Books

It’s been almost a year since I last blogged. A lot has happened, but these days, I don’t feel much like personal or recreational writing—not even on a blog. That said, sometimes A Thing makes me so infuriated that I can’t bottle it in and need to get it out somehow.

This was posted in one of my writing groups, and I think it’s probably the last straw for my interest in belonging there.

The text reads:

Side Note To Fan Fic Authors

Here’s the thing.

I read a lot of scripts. A lot. From professionals to aspiring writers to complete newbies. Features and pilots. Specs and treatments.

And 8 times out of 10 the fan fic I’ve read over the last, oh, fifteen years is leagues better than this stuff. It’s more inspired. It’s more compelling. It’s genre bending and creative and heartfelt. It’s well-paced and funny and sexy and meaningful. It’s smart and thoughtful and good. It’s novel-quality. Better than, sometimes.

Rare is the script I don’t want to put down, but how often have we stayed up until 3am to get to the last chapter of a 100k fic? And it’s not even a fan fic author’s day job. This is what they do on the side. In their spare time. For free.

So my point is, fan fic authors, you’re good. You’re good writers and great storytellers. I know it doesn’t always feel like it, especially if you’re one of the authors who’s not a BNF and doesn’t get the hits/notes that a few do. And because some people still view fic as “not real writing.” You guys know the shit that gets made into movies. You’re better than that. So be better than that. If writing is what you think you want to do, then just know you’re already doing it. you’ve already started.

There is so much wrong with this take that it’s going to take a while to unpack it.

First, I need to be honest about two things: One, I was a prolific fan fic author about 10 years ago. And I was GOOD. I had slow start, but then I found myself with lots of readers. I had very, very little negative feedback. In fact, the only few truly nasty comments I can recall came from beta readers. I was popular. Even now, I still open my email at least a few times a month to find that a new reader has found my nearly-decade-old fics and loves them. In a sea of brand new writing, much of which I think is superior to mine, this blows me away.

The second thing I should be honest about is that I wanted to be a published author and thought I could do a decent job because I was good at writing fan fic. It’s possible I’m selling myself short, but I don’t know if I was that good. I certainly never enjoyed the popularity I did as a fan fic author. I have no idea whether this is because I was genuinely better at fan fic or if I was never that great but people in fandoms sometimes enjoy things even when they’re not stellar. I know I have.

So let’s get to that bizarre word-vomit about how fan fic authors are apparently “better writers” than people sending in what looks to be screenplays (not really the same thing as “scripts,” which then makes me question exactly what this person does and if they are being honest about their job).

In no way am I saying here that fan fiction isn’t legitimate writing or isn’t often really good or that anyone isn’t a “real writer” if they create it. Just getting that out of the way.

Scripts and screenplays are an entirely different beast from novels. Even if I was at one point a good fan fic writer, there is no possible way I could’ve written a script. That’s a skill set I do not possess. I suppose it’s one I could learn, but no, my prior writing skill does not lend itself to that automatically. Right off the bat, this is a terrible comparison.

For argument’s sake, though, let’s pretend that this is the same skill set. I find it hard to believe that 8 out of 10 fan fictions are, in fact, better than attempts at screenplays. Has this person ever read some of the awful, trashy fan fics out there? My guess is that the person skips the bad ones and reads the ones they prefer. Fan fic readers are generally not doing so for the purpose of offering reviews or critiques the way book reviewers do, and they certainly aren’t getting paid to evaluate the quality. Therefore, most readers pick and choose the things that interest them. They might read a wide range, but they will still remain limited to things they thought looked interesting from the summary or the pairing or the fandom or whatever.

Which brings me to a related point. A person who is paid to read every script that crosses their desk doesn’t have the choice of deciding it’s in a genre they don’t care for or has a premise they find uninteresting. If they aren’t checking themselves and considering what other people might enjoy, they could easily think something is “uninspired” if it simply isn’t in their preferred genre or style or lacks elements they wish it had, even if it’s in their favorite genre. Someone who loves overt romantic subplots might be extremely disappointed by most Marvel movies, even if that person adores superheroes and action films. Does that truly make the MCU full of “uninspired” films? No, obviously not just based on that one thing.

Then we have the problem of praising fan fiction authors for being all these things the original writer suggests these screenwriters are not: creative, inspired, great storytellers. That’s a troubling sentiment for several reasons.

Fan fiction is terrific and fun, but here’s the deal: it is always based on someone else’s creative work. We can argue whether those works were all that good in the first place (see: all the discussions in the Harry Potter fandom). But what we can’t do is attribute all the creative genius to fan fic writers. They (we) are operating with certain elements already in place. There’s not only a built-in world and characters with ready-made personalities, there’s also an audience that knows the original story (canon) and multiple fan-created offshoots (fanon). Nobody has to explain in a fan fic how Iron Man came to be or what expelliarmus is or any number of other details. It’s expected that readers will know what’s up going in.

It is extremely easy to be inspired when writing in a world we know and love. Not only do we have relief from having to build everything from scratch, we also have these characters and worlds in our hearts. We love them. The authors who created them sparked something inside us, and we are letting out the joy these people and places bring us.

I can say from experience that these skills do not readily translate to original fiction. Sure, some do. But I didn’t find that it was easy to balance world building with storytelling and not simply info-dump on my readers. When I wrote a love story between two characters, I didn’t have the luxury of having readers already know their history together. I had to figure out a way to work that into the story. I also had to develop the same adoration and joy regarding my original characters. I had to learn to love them in the same way I loved the ones in the fan fics I wrote. I had to know them as intimately as I felt I knew the existing fictional characters. That’s much easier said than done for some of us.

There’s a common argument that all fiction borrows from or is inspired by other stories, and this is true. But it’s very different to have something that draws on elements of other stories and feeds into readers’ interest in those stories or that genre, vs. having a story directly written from a specific work (especially one that’s published and not in the public domain).

Now we come to the idea of doing it for free in their spare time. The person who wrote this seems to be unaware that a majority of original fiction authors are also doing it in their spare time. It is not easy to earn a living as an author. Most people have to have another source of income or be supported by someone else. Some of us reach a point where it’s no longer sustainable and we need to return to full time work elsewhere. For all writers, fan fic and original works, we often make sacrifices, including giving up writing for a season or permanently. Let’s not make fan fiction writers into some kind of martyrs here.

It’s really important to point out that there’s a reason fan fic authors do it for free: they aren’t allowed to make money from it unless the original is in the public domain. If it’s not under copyright, go for it. Publish away. But if that sucker is still under copyright, you’d better be able to do more than file off the serial number before you send it to a publisher. People writing fan fiction make a choice to write things that can’t earn money, and that is absolutely fine. They’re not somehow being held back by unreasonable laws governing plagiarism and theft of work.

Not only that, there is nothing wrong with doing something as a hobby, even if it’s something that theoretically could be monetized. Just because a person chose to write in their free time doesn’t mean anything special, any more than someone who skis on the weekend necessarily should be held aloft for how awesome and hardworking they are for “giving up” their free time to enjoy a hobby. That’s not to say there’s anything bad about having fan fic writing as a hobby; on the contrary, it’s a great thing to enjoy. It simply isn’t some kind of heroic act to engage in a hobby just because one is good at it.

I am all for people writing fan fiction and for fan fic writers to give it a go writing original fiction if they want to. What I’m not in favor of is pitting fan fiction writers against other kinds of writers without examining the conditions and nuances. We need to stop putting pressure on fan fiction authors to write original stories for money unless that is their own goal. We need to stop treating fan works as “not real writing.” But we also need to stop acting as if fan fiction is “better” than original works as compensation for all the criticism fan fiction gets. We need to acknowledge that there is as much crappy, problematic, badly written, uninspired fan fiction as there is original fiction, we just tend to skip reading those.

When people make these terrible comparisons, rather than being uplifting, it’s disappointing and has the opposite effect. It’s entirely possible to celebrate fan fiction without trash-talking original works.