May 20 2008
Is Fan Fiction a Good Idea?
In my last post I brought up fan fiction as it relates to movie and tv show tie-ins. Fan fiction is an odd beast. Some writers, like Anne Rice, hate it. Rice has forbidden fans from appropriating her characters and has even started legal proceedings against some who would ignore her wishes. At the opposite end of the spectrum is J.K. Rowling, who not only puts up with fan fiction, she actively encourages it, going so far as to read some of the fics. Whether a writer likes fan fiction or not, it has always been around. When I was in junior high, fan fiction was furiously scribbled in spiral notebooks and passed around the halls between classes. Today, fan fiction is published for a potential world-wide audience on the Internet. If there is a TV sow, book, movie or celebrity, you can bet someone, somewhere, is writing fiction. Fan fic writers can develop fan bases and many use fan fic and the things they learn to move on to professional original fiction.
If you are a published writer, how would you feel if a fan took your characters and wrote a new story featuring them. Would you be flattered or would you feel violated?
If you write fan fiction, why? Would you ever want to write original fiction?
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2 Responses to “Is Fan Fiction a Good Idea?”
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At one time I belonged to a fanfiction group that revolved around the world of Pern created by Science Fiction writer Anne McCaffrey. The fangroup bore her approval as it met certain rules and regulations she dictated, such as refraining from using her main characters and not making any drastic changes to the world. That being said I didn’t do much fanfiction writing, I was mostly there to draw pictures of her dragons, which were forbidden to be posted elsewhere on some other sites (I believe that has changed now).
I am not sure how I would respond to fanfiction if I were a published writer myself. I would be flattered if my work inspired that sort of creativity, but also somewhat afraid of my work being twisted. That being said I would still like to write original fiction.
How do you feel about it Karil?
My first book, under a pen name, is still in the pipeline, so I can’t say for sure how I would feel about it. I don’t see anything wrong with it from a reader standpoint. As a writer, I would like to say that I would be flattered, but you never know until you’re in that situation. I tend to let things roll off, however, so I don’t think I would mind.
The one thing I don’t get about some fan fiction is that some fan fic writers are very talented and have to jump through multiple hoops to get their works posted (Muggle Net comes to mind). If they have that kind of talent and persistence, it just seems logical that they should try original fiction.