Is Fanfiction really that bad?

[Newstar]

A lot of fanfic is garbage, but I suspect the vast bulk of it is written by people under the age of 20, and a good chunk written by people under the age of 15, and these days, it's the very rare person who produces anything worth reading at that age, as much fun as it can be reading a male/male sex scene written by a straight preteen girl super-keen on her slash pairing of choice but not quite clear on the mechanics. However, there is some really good stuff out there, written by some truly talented people. Seems like a disproportionate number of female graduate students/professors in the humanities and/or professional authors hang out in different fandoms, depending on the fandom, of course (they tend to gravitate towards fandoms with strong female characters or an extremely popular slash male/male pairing, from what I can tell), and those ladies can write.

Well it was fanfiction that eventually became 50 shades of Grey...

The Mortal Instruments YA series--now a Major Motion Picture (City of Bones)--began life as a Draco/Ginny fanfic with the names changed...er, or so I hear. :)

So far as creativity goes, I think that depends on the fan-fic itself, but in fairness some of them can be just as creative as regular books. If not more.

Reading authors' biographies makes you wonder how much is truly made up in their novels or completely cut from whole cloth. I was reading this "Who's Who" of CanLit, and it wasn't just about the authors: it listed certain characters in the authors' books and who inspired them, and I was shocked and disappointed to discover that so many of the characters I'd admired as exemplars of their creators' imaginary powers and characterization skills were pretty much based note for note off people the authors personally knew. Truth is stranger than fiction and all that, but it was very surprising. (It seems like good life advice never to get involved with an author, lest you end up in one of their books!...Ditto for songwriters and poets, I suppose.)

[felice]

That does not answer my question. Yes, 'fan fiction' is a label. In what way does that label make any sense, if we are claiming that it includes works written for non-fannish reasons?

The etymology of a label doesn't determine its current meaning; the word "fiction" is derived from a verb meaning "to knead, form out of clay". Much fanfic is written at least in part for fannish reasons, which is why it acquired that label, but it isn't possible to tell just by reading a piece of fanfic what the reason for writing it was, so it's not a useful definition for the purposes of evaluating the quality of fanfic.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

I think my first "fan fics" were variations on mythology, thought part of that was [because] we had D&D for our uber fanboy creations fighting Energy Golems and Poseidon with his laser trident.

After that I had a guy who was an immortal African wizard but sadly that sort of was a Candy Man fan fic.

I also have two D&D Planescape novel attempts, though established characters aren't central. The first was 40 pages that I deleted in shame, the other is an unfinished tale that I think is still floating around on the D&D boards.

Awesome! Mythology was great for fanfic when I was a kid. I used to write wars between the gods as they splintered off and hated each other. Zeus would lead the good gods against Cronos and the gods he converted to his cause. Fanfic is so fun to write sometimes.

[Azzanadra]

Well... the Witcher videogames are considered to be "fan fiction" by the author so its not all bad....

[Newstar]

Awesome! Mythology was great for fanfic when I was a kid. I used to write wars between the gods as they splintered off and hated each other. Zeus would lead the good gods against Cronos and the gods he converted to his cause. Fanfic is so fun to write sometimes.

I wrote an epic, extremely long Street Fighter II fanfic back in the day, before I'd ever even heard the term "fanfic." Decidedly more lowbrow. :D I am eternally thankful it never wound up on the Internet, suffice it to say; the next great American novel it was not. :D

I haven't written fanfic in a very, very, very long time, but there was a time when I wrote a ton of it--all terrible, all in fandoms even more embarrassing to mention than Street Fighter II, all fortunately lost to the ages--so I'm in no position to judge those who do. The fannish heart wants what it wants.

[PhoenixFlame]

A lot of fanfic is garbage, but I suspect the vast bulk of it is written by people under the age of 20, and a good chunk written by people under the age of 15, and these days, it's the very rare person who produces anything worth reading at that age, as much fun as it can be reading a male/male sex scene written by a straight preteen girl super-keen on her slash pairing of choice but not quite clear on the mechanics. However, there is some really good stuff out there, written by some truly talented people. Seems like a disproportionate number of female graduate students/professors in the humanities and/or professional authors hang out in different fandoms, depending on the fandom, of course (they tend to gravitate towards fandoms with strong female characters or an extremely popular slash male/male pairing, from what I can tell), and those ladies can write.

Reading authors' biographies makes you wonder how much is truly made up in their novels or completely cut from whole cloth. I was reading this "Who's Who" of CanLit, and it wasn't just about the authors: it listed certain characters in the authors' books and who inspired them, and I was shocked and disappointed to discover that so many of the characters I'd admired as exemplars of their creators' imaginary powers and characterization skills were pretty much based note for note off people the authors personally knew. Truth is stranger than fiction and all that, but it was very surprising. (It seems like good life advice never to get involved with an author, lest you end up in one of their books!...Ditto for songwriters and poets, I suppose.)

Heh, my first fanfic was written while I was in middle school. Hoooooly crap it was crap. Now, a college grad, if feedback is anything to go by, I write some decent fics. It's rather fun to look at the awful stuff you wrote as a young'n and compare it to your current writing.

The thing about basing characters off people you know is I think a lot of interactions you've had with people are stored so deep they seem organic when you think about them. When I'm writing something original, most of the characters have a mix of traits from various people I've met, but I'm not consciously thinking of those people when I first start writing. I haven't done a 1:1 transfer, but I've met a lot of weird, awesome people, so there's lots of inspiration.

[PhoenixFlame]

*shrugs* That's what recommendations are for. Typically if I have an author I like who writes in a specific fandom, I look up what his or her favorite stories are and check those out. Some writers are hugely open to critique, others are not. Sometimes on kink memes, just to keep drama low, there are specific rules about not critiquing, but it's up to the mod. I don't read fics with awful grammar or stupid plots but I don't have a problem with them existing. They aren't hurting anyone. Some people write themselves in, but I've never read a fic I liked that did that.

[The Marquis de Leech]

As I said - you do, most people don't. Your own definitions are fine for your own purposes, but not very useful and not very good definitions if they don't fit with common usage.

If we're going by common usage, I'd point out that several people in this thread have agreed with the view that the essence of fanfic is borrowing.

Bit of a non-sequitur there: your response certainly isn't a reasonable interpretation of what I said, seeing as how what I said was a discussion of what a good definition actually looks like. It's not that one may never create definitions - it's that (as I have explained, at length) the definitions you have created are just bad definitions.

Your definition essentially states that Dante and Milton can't have been fanfic because their work is serious, not fannish. When pressed to identify the dividing line between serious work and fannish work, you have fallen back on "it's obvious". Which isn't an overly helpful definition, and is certainly less helpful to debate than my "borrowing is fanfic" view - at least with my definition, we can actually test it.

You've been asked this question three times now. You haven't yet answered it, and I'm afraid it appears to be because you have no answer. Which is not a surprise, because what I'm saying is simply the truth.

Asserting something doesn't make it true, even if embellished with judicious applications of "it's obvious".

If I intend to write a comedy, that affects whether the story I write contains jokes.

Something is a comedy if the reader finds it funny. Imagine if Tolkien had given an interview in 1960 where he stated "The Lord of the Rings is intended as a comedy." That would not retrospectively make LOTR a comedy.

If i intend to write a fantasy, that affects whether the story I write contains fantastic elements.

What matters is not whether the author intended to write fantasy, but rather whether the story contains fantastic elements.

If I intend to write a story engaging with issues of gender identity, that affects whether my story contains characters who are dealing with those issues. If I intend to write a Lovecraft pastiche, that affects the language of my story. Author intention affects what is written. That's a fact.

You're missing the point. Once written, interpretation passes from author to reader. GRRM can't come out and say "I intended Gregor Clegane as a nice person," because that does not fit with any sane reading of the text.

It means that whether that story is fanfic is arguable, just as one can argue about other stories and whether they fit a form.

I would note that this is a strange complaint given that you yourself are insisting on a position that also allows the reader to define whether something is fanfic or not... but then qualifies this by also insisting that the reader might be wrong, depending on whether the author had permission or not. You can't seem to make up your mind what the role of the reader is!

Because whether or not something is fanfic is not a matter of intent or interpretation. Either the characters were borrowed or not - there is no room for subjective judgement any more than the reader can decide the language of the text.

Again, this does not answer the point. It's merely a claim that fan fiction is not limited to fannish works - which is not a fact, but the position you're arguing for. It's an attempt to beg the question.

Again, with your circular logic: fanfic is limited to works of fandom, so anything outside fandom works cannot be fanfic.

Look, I understand the desire to make the label as wide and inclusive as possible. But at the point where you are effectively arguing for minimising the relevance of the word 'fan' in 'fan fiction', you're tilting at windmills. There's no case for that.

Because there is no way to tell whether or not someone is a genuine fan, your definition helps no-one. If two authors produce exactly the same derivative text, independently of each other, with one loathing the original (but writing on a dare) and the other loving the original, it is daft to assert that only one of those is fanfiction. They're both fanfic, since they're exactly the same story.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Double post.

[Ran]

A reminder that we don't permit fan fiction to be posted on the forum, or links to same.

[felice]

A reminder that we don't permit fan fiction to be posted on the forum, or links to same.

I thought that was just fanfic based on GRRM's works?

[Joe Abercrombie]

Any mileage in the idea that intended audience might be a defining feature? Fan fiction seems to me to be written by fans, for fans, usually published in spaces populated almost entirely by fans. Once something spills out into a wider audience, or is aimed at a wider audience, it starts to feel less like fan fiction. The 'fannish' element is reduced. Of course, as with any of these labels/genres/categories, they're always fuzzy around the edges. Try defining grimdark...

[Happy Ent]

I thought that was just fanfic based on GRRM's works?

Yes, Ran, please clarify this. Not that I care much either way.

[Ran]

Felice,

Though the rule is very specific about ASoIaF fan fiction, we also ask you not to link or share fan fiction in general on the forum. It's fine to mention "A Darker, Distorted Mirror", though, but we don't want any chance of a rights holder coming to complain to us.

Joe Abercrombie,

The only issue with the intended audience thing is that I'm sure there are readers of fan fiction, who are part of that community, who write fictions for themselves and no one else. The intended audience is... well, themselves, or maybe no one.

But it's all very fuzzy. I think for me, generally when we're talking about fan fiction, we're talking about a particular late 20th/early 21st century fan culture. If you are part of that culture and produce a fiction based on someone else's work as part of an activity within that culture, it's fan fiction.

This is part of why I believe we can't consider Shakespeare, Jean Rhys, or Alice Randall to be writers of fan fiction. The circumstances, mindset, and culture which was the context of their writing is not that of modern day fan fiction aficionados and writers.

(Yes, mores and morals change over time. The past is another country, and even today there are writers who aren't interested in that fan culture.)

[Newstar]

Heh, my first fanfic was written while I was in middle school. Hoooooly crap it was crap. Now, a college grad, if feedback is anything to go by, I write some decent fics. It's rather fun to look at the awful stuff you wrote as a young'n and compare it to your current writing.

That's true. And just because the first fanfic you wrote in middle school was crap doesn't mean that you're doomed as a writer, since middle schoolers aren't known for producing great writing of any description: precocious, maybe, but not objectively great. There's actually that interesting element to literature where some level of not only intellectual but also emotional maturity seems to be required for great writing of any description. Fiction written by children (or near-children, like middle schoolers) in the 20th century, no matter how technically proficient on a superficial level, is always rather soulless in that respect, because in a sense, the "soul"--the developed intellectual/emotional core--is missing at that age. When I was studying piano as a child, I couldn't play pieces by any of the Romantic composers except in the most graceless, leaden way, even though I could pound out the notes no problem (and could play pieces by other composers with relative ease); my emotional faculties weren't sufficiently developed at that time to connect with the music on that level. I suspect it's much the same with young writers and young fanfic writers, which is why their writing--even if technically proficient, well-structured, written in a consistent voice, etc. etc.--will ring false.

This is part of why I believe we can't consider Shakespeare, Jean Rhys, or Alice Randall to be writers of fan fiction. The circumstances, mindset, and culture which was the context of their writing is not that of modern day fan fiction aficionados and writers.

Well, of course there are those distinctions. The larger question is, are those distinctions--circumstances, mindset, motivation, culture, participation in fan culture, etc.--meaningful ones in terms of drawing a line between Shakespeare, Jean Rhys, etc. and fanfic writers, or are they essentially doing the same thing?

Your definition essentially states that Dante and Milton can't have been fanfic because their work is serious, not fannish. When pressed to identify the dividing line between serious work and fannish work, you have fallen back on "it's obvious".

I have seen fanfic writers do what Jean Rhys seems to have been doing in The Wide Sargasso Sea: throw light on a marginalized character in the source work and craft a story around that individual, in response to how that character is treated in the main work (or put their own spin on what they perceive as racist or sexist aspects of the source work, doing a prequel or sequel, essentially retelling it or telling it from the perspective of that character). That sounds pretty "serious" to me, and analogous to Jean Rhys' approach. For example, there are a number of fanfics dealing with what Neil Gaiman famously labeled "The Problem of Susan," i.e. C.S. Lewis' rather harsh treatment of poor Susan Pevensie's fate in his Narnia books. It seems like the fanfic writers wrote their own takes on Susan's fate in response to how she was treated in the source work. Is this not "serious"?

This is not to say that all fan-created works are "serious," just as not all unambiguously original literature is "serious" (and thank God for that), but the presence of "serious" fan-created works with serious intent behind them analogous to the intent and creation of The Wide Sargasso Sea, a recognized piece of Serious Literature, puts the lie to the idea that "serious"/"fannish" is a meaningful distinction. "Fannish" reactions are not necessarily uncritical, after all. There's a good deal of ASOIAF fanfic that seems to be aimed squarely at combating perceived sexism/misogyny in the source text or "correcting" the source text in terms of its treatment of this or that character (Shae POVs, Tyrion getting explicitly called on his sexist/misogynist bullshit, that kind of thing).

There seems to be a bit of a confusion here between form and quality. We think of The Wide Sargasso Sea and Dante's Inferno as being qualitatively different from fanfic because they're superior to the vast bulk of fanfic in terms of quality. However, if they are in essence the same thing as fanfic in terms of form and no meaningful distinction can be drawn between the two on the basis of time period/intent/culture/what have you (and there's obviously disagreement on that point), then the fact that one is vastly superior in quality to the other doesn't change that. "Roses are red / Violets are blue / Sugar is sweet / And so are you" and "Ozymandias" are both poems. One is a silly bit of doggerel, and one is considered something much more lofty, but the fact that one sucks and the other is awesome doesn't change the fact that they're both poems.

[Werthead]

we also ask you not to link or share fan fiction in general on the forum

What about The Methods of Rationality? There's an active thread on that.

[mormont]

As I said - you do, most people don't. Your own definitions are fine for your own purposes, but not very useful and not very good definitions if they don't fit with common usage.

If we're going by common usage, I'd point out that several people in this thread have agreed with the view that the essence of fanfic is borrowing.

Sure. But while borrowing is a necessary inclusion in any definition of fanfic, it's not sufficient to produce a workable definition: and I think most people would agree with me on that. There are forms of borrowing that are not fanfic. Heck, you agree with me on that.

Bit of a non-sequitur there: your response certainly isn't a reasonable interpretation of what I said, seeing as how what I said was a discussion of what a good definition actually looks like. It's not that one may never create definitions - it's that (as I have explained, at length) the definitions you have created are just bad definitions.

Your definition essentially states that Dante and Milton can't have been fanfic because their work is serious, not fannish.

My definition does not state this, or anything like it. It says nothing about being 'serious': it does indeed stress the importance of 'fannishness' in defining fanfic, but doesn't suggest or imply that this is opposed to being 'serious'. I can't help it if you keep making assumptions about my position. You seem set on the idea that I'm motivated by a desire to somehow protect the reputation of 'great literature'. I'm not. I'm suggesting that fanfic is, at root, a fannish activity. That's not a controversial position, I would think. In fact it seems to me to be nothing more than a statement of fact.

If I intend to write a comedy, that affects whether the story I write contains jokes.

Something is a comedy if the reader finds it funny.

Nope. Something is funny if the reader finds it funny: but a book that is unintentionally funny is not a comedy.

Besides, even if you were right on this point, while it's possible to be unintentionally funny, it is not possible to unintentionally write a fantasy, or unintentionally include characters who struggle with gender issues. The general point remains true: what is actually written is influenced by what the author intends to write - any other position is absurd. There may be aspects to the author's writing that are not intentional (in fact, there surely must be) - but equally, author intention is not irrelevant to what is written. That's an absurd position to take. And again, not one that you yourself actually take: you agree that fanfic must contain borrowed characters, for example, which could hardly happen by accident. It must be because the author intended to use those characters: and that choice can only be a result of the kind of story the author intended to write.

With that in mind, we can safely say that if a writer sets out to write fanfic, that will mean that the text contains, or is likely to contain, certain elements: engagement with themes, characters, plots and settings in the source material, for example. I'm contending that true fanfic will, consciously or not, engage in certain ways with these elements that other forms of borrowing will not: that it will be concerned more with the specific source text or texts than with wider culture. For example, it may explore alternative paths in the plot not taken by the author - alternative romantic relationships being a classic case. This is quite different than other forms of borrowing. I've mentioned other examples already.

I would note that this is a strange complaint given that you yourself are insisting on a position that also allows the reader to define whether something is fanfic or not... but then qualifies this by also insisting that the reader might be wrong, depending on whether the author had permission or not. You can't seem to make up your mind what the role of the reader is!

Because whether or not something is fanfic is not a matter of intent or interpretation. Either the characters were borrowed or not - there is no room for subjective judgement any more than the reader can decide the language of the text.

So when you raise protestations about the role of the reader, you're just blowing hot air and I should ignore it? Fair enough.

Any mileage in the idea that intended audience might be a defining feature? Fan fiction seems to me to be written by fans, for fans, usually published in spaces populated almost entirely by fans. Once something spills out into a wider audience, or is aimed at a wider audience, it starts to feel less like fan fiction. The 'fannish' element is reduced. Of course, as with any of these labels/genres/categories, they're always fuzzy around the edges. Try defining grimdark...

This is more or less what I'm saying, yeah.

[Zoë Sumra]

... it is not possible to unintentionally write a fantasy, or unintentionally include characters who struggle with gender issues.

Plenty of authors have denied that what they have written is a fantasy, from Margaret Atwood to Terry Goodkind, but we'll assume they're wrong (or embarrassed, or being intentionally obtuse). What do you mean by a character who struggles with gender issues? If you mean a trans character, I think it would be impossible to accidentally write a trans character. If you mean a character whose gender politics are not what the author intended, authors do this all the time, usually (I believe) either by inattention or assumption.

The new quote function and I are not yet friends so I haven't picked up the comment I wanted to reply to about intention, audience etc. as a defining characteristic:

Take RBPL's example from previous pages of the Maglor in New York AU. There are very few numbers left to file off - name, how he burned his hand, presumably how he got to NY but you could just ignore that bit - before you have a submittable novel/novella/short story depending on length.

Everyone knows that 50 Shades and City of Bones are fanfic with the numbers filed off. If EL James hadn't posted her original Twilight fic and had just changed the names straight away, would it still be fanfic? If, say, (picking on him because it was his example) RBPL wrote that Maglor story without the LOTR references, knowing it was fanfic but with the deliberate intention to try to publish it as an original novel/novella/short, how would it fit into the definition?

I'm aware that takes us into an argument about genre definition in general in terms of (IIRC) Shannara's similarity to Tolkien and part of Stone of Tears' similarity to WOT. There's a dividing line between homage, keeping to norms, and flat out borrowing. I would argue that if an author deliberately pinches an entire fantasy world, changes all the names/place names and writes in that world for profit, it's fanfic, though it is not presented to fans of the original work as a fanwork.

[Clueless Northman]

Well, if we still go with this ludicrous "Dante writes fan-fiction" lunacy, then we would also have to consider the Quran and the Bible as fan-fictions - the former for relying heavily on the latter, the latter for having whole books plagiarised from Egyptian and Sumerian myths, including the Flood story.

Heck, there's even an argument to be made that the Gospels are partly Socratic/Platonic fan-fictions (charismatic protagonist with a youth following, running against morality and traditions of his fellow citizens, knows he has upset some powerful people but deliberately decides to up the ante and provokes the power that be instead of pleading and begging, ends up condemned to death, refuses any way out and accepts a memorable death that will have a lasting impact on his society / the world at large)...

Any mileage in the idea that intended audience might be a defining feature? Fan fiction seems to me to be written by fans, for fans, usually published in spaces populated almost entirely by fans. Once something spills out into a wider audience, or is aimed at a wider audience, it starts to feel less like fan fiction.

At the very least, I think this should be one of the variables to take into consideration.

I'm reluctant to fully back it up, because it'd mean that the whole "Star Wars expanded universe" mess couldn't be considered fan-fiction then :D

[felice]

I'm suggesting that fanfic is, at root, a fannish activity. That's not a controversial position, I would think.

Well, aside from the fact that fanfic isn't an activity. Writing fanfic is a fannish activity, and reading any fiction (fan- or otherwise) for enjoyment is arguably fannish activity, but the fanfic itself is a document. And that document doesn't necessarily contain anything that identifies it as the product of fannish activity. There's no way to tell a decently written piece of fannish gen-fic from an authorised written-for-profit story just from the text of the respective documents.