Technically, the original discussion that sparked this wasn't about the quality of fanfiction in general. Rather, it was about what I do feel is a legitimate problem with it: the way how fanfiction writers will often assume readers already know everything about the original work, and use this as an excuse to ignore all of the stage-setting of normal fiction.
The future of warfare in UC.
We've discussed why the "it doesn't provide world-building experience" is wrong in previous threads on the subject, I believe.
A brief summation from that thread: a TV show is constrained to limit the amount detail regard its world. So is a comic book. So are a lot of other things. Particularly for sci-fi and fantasy settings vast amounts of worldbuilding are left undone, which any author who spends much time there is going to have to fill in.
In general, most criticism on the subject is weirdly misinformed. People do rebuilds and re-imaginings. They radically reinterpret characters. They tell the story as a different sort of work from what it was. These are not uncommon things. People somehow assume these things don't happen and that fanfic writers endlessly repeat the existing story. People trying to faithfully novelize a movie or a game or something are very rare.
Nous restons ici.
Shadowed Philosopher
I tend to find that people who criticize fanfic haven't read much of it, which is not surprising. As such, many of the standard criticisms are simply wrong. By my experience, there's probably more passable writing in fanfic than there is in published original fic, if only by sheer size difference of the participating populations. Of course, it's sturgeon as Hell, so a fanfic reader has to trudge through metaphorical sewers in order to find the gems, but there are gems available.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
At least speaking for myself, I wasn't making that argument. Rather, I feel that (and I have definitely seen this happen) fanfic offers a strong temptation to ignore all kinds of setting the stage - not just world-building, but characterization/character development and plot. You assume that your readers know it all already.
Does this make fanfiction inferior to original fiction? No, and that shouldn't be what this thread is about. I think the more relevant question here, and the one that was being discussed earlier, is should fanfiction assume its audience are familiar with the original work?
edited 17th Feb '12 11:26:56 PM by nrjxll
Diagonalizing The Matrix
Putting spins and doing creative re-interpretations of canon is by far the thing fan fiction does the most. The question is whether these spins and re-interpretation are meaningful fiction on their own merits, or at all. I mean, the first page of Harry Potter fic on ff.net has this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
Just to make it clear, I'm not making a "lol look at this crap" argument, I'm sure there's plenty of original fiction which isn't that great either. I'm asking whether that is the kind of thing you're talking about. If it is, we can discuss whether premises of this sort have the supposed failings of fan fiction or not, instead of talking about hypotheticals.
edited 18th Feb '12 12:00:47 AM by TripleElation
Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
The future of warfare in UC.
Actually, I did have specific examples in mind. But several of them are unpublished, thought not all my own. Others are more anecdotal in nature but point to specific instances in my own work. Nobody Dies is decent example of the sort of work I'd have in mind. Chosen
is also a good example.
Sturgeon's Law in action, my friend.
Mind you, I don't necessarily agree with Night's argument in the first place. I'd just like to shift this away from a "versus" debate and onto that specific question, as it's going to cause less trouble.
vigilantly taxonomish
Yes. The primary appeal of the genre is stories involving familiar characters and worlds in new situations.
To an extent it might be necessary to explain some things. For example, if you were writing a Doctor Who fic you would probably need to explain what a Tenza was or who Beep the Meep was, because it's a vast franchise and nobody is going to be familiar with all of it. But it clearly wouldn't be necessary to explain who the Daleks were or what the TARDIS did, and if you did that your readers would just be impatient because they'd know all of that already.
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Not all Fan Fiction is bad. HPMOR is one of my favorite piece of fiction of any kind, ever.
However, I'd advise would-be fan fiction writers to ask themselves if they'd be better off filing off the serial numbers. Seriously, would Watchmen have been as good if Moore had went ahead with his original plan to use the Carlton Comics characters?
The future of warfare in UC.
Probably.
Nous restons ici.
vigilantly taxonomish
Yeah, I think it probably would have been. Both because Alan Moore is a capable writer and because you don't make something miraculously better by changing the characters' names and appearances but retaining their general personality traits.
I don't think fanfiction is intrinsically worse or less original than any other form of genre fiction. In practice, of course, most of the fanfiction you encounter is amateurly written with no proofreader, and consequently shite, while most genre fiction you encounter is published, which filters out the worst of it (one would hope). Original fiction on the Internet tends to be just as crappy as fanfiction tends to be.
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The Puzzler
That depends on who the audience is. If on a fan site of that fan fiction, they could or couldn't it is their choice. If the audience is somewhere other than a fan site or somewhere where there are multiple fans of media* the fan fiction should not, because the average reader might not know the canon.
Take me for example, the only media I regularly consume nowadays are Fiction and Non-Fiction books. I don't watch The Office nor Twin Peaks. I don't go to movies that often, and I can't play computer games at the moment. Anime is mostly foreign to me.
If I don't know the canon you assume that I know, then how do you expect me to be a good reader or editor?
Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.
Diagonalizing The Matrix
So I went reading the thing in your signature...
Dammit. NaruHina. You know my weakness.
Well, you know, this brings me to a story. A few months ago I specifically went reading a piece of Naruto fan fiction with a huge amount of internet critical acclaim (I'm not naming names). I was very disappointed- I mean, it was certainly better than the usual Sturgeon fare, but there were also several fundamental flaws of the "god, am I really reading this" kind. I went looking at the reviews and they were all praise, "awesome"s and "epic"s, without a single criticism- any suggestion to improve, even a wrong one, something, anything. I left a lengthy, if a little harsh, concrit on the review list, and the loyal fans nearly chewed my head off. Hisssss! Killl the disssenterrr!
At first I was very frustrated, and I thought the fan fiction community just has no standards if this level of writing is so "awesome" to it. Then I started thinking that maybe I'm just looking at things from the wrong perspective, and I'm the one with unfair standards. Maybe fan fiction is about getting excited about a fandom and having fun, and fan fiction that is decent+ should be appreciated instead of disparaged with a "pfah, it's clearly not perfect". I remembered reading and writing it when I was younger, and recalled suddenly that fan fiction was a community lubricant of sorts. Reading and writing fan fiction was a form of mingling. If someone had swept down on a fanfic by one of my favorite people and started criticizing it, I would have been up in arms along with everyone else, because that's what you do when some jerk who doesn't get it starts badmouthing a fic by a fandom buddy of yours.
In essence, a voice said "No, Ben, you are the unfun guy", and then Ben was a Stop Having Fun Guy.
I figured that the fanfic community has no standards, and this is probably a part of the natural order of things. You can love it, you can hate it, but it's probably not going anywhere. What I really wonder is why this is.
edited 18th Feb '12 2:12:32 AM by TripleElation
Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
vigilantly taxonomish
The more niche the audience, the more tolerant it is of mediocrity, and the more pronounced the echo chamber.
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For the most part, I don't read or write fanfiction - usually, the disconnect of characters that I know being written/presented in a different style than their original work prevents me from enjoying it, as does the conviction that it isn't 'real'.
The other thing, of course, is the ethics of writing it if the author doesn't approve. I know that if I were a published author, I wouldn't really want people writing badly-written porn that completely misses the point of my beloved characters.
Be not afraid...
One thing I never understood about fanfiction, is that characters are almost always completely different from what they were in the original story, and if not completely different, then they definitely constantly act out of character. Which just makes me wonder about just what exactly is the point of calling those stories fanfiction. What's the point of creating all those original characters and then giving them names of characters from some other story? I just don't get it.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
That tends to be a result of poor writing rather than anything intentional. Fanfiction is heavily affected by Sturgeon's Law.
Diagonalizing The Matrix
There's a whole flavor of fanfic dedicated to trying to avert this, but admittedly it's not very common.
edited 18th Feb '12 4:19:39 AM by TripleElation
Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
I draw stuff.
Well, there are plenty of people out there seeking notability. It becomes a lot easier to attract readers by associating the work with already-established material they're familiar with, even if it's obvious the only relation they have is the physical description of the characters.
And then there are those who can't seem to leave their comfort zones, in which every attempt to write fiction will be directed towards the fandom.
EDIT: That is, assuming you are not talking about crappy fanfics.
edited 18th Feb '12 4:48:32 AM by Fancolors
They think me mad
I do think it has some value as practice for people that don't want to have to make up characters themselves (I find actual world-building to be far less important beyond fleshing out the primary characters), but I don't think I've ever read any unpublished fanfiction that I've felt was particularly good, even by the rather low standards of internet fiction.
to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee
Honestly, I think fanty's question is a good one. I'm not a "fanfic hater" - I'm violently opposed to shipping, but I've read fanfic in general that I've enjoyed and even a few stories that were genuinely good - but it's hard to shake the feeling that a huge amount of what's written (and not just the bad stuff) isn't really the work of "fans" as such.
Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
If it makes you feel better, I'm a fanfic writer and reader who don't care for shipping in the least.
Regarding the discussion that sparked this whole thread: I think it's very nice if a fanfic makes sense to a non-consumer of the source material, but ultimately, 99% of readers are going to be fans of the source material: why else would they be searching for fanfics for it, after all? So I don't take any points off fanfics that make less sense to a non-fan.
It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
Shadowed Philosopher
@Triple Elation: I go to FF.net for wide readership and ego-stroking. I go to somewhere like Soulriders for concrit. Different communities have different standards.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)
Now that - the lack of standards, that is - is definitely an unquestionable failing of fanfiction.net, "fun" or not. But I agree with the above poster - it's hardly a universal thing to fanfiction as a whole. Generally, the more tightly focused the site, the higher the standards of quality will be.
We kind of had this argument on another thread, so here's a new thread for it. Is there a "problem with fan fiction", in theory or in practice?
I went googling for opinions pro- and anti- fan fiction to jump start the thread, and here are some I found.
Marcy Kennedy:
Strixvaria:
What it will not prepare you for, however, is world-building, which is the other half of the battle when you write, and is just as important as your ability to write. You can be a brilliant wordsmith, but without a story to tell and a world to tell it in, your talent is wasted. At the same time, you can have the most compelling story ever conceived, but if you don't know how to put it in words, there's not much you can do with it.
In short, writing fan fiction only partially prepares you for the "real deal".
HedgeMage:
It's like they're just too scared to ever leave their comfort zone, and why wouldn't they be? The fanfic community tends to do its own thing, not overlapping much with other types of writing, so it's easy to feel like a big fish in a small pond — to go from there to being a guppy in the ocean of original fiction is probably a jarring experience to say the least. Plus, if you are writing fanfic, we all know you aren't writing for publication, so it's not like not getting published would be a failure you might have to cope with. By not trying, you feel like you can't fail.
Adam Gurri:
As Jeff Atwood put it:
The process of writing is indeed a journey of discovery, one that will last the rest of your life. It doesn't ultimately matter whether you're writing a novel, a printer review, a Stack Overflow answer, fan fiction, a blog entry, a comment, a technical whitepaper, some emo Live Journal entry, or even meta-talk about writing itself. Just get out there and write!
If fanfiction is what gets you writing, then write. It doesn't mean you have to do it for the rest of your life! But whatever you are interested in doing enough to get you writing is good.
As a parallel, my mother wanted to discourage me from reading comics when I was a kid, but my father argued that anything which got me reading—even if it was reading with pictures—was a good thing.
People here have variously argued that fanfiction is a crutch, that it is limiting. But that is silly. It's limiting in the sense that you couldn't go and sell it, but other than that, it's an art form like any other. Some people here claimed you couldn't do world-building with it; that is wrong, because you can always build on top of the existing world the fandom is set in. You can always add characters to the ones already in the fandom, and you can always take the characters in a direction that was not obvious from the show, so good character building is also possible.
In short, there is nothing you can do in any other form of fiction writing that you can't do in fanfiction, and any skills you hone while writing the latter will help you in the former.
jalefkowit:
The problem is that you never learn anything without taking a risk, and so by hiding behind other peoples' characters fanfic writers stunt their own development. The way you learn how to write good characters and compelling stories is by writing bad and boring ones. The things you do wrong give you insight on how to do it right. But this never happens in fanfic, because you always have that world's established tropes to fall back on.
In other words, to tell great stories you have to be willing to fail completely, and fanfic writers aren't.
piersb:
Unfortunately it can be all too easy to spend all of your time there. If you think you'll enjoy it, write fanfic by all means. You'll certainly learn lessons from it and be able to take that knowledge forward into your later, original work.
[..]
Fanfic can be a great training ground for a writer; but it can also be a seductive echo chamber. Good fanfic, like good everything, is rare, and will receive a lot of praise. And leaving the nest can be a harsh experience if you're used to praise in the fanfic world, and find that you need other tools in your writer's toolbox to make it on the outside.
wwwwolf:
This isn't to say that writing for someone else's universe would be too bad in principle. It's just like writing things based on real world and history: it may need interesting research work to make your story fit with the rest of the established world.
Angel Wilson:
I’ve got news for you: I’ve seen some fan fiction that actually sounds better than some published books. I honestly see nothing wrong with fan fiction; it’s a way to hone your writing skills, experiment with characterization, and give your own spin on something you love. Granted, some of the ideas can be a bit…um…out there…but they are still ideas.