rendition seemed. Something which I'd created had been warped, and not - from my then perspective - for the better

Re: Just to play devil's advocate...

[sistermagpie]

Heh--not that he has a fanbase. He was railing against fanfic writers, but he doesn't have any himself. In fact, looking at his imdb bio he seems to usually write about other characters anyway, because he's a TV writer who does episodes for shows. His pov is that this is okay because it's official, with the creator's okay--and that's true, of course. But he doesn't feel like you should be able to write a story that you're not paid for because you don't have the author's permission etc

Re: Just to play devil's advocate...

[ex_lonicera600]

Heh--not that he has a fanbase. He was railing against fanfic writers, but he doesn't have any himself. In fact, looking at his imdb bio he seems to usually write about other characters anyway, because he's a TV writer who does episodes for shows.I'm sorry to have to contradict you, but that's not quite right. He has indeed a fanbase - or at least the show he once has produced and is now writing tie-ins for, "Diagnosis Murder", has a fanbase. And it was a fanfic of this show that obviously was his very first experience with fanfic. Unfortunately it seems to have been a mpreg-fic. Now, given the fact that most men feel incredibly creeped out about m/m sex and go right into shock at the mere idea of mpreg, it is at least a little understandable that he did not react favourably at first

Re: Just to play devil's advocate...

[sistermagpie]

Ah--I see. I didn't realize he'd produced the show and possibly created the characters. I thought he just wrote some episodes, so that they weren't his characters to begin with.

Mpreg creeps out many people who enjoy fanfic after all, so I imagine starting with it has got to be a bad idea.

[morgan_d]

I remember the post you quoted very well. I also remember my reaction to it. "Dude, I don't want to save the galaxy with Han and Luke. I want to hide somewhere in the Millennium Falcon's so I can watch while they make out!" ^__^

Seriously, when I read that I did think he was being unkind when he assumed the reason why people write fanfiction could be condensed into some pseudo-psychological insight, and when he assumed fanfiction writers' motives are that different from original fiction writers'. (Frankly, would Han and Luke even exist if George Lucas hadn't spent a good part of his life dreaming of flying through the universe at lightspeed and having thrilling adventures about princesses and knights?)

But your post raises a very interesting issue that I haven't quite considered before. Like you, I've always dived into the fictional world of whatever I was watching or reading... Well, isn't that what I'm expected to do? Isn't that what the writers expect me to do? I know it's what I hope my readers will do when they read my stories

[jodel_from_aol]

"But your post raises a very interesting issue that I haven't quite considered before. Like you, I've always dived into the fictional world of whatever I was watching or reading... Well, isn't that what I'm expected to do? Isn't that what the writers expect me to do?"

Not necessarily if you're writing for television. The box is always at some remove. The viewer is never really *inside* the box. Where the reader can get *inside* the book.

[morgan_d]

I'm afraid I don't understand what you meant, sorry. I've never written for television, but I've written for cinema. And although, technically speaking, writing a script is different from writing a novel, the idea was always to get the viewer inside the fictional universe. The method is different -- a reader has to come up with images to go with the words, while the viewers has to come up with words (explanations, details, the characters' hidden feelings or unmentioned backgrounds) to go with the images, but the result is pretty much the same. The viewer is not passive, he has to absorb what he sees and make something out of it. Or else he's just sitting in front of the screen.

[jodel_from_aol]

Yes but the point of view of the consumer is more involved with a novel (once they actually engage with it.).

It's *easier* to engage with a film or a TV series because everything is done *for* you, but you have no control apart from whether to watch it or not. Once you have engaged with a novel much of your perception of the world inside it is entirely your *own*. YOU are the one to synthesize what the characters look like and how their voices sound. What the rest of the furniture is, what plants are in the yard.

The author gave you some guidance, sure, but the world of the novel is at least to some degree your own.

One suspects that the people who attend those "past lives" seminars and get so wrapped up in it are often people who never have settled down to read fiction of any sort.

[gillieweed]

They seem mainly obsessed with a) finding a group they’re superior to (which isn't easy) and b) being really angry at how little respect readers have for the individual author.

Actually I can think of more than a few "Big Name Ficcers" who would fit right in with them.

[sistermagpie]

Oh yeah--don't we know it!

[alchemia]

I wonder what’s the overall feeling by pro-writers about fanfic. Is it mostly positive (like JKR), negative (like Anne Rice) or something in between- where maybe they don’t like it, but they accept it. I have a really difficult time understanding the negative POV. To me, all writing in some way is “fanfic” because we all draw upon these plots, ideas, symbolism etc that have been with our cultures- shared across cultures- for ages. Fanfic to me is just when we:
1) use a good amount that is directly identifiable to a source (text/film etc.) AND
2) that source is still under legal copyright- something that in the grand scheme of human civilization is a very new concept.

I had a lot more to say, but it was- well a lot. So I posted it in my LJ if you woudl like to take a look: http://www.livejournal.com/users/alchemia/119368.html

[sistermagpie]

Yes I would--will go right over.

That's a grea question about how "professional writers" think about fanfic since we've got examples of both extremes. I would guess a lot of authors should fall more in the middle. For some people fanfic is just a shock--a lot of people start out thinking it's weird but once they read some of it don't think so anymore. I'll bet some authors, once they get over the weird idea of somebody writing stories where these characters that have only lived in your head for years are doing other things, they can be more objective. Copyright issues bring in a whole other thing, but pop culture is such a powerful force I feel like it's useless to try to make it off-limits for this type of thing. Instead it seems like more and more these are the types of things we use to communicate with each other. Fiction just isn't that exclusive.

[heidi8]

I was musing over replying to Keith and asking if his hatred for Disney's Little Mermaid, Wicked, West Side Story, the Midsummer Night's Dream issue of Sandman, Shakespere in Love and Five for Fighting's It's Not Easy is as great as his hatred is for those who don't get paid for creating something. I mean, it's not like HC Anderson, Baum, Will S. or Superman's creators gave *permission* for those derivative works, even if WB has authorized things like Smallville, and used the 5fF song in connection with it.

[sistermagpie]

The weird thing is there seems to be a need to act like those types of things are too different to even be mentioned. Wicked, for instance, seems to be something they want to label a parody when it seems to me to clearly be closer to fanfic. It even has a common fanfic idea, from what I know of it, taking the villain and telling her story, making her more sympathetic.

It seems like a lot of what they want it just control--you can write anything as long as the author personally approves of it. Though some of those things were written after the author died. I think, frankly, that a lot of it has to do with some people on the thread just being automatically more respectful of someone who is published and successful, and they just don't want to give that same respect to someone writing for a hobby.