Raison d'Fanfic

[Horst or Rebecca J. Bohner]

Rosmerta wondered:

> But at that moment when you, as the would-be fanfic author, sit down
> at the PC and begin to type, what are you feeling? If you aren't
> stealing the creation of the very author that you profess to admire
> the most, then what is it (or borrowing, or appropriating, or
> whatever term you want to use)?

I think JKR is one of the few authors who understands what an incredibly
high compliment her fans are giving her by writing fanfic based on her work.
I totally understand and sympathize with those authors who feel squeamish at
the thought of reading "their" fanfic, and I'm even a bit surprised that JKR
doesn't have any trouble doing it:  because, as one popular and much-ficced
author said to me (loosely paraphrased), "If it's bad it'll only upset me,
and if it's good it'll influence my own vision and I don't want that to
happen."  But she, along with JKR, recognized how privileged she was to have
fanfic being written about her characters and her setting.  She understood
that it was proof that her story had powerfully affected her readers and
taken on a life of its own in their minds.

Fanfic authors are not plagiarists:  they do not try to pass off somebody
else's work as their own.  Rather, they take characters who in their own
minds have assumed mythic dimensions and they write stories about them to
help express their longing for more adventures, more knowledge, of those
characters.  There's no sense of stealing, or cheating, about it.  The
writer or reader of fanfic is simply scratching an imaginative itch, working
out a theory on paper of what might have happened here or might yet happen
there.  But if and when the original author writes her version of the same
events, there's no question which one takes precedence.

> And with all the efforts of various emotional and physical kinds that
> go into writing anything, fanfic very much included, how does it feel
> when it's all over to have written something that is derivitive in
> the literal sense, derived from someone *else's* brainchild? With a
> little more effort (okay, a LOT more, since the initial genius spark
> is the biggest thing) couldn't you be writing your own "stuff?"

As an original author as well as a fanfic author, I entirely disagree that
"the initial genius spark is the biggest thing".  The biggest thing is the
long hours of creative stewing and plain hard work you put into working out
the idea.  Ideas themselves are a dime a dozen:  but writers with the
commitment, the patience, and the talent to credibly develop those ideas and
draw readers into them are far more rare.

Also, every fanfic begins with an original idea.  Just because the setting
isn't entirely original (and what setting is?  Even fantasy authors draw on
medieval history, folklore and mythology for their material) and the
characters aren't entirely original (and what characters are?  We all tend
to base characters on aspects of ourselves or people we know) doesn't mean
that the story isn't original, and that writing it isn't just as much hard
work as an entirely self-created work would be.  In fact, fanfic actually
requires *more* discipline and skill in some respects, because you are not
merely writing a story with setting and characters of your own invention,
you are writing with a setting and characters already well known to your
readers and you are thus obligated to convince them that you are writing
about the *same* setting and characters with which they are familiar.
That's hard work, and a real achievement to do well.  (And many fanfic
authors never accomplish it, which is why there is so much lousy fanfic out
there -- but it's also why a really good fic is a major achievement.)

> but moral and/or inspirational). I write--hell, I'm a professional
> writer if you mean that I do it full time and get paid for it--but I
> would never, ever cross that line into using anyone else's material,
> nonfiction or fiction, ever.

Every author uses somebody else's material for something, whether it's
research or inspiration or the development of one's individual style.  Every
author is influenced by other authors, other stories, other characters.  If
you were passing off somebody else's writing as your own, you would be a
plagiarist.  But you aren't.  And neither are the fanfic authors.

> ago on the main list that suggested fanfic was around to fill in the
> holes in the primary work......is HP fanfic around mostly because
> it's still a work in progress?

I can't speak for every author, but personally I write fanfic to tell a
story that either the author never got around to telling, or that I suspect
he or she is never going to tell.  And it really doesn't matter whether that
author is alive or dead.

For instance, C.S. Lewis is never, ever going to tell us exactly how Cor and
Aravis finally stopped quarrelling and decided to get married.  But it'd
make a great fanfic.  JKR is probably never going to tell us about Snape's
childhood, at least not in any detail.  But several people have written
about it.  (Now, if JKR *does* tell us about Snape's childhood in a
forthcoming book, then those fanfics are going to be outdated, or else have
to go into the "Alternate Universe" basket.  Unless, of course, the author
actually guessed correctly what JKR was going to say about Snape's
childhood... that's happened on occasion, too.)

A lot of fanfic is generated by the desire to see one's favorite
character(s) romantically involved with a worthy object of affection.  When
the parent work doesn't actually spend a lot of time on romance, fanfic
often scratches that itch.  Witness the enormous load of X-FILES fanfic
centering around speculation on how Mulder and Scully might finally get
together, for instance.  There used to be a lot of DS9 Odo/Kira stories when
it didn't seem like they'd ever fall in love; when they finally did get
together on the show, the fanfic changed to reflect that.  People stopped
writing "How O/K got together" stories and started writing "Things that
happened in O/K's relationship that DS9 didn't show us" stories.

Even if a work is "completed", the story never is.  Especially if it's a
good story.  So technically, any and every story is a possible candidate for
fan fiction.  But certain genres tend to attract certain kinds of fans, and
I dare say that the more imaginative genres attract the more imaginative
fans, which is why SF and Fantasy have so much fanfic written about them,
mysteries and westerns have less (except for the enormous flood of Sherlock
Holmes fanfiction), and mainstream fiction hardly any at all.  (But there
are notable exceptions to that rule.  Look at all the Jane Austen fanfic,
for instance.)
--
Rebecca J. Bohner
rebeccaj at pobox.com
http://home.golden.net/~rebeccaj