On fanfic

[deelaundry]

I've been thinking about this anonymous quote I recently saw: 

"If the writers of fanfic really had any talent then they wouldn't be relying on already established characters/people and scenarios."

It's a comment oft-repeated, and I'm thinking it must be true.  I mean, authors with any sort of talent at all always create brand new characters and settings with every piece they write.

Agatha Christie - Ian Fleming - Sue Grafton - C.S. Lewis - Robert Ludlum - A.A. Milne - J.K. Rowling - J.R.R. Tolkein

Always!

Comments

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Shakespeare. Homer. Virgil. Ovid. T.H. White. Jean Rhys.

People who make that argument sadden me because they clearly haven't put much thought into what they say.

I know a woman who teaches fanfic as part of a freshman comp course, and she always gets comments like those and opens a discussion with the question of originality and what constitutes it.

[galaxygirl76.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right. I'm even inclined to say that it's harder to write fan fiction because of the whole being based on already existing characters thing. I mean you're playing with someone else's toys, toys that already have existing character traits and already existing canon. Not to mention obsessive fans that will nitpick everything that is not IC.

My opinion of course.

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

*points up* Agreed.

And who in the world believes every published author actually has talent, anyway? There's some great fanfic out there as surely as there are some terrible published works.

[daisylily.livejournal.com]

I totally agree - I think it (potentially) takes a lot more effort to borrow someone else's characters.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

My oft-repeated reply is that Homer's Achilles and Odysseus, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and David Shore's House are all -- GASP! -- based on literary precedents. And yet, somehow, we find them entertaining, despite that flaming lack of originality :D

[purridot.livejournal.com]

Hee, fast-fingers bironic beat me to the argument while I was spell-checking :-)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*blows imaginary smoke off finger-gun*

I think it's amusing -- and telling -- that we as House fans have no problem with House & Wilson/fellows being inspired by Holmes & Watson but we berate the writers/producers for failing to do anything original with them after the first season.

[dangomango.livejournal.com]

Hmm. And here I thought we had fanfic writers to correct all the problems we find with the writing on television shows.
Probably unfair to say while the strike is going on, but I blame most of the bad writing on moronic corporate people worried about offending speshul snowflakes, so I stand by it.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

Those who can - read and write fanfic.
Those who can't - gripe about fanfic on the internet. Because that's a MUCH more productive activity. ;)

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

And of course fanfic writers are always so busy relying on those already-established characters that we never create any interesting or memorable OCs of our own.

*coughJackcoughcoughChurchcough*

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget Martin and all your other wonderful characters. And I'd have to say I'm pretty proud of Viv and Eli and a few of the other "original fictional" characters I've created.

[xaipw.livejournal.com]

Almost every character that one comes across in Ancient Greek drama or poetry is not an original character. If fanfic is good enough for Homer, than it's good enough for me.

And what about books like The Seven Percent Solution? Fanfic! Bloody good fanfic! Or Wicked?

That quote came from DL, didn't it? Those queens will bitch about anything.

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

Of course.
And let's not mention last year's Pulitzer Prize in Literature (http://www.geraldinebrooks.com/march.html), which technically took someone else's characters and wrote an entirely new work ...

[rainsquall.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about Milton!

[spoopy.livejournal.com]

All ideas are inspired by other ideas or concepts in some way, therefore maybe one could argue that nobody essentially has talent. Kind of like that old cynical adage, "You're unique, just like everyone else".

Has this anon person ever visited the sci-fi section of a bookstore? Because if they have, they'll no doubt have come across that huge section they have in every bookstore of Star Trek novels written by fans. Or the BtVS/Angel section of the bookstore? Or what about the fact that season five of Xena was written by a well-known fanfic writer from the Xena fandom (or so I was told)?

The principle of that anon's comment could be applied to so many other aspects of creativity. "If singers/musicians had any talent they wouldn't do covers of already famous songs; they'd write their own", for example. It's such a shallow, narrow-minded argument.

edited, for i fail at html

[tripperfunster.livejournal.com]

Yes! So true! And if I had any talent as an artist, I certainly wouldn't waste it drawing fanart! I'd be, um ... drawing .. rainbows and unicorns.

[daisylily.livejournal.com]

I wonder what that person would say about me including God as a character in my fics?... XD

People who say things like that aren't writers.

When I was in Star Trek fandom we had a huge discussion once about someone (another anonymous) having once said that there were only seven possible plots for a story, and every single story, whoever it was written by, would fit one (or more) of those plots.

[joe-pike-junior.livejournal.com]

Not only is it a shallow, narrow-minded argument, it's a facile and tired one as well.

It takes a supreme lack of insight to assume that the only talented writers (artists, whatever) are the ones creating original characters. Settings, tones, moods, emotions, styles -- do these not have something to do with the creative process?