Fanfiction/speculation

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 31269

Gwen,

thank you for re-opening this topic.  As I said a week or so ago (see 
post #30356), I sense a fairly fundamental divide between writers and 
canon-readers, and had rather given up on any fanfic writers being 
prepared to discuss it.

This discussion also touches on an earlier one Pippin and I had with 
Steve, in which we pointed out that the Lexicon effectively includes 
decisions about probabilities - these could be seen as a very 
specialised form of fanfic, particularly when further deductions are 
based on these probabilities.

I agree totally that the lines between deduction, speculation and 
fiction are blurred, and that many of the speculations put forward 
could be re-expressed as fanfic.

Gwendolyn Grace wrote:

> I know folks have had the fanfic/canon discussion before, but I 
still find
> it interesting that people draw out elaborate speculations and 
theories and
> in some ways stray well out of what canon confirms, but because 
they don't
> explore their ideas in a narrative, they don't call it fanfiction, 
and they
> state that they don't read fanfic.
>  
> To me, writing fanfic in the HP verse is one way of organizing my 
thoughts,
> theories, and speculations into a framework that takes into account 
as much
> of canon as we've been given, and addresses those issues and 
questions which
> are left unanswered at the present.

This is interesting, because I suspect that this, while doubtless 
true for many fanfic writers, is not the main reason for their 
writing fanfic.  It would not be for me, should I find a way to do 
so: I would see it as a stepping stone to writing fiction which is 
not tied to any previous creation.

> Huge questions. IMO, we could sit around our computers and debate 
the merits
> of answer after answer after answer, each one as potentially valid 
as the
> next. But I don't think one necessarily is faced with all the 
consequences
> of any decision on any issue until one tries to weave those 
decisions back
> into the world JKR created. Frankly, I don't think she was 
necessarily faced
> with all the consequences of earlier decisions until they became 
important
> later.

I agree strongly with this, though I don't see fanfic writing, in the 
sense of composing a narrative, as necessary to do this. Your 
(snipped) example of how portraits might work did not strike me as 
fanfic in form.  Indeed I would say that all your posts are written 
in a form which eschews the use of a narrative to make their point.  
Are you saying that expressing your conclusions in relatively 
abstract logical form (as I think you do) costs you extra work 
because it is alien to the way you reach those conclusions?  I would 
say that one could do everything you describe below without doing 
what I think of as fanfic.  So, yes incorporate an arbitrary decision 
and make a deduction, but just remember that it was arbitrary, and at 
the same time hold the alternative possibilities in mind.

> I guess that's the part of the writing process, the search for 
internal
> consistency, that makes it difficult to think "What if" without also
> examining how the world and the characters in that world would 
incorporate
> the new and often arbitrary decisions that must be made in order to 
proceed.
> And by internal, I mean reconciling the derivative work or, in this 
case,
> theory, with the original set of information and clues, not just 
making sure
> that the derivative work is consistent with itself or even that the
> canonical work is consistent with itself (we know it's not always). 
I'm
> talking about a theoretical consistency that enables the derivative 
writer
> to be *fairly confident* that he is not removing the theory from the
> framework of the original altogether.
>  

> For those of you who can speculate and theorize without turning to 
the
> actual writing of fanfiction, how is it that you keep track of all 
the
> interwoven details to keep things straight? How do you determine 
your handle
> on the characters and how they'd react to the kinds of questions we 
at HP4GU
> attempt to answer?

The answer is, 'I don't know, I just do', I'm afraid.

> How do you keep your speculative colourization from
> tinting the limited black-and-white print of the books?

Oh, that's impossible.  The only corrective is the other folks on the 
list.  And *that's* why we need for the fanfic-writing community not 
to disappear into its own world, but to continue to argue the toss 
about H/H v R/H, or Hermione's age, or how Harry is special, or what 
the gleam means, in terms that the rest of us can understand.  Let me 
repeat that: we NEED the fanfic writing community to remain engaged 
with us in discussion.  Not all of us are *able* to discuss on the 
fanfic writer's terms.

> Where do you decide
> to cut off your horizons and edges and place your vanishing points 
so that
> you keep everything in perspective without creating a canvas that 
is either
> too widely or too narrowly focused?

I don't understand this question.

I am a non-fanfic reader because of opportunity, not principle.  
Given different circumstances, I would love to read fanfic 
(admittedly because it's by people I know more than for any other 
reason).  However, I feel that fanfic *writing*, as well as requiring 
the logical discipline you mention above, also requires a creative 
gift which I'm not sure I possess.  IOW, I'm not sure that the 
writing of fanfic as a means of clarifying canon speculation is 
actually open to me as a possibility.  So for me the answer to all 
those 'How do you...' questions is 'How else can I...?'

David