The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Naa-Dei Nikoi:

Wrote Naomi (in part):

I do wonder if this might not vary between literary and media inspirations for fanfic. It's hard to imagine a literary source that's poorly written that could also create a deep-enough attachment to the characters and universe to inspire fanfic writing. In media sources, you have so much else happening: the visuals, the performance of the actors, the multiple writers. (I would range series like Dragonlance, etc in the 'media' camp rather than the literary, myself.)


Well there's just one thing: how then can you explain the Pern fandom? With all due respect to any fans, Anne McCaffrey's body of work is a long, long, long way from being on anyone's list of work worth preserving. And she's not the only writer to have achieved enduring fandoms with less-than-stellar (hell, sometimes awful) writing. Far from it and if you were to try to judge the worth of works from what fandoms they generate, you'd be tempted to despair.

I'd say that some subject matter attracts fanfic more. Vampires seem to be a good one: alienated of necessity but have powers over mere mortals, vulnerable yet strong, can have angst foisted onto them and don't have to obey laws of physics -- just the things to identify and work with. I think that if the qualities that can be worked with are there and it's at all readable, it can have someone writing fanfic about it. If it's decent and/or a little club can be founded to attract more people into looking at its good qualities, it can take on a life of its own. (No, I'm not a fan of vampire stories -- a very few are interesting but most of them suck, pun intended).



Dan:

I see your League of Gentlemen (not bad but couldn't finish it, alas) and raise you another: His Dark Materials. What didn't that one borrow from? Writers *are* magpies, taking from this and that and that else to feather their own nests, but there's a difference (not a super sharp one, but a difference nonetheless) between the pro-writer 'borrowing' aspects of some other work and the fanfic writer in that the pro-writer is making his or her own thing at the end of the day, while no matter how well a fanfic writer writes, the purpose of his or her work is to cast glory back to the original work. Okay, glory mightn't be the very best word to use, but you get the sense of it, no?


Btw, how do you quote previous posts properly, with italics and all?

Goodness, look away for a day... :) Let's see if I can't add something not already said better elsewhere.

Someone said that fanfic is the highest compliment a writer can receive. I disagree.

Fanfic doesn't mean that a work is good. I'd argue that a lot of stuff with the most fanfiction are second or third rate stories. What it does mean is that there is something *within* the story that has caught the readers' eyes and that they love and that they feel they can work with.
What that thing the readers fall in love with may not be central to the original story itself -- it can be quite a minor scene that considered and expanded upon, can cast the whole show in a different light. And sadly, it's often the very incompleteness (or incompetence) of the writer that creates the urge on the readers' parts to do something with it.

With all due respect, Star Trek is not that good a show. What it is is engaging -- and filled with enough holes to tempt the fans into writing. Speaking for myself, the one fandom I'm in (I like loads of things, but there's only so much time in my life for fannishness) well lessee... it's a thirty year old anime whose writers have major issues with consistency, logic, geography, practically all the sciences and a good chunk of the arts. Not very good at all -- but all the better material for it.

I'm not saying that if your work generates fanfic it's incomplete or poorly-written, but it does mean that it has a certain something to it that encourages people to explore it and that something isn't necessarily related to writing quality.


Jo Walton, I have to say, your post really caught my eye. :)
Leaving aside the practical 'it's not about you and it's not under your control' thing that others have wonderfully pointed out, there are two other reasons for avoiding fanfic.

One is that it won't do you any good. If it's bad in your eyes, it'll be upsetting because you'd never write them that way and if it's good in your eyes, it'll be upsetting because that person had an idea that you might have wanted to use, which leads on to the next reason to avoid fanfic -- accusation of plagiarism.

If your next book has a major plot point of a fanfic, it can get hairy if you are known to read fanfic -- while it's unlikely that a fan would take an author to court, it's not impossible. If you haven't been reading fanfic, it's coincidence and it's all good.

I would say cross that bridge when you get there.

I know that there's a lot of fanfic for most things, but the majority of published works never have any fanfic written about them. Of those that do inspire someone to go 'what if' and write something down about them and then go on to trying to share it out there in the ether, few get a fandom whereby several other people say 'ooh, what a good idea' and start discussing the book and sharing their own stories about it.
In order to have fanfic, a story needs to do two things: engage the reader's interest and imagination and second, leave enough holes for the imagination to wander about. Not all stories can or should do that. In order to have a fandom, a story needs to be widely distributed enough to attract enough people who might be interested in interacting, so anything that doesn't make it to a second printing, is picked up by a small publisher and the like doesn't have a hope. It wouldn't be top of my list of things to worry about if I were out to get published.


Fanfic isn't written for the creator's perusal (indeed reading fanfic of something you've written is a bad idea) and it isn't about telling you how you *should* have written things.
Fanfic is about how a person has seen and speculated about a work; it is writing about things that could happen, might have happened under different circumstances and sometimes fanfic events exist because they could never happen. In seeking like-minded people to share with, fandoms can become networks of friends, to the extent that the thing that brought people together in the first place becomes secondary.


I think most authors ignore it. Some even see it as a good thing, given that fanfic writers are of necessity rabid fans of the book and can be guaranteed to buy everything they put out and issue free publicity. However, given that 'fair use' is in the eyes of the creator, if it all really, really bugs you, there's always the cease-and-desist letter.


Just my two cents.

Pay up? Osama bin Laden's showed up all right, but not on ice, not at the behest of the Bush camp and to all appearances healthy, tanned and rested. Terrorist appears on own initiative to mock presidential campaign(s) isn't the same as presidential campaign produces terrorist in order to gain political advantage. Have 10% of bet for mentioning Osama. :)

One thing's for sure, Osama will be laughing at the spin all the way to election day. Bleh.

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