Fanfiction

[Feo Takahari]

I think any kind of writing can be good practice for writing skills, so long as you put as much effort into it as you'd put into publishable writing. I also think it's a mistake to start writing based on publishable ideas when you haven't had enough practice to write those ideas with the quality they deserve. Fanfiction is one of the two unpublishable types of writing that's guaranteed to have an audience on the Internet, and while I myself went for the less savory type, I can understand why some people would prefer fanfiction to that.

 

[Ireth]

What's the other "unpublishable type" of writing?

 

[Feo Takahari]

^ I'll give you a hint: according to Avenue Q, the Internet's for it. (I think its audience has a lot more in common with fanfiction's audience than most people realize. Both give you leeway to create independent stories, and both are less picky than audiences for regular works, but both will eventually give up on you unless you give them what they want in the end. It's up to you to decide how much you want to prostitute your art.)

 

[Ghost]

So overall, the argument is that fanfiction is unproductive because it takes time and energy away from "real" writing. [...] I think too much emphasis is placed on fanfiction's apparent unproductiveness as an argument against it, because writing overall is not, generally, a productive hobby.

Interesting. Any fanfic I were to write would be a failure and a waste of time for me because my primary motivation is to tell my own stories. I need to tell something that touches the core of me, to write how I see the world. That's my personal measure of productive, in the sense that it's an achievement, but I hardly expect other people to abide by it. Your primary motivation is different. Achieving something meaningful within your fanfiction is good and that makes it worthwhile. It doesn't do the things I need or want it to do, so it isn't useful or cathartic or even entertaining in my case.

The part where you quoted me came after I mentioned how much writing takes out of me. Writing fanfiction would be like a false start, especially since I have dozens of original ideas and a desire for publication.

Because of the nature of fanfiction, there is a social aspect, a sharing of familiar characters, concepts, and places. You can take something you've encountered in media and write what you wish happened or what makes more sense to you. I envy the participatory element, and I certainly don't fault anybody for enjoying it. My point was that writing fanfiction doesn't appeal to me or suit my purposes, not that it's impossible for a writer to learn anything from fanfiction.

Oh, Feo, I wouldn't touch erotica with a 10 ft pole. (Pun not intended because I don't have the right naughty bits.) I would suck at it. (This pun is also not intended.) I tend to write around sex scenes or else it would be like..."He touched her hoo-ha and she was really happy, so she touched his no-no place and he was really, really happy. They had a baby."

 

[Ankari]

"He touched her hoo-ha and she was really happy, so she touched his no-no place and he was really, really happy. They had a baby."

LOL, I'm still chuckling at that. I would buy your book if it was written like that.

 

[JCFarnham]

LOL, I'm still chuckling at that. I would buy your book if it was written like that.

Comedic Erotica? That's genre in itself

 

[The Dark One]

Finally, to be honest, I think too much emphasis is placed on fanfiction's apparent unproductiveness as an argument against it, because writing overall is not, generally, a productive hobby. For most people here, I think, it is no more than a hobby. Sure, we'd like so get published and make money from it, but I'd be willing to bet most of us have full time jobs - in which case, all writing is unproductive as it is entertainment and does not contribute to the ability to put food on your table.

I disagree profoundly with this point. I've had a full time job the whole time I've been trying to become a writer. I see the whole of that experience as valuable and helping to push me along the road to publication.

Of course, if you want to write fanfic, then fine. But if you want to be a professional then at some point you have to write original stuff which can be sold to a publisher.

 

[ArielFingolfin]

I know I already made my point, and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I also wanted to point out that fanfic has helped me to explore other styles of writing. Right now in fanfic I'm delving into humor, something I never considered myself good at, and it's much easier for me to experiment in a preset world; then I can take what I've learned and apply it to my original stuff. So to restate my point (poor dead horse), I think it can be a great writing tool. However I agree with The Dark One (ominous name, by the way), if you want to be a professional writer you have to buckle down and take off the training wheels sometime.

 

[Anders Ämting]

To expand on my previous brief post: In general, I don't believe writing fanfiction is good practice for writing original fiction. Or rather, it can be, but only if you're doing it wrong. If you are doing it right, it's good practice for writing even more fanfiction.

Writing fanfiction is an excercise in immitation, the art of seeing potential stories in something you did not create and ultimately have limited control over. Even if the basis of the plot is your own idea, you still have to work with an established setting and established characters. You can take some liberties, of course, but go too far and next you'll find yourself writing a Game of Thrones fanfic where the whole cast are now modern day high school students acting wildly out of character, or something equally silly, and then you might as well replace all the names and congrats: you just wrote an original story. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it kinda misses the whole point.

Writing a good fanfic demands an intricate knowledge of the source material, a highly adaptable style and often the suppression of your own creativity. Make no mistake, this is hard. Most people can't do it, even really skilled and talanted writers, because those who write are creative people and creative people generally want to express their own individuality and don't work well with restrictive formats. I've read countless fanfics that were certainly well written and interesting, but that completely failed to capture the style and mood of the original.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Writing time should be a fun time. Why write what you don't enjoy? If you enjoy fan fiction then that's grand.

I don't any more, but I wouldn't care much if I did. Whether I get paid for it or not, writing should always feel like a hobby, something to get lost in, something to indulge your ego I suppose. When it's not? Well you may as well go and be a copywriter -shrug-

I think the main thrust of my argument is that any writing you do is practice, and honing the craft is never a waste of time especially if you're doing it in a way that you love.

This is true, but you could be spending that time writing something that you might also actually be able to earn money from. You can't (effectively) earn money from fanfic, but you can from original works. So if your goal is to earn money, you're better off not spending time on fanfic.

That said, maybe making money isn't your only goal, and you enjoy writing fanfic so much that you don't even care that you can't sell it -- it's too much fun not to write. In that case, go for it.

As usual, it's all about your goals.

 

[Christopher Wright]

You can't earn money playing video games either. Do you do that? You could be writing instead!

Do you read other people's books? You know, all that time you spent reading fiction other people wrote is taking away from your time writing your own fiction.

"It's unproductive" is the least compelling argument in the English language.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Writing a good fanfic demands an intricate knowledge of the source material, a highly adaptable style and often the suppression of your own creativity. Make no mistake, this is hard. Most people can't do it, even really skilled and talanted writers, because those who write are creative people and creative people generally want to express their own individuality and don't work well with restrictive formats. I've read countless fanfics that were certainly well written and interesting, but that completely failed to capture the style and mood of the original.

Capturing someone else's style is a skill of its own. Don Rosa was probably the grandmaster of it, but many comic book writers learn to write in the same style as the writers who worked on the same project before them, and any good television scriptwriter must learn how to write episodes that match the style imposed by the showrunner.

(This isn't something I normally think about, since the stories of which I normally think "This would make a good fanfic!" expand upon the lives and stories of characters who only got a few lines in canon. The one fanfic I ever wrote revolved around the unnamed courier in Mass Effect 2 who talked briefly of how a major character saved her life.)

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

You can't earn money playing video games either. Do you do that? You could be writing instead!

Do you read other people's books? You know, all that time you spent reading fiction other people wrote is taking away from your time writing your own fiction.

"It's unproductive" is the least compelling argument in the English language.

Not if your goal is to be productive.

Mostly what I'm saying is that if your goal is to write fiction for a living, you're better off writing your own material, and not fanfic. But if you really enjoy writing fanfic, then it may be worth it to you to write it (because it meets your secondary goal of enjoyment) even if it doesn't meet your primary goal (to become a successful author).

 

[Steerpike]

Not if your goal is to be productive.

Mostly what I'm saying is that if your goal is to write fiction for a living, you're better off writing your own material, and not fanfic. But if you really enjoy writing fanfic, then it may be worth it to you to write it (because it meets your secondary goal of enjoyment) even if it doesn't meet your primary goal (to become a successful author).

Yes, I agree with this. I don't think there is anything wrong with people writing fanfic, even though I don't write it or read it. But I think if your goal is to make a living writing fiction, there is nothing in furtherance of that goal that you will gain from fanfic that you can't gain from writing original material, and in writing original material you may be able to sell it.

 

[Chekaman]

I write My Little Pony fanfiction, being a Brony, I have also written Battle Royale fanfiction as well.

 

[Chilari]

Chekaman: my other half would love you. He can't get enough of MLP fanfic and he loves Battle Royale. For my part, I find quite a lot of MLP fanfic very disturbing indeed, though there was one where the mane six went to an alternate universe where everypony was the opposite sex from the canon universe. That was pretty cool.

 

[ArielFingolfin]

I think the heart of the question is whether or not writing fanfiction influences your writing. We can all agree that you can't write 24/7; you need a break, a time to recharge and let the creative pools refill. So if writing fanfic is part of that, I don't see the harm. I do see the harm in becoming too accustomed to letting someone else do the grunt work of building worlds and characters for you. So you can debate this all you want, but all in all I think it's something that differs from person to person.

 

[Koru Lunan]

I have been reading fanfiction for awhile, entertaining myself with the multitude of stories that I see people come up with, albeit some are good and some are not(in my opinion, at least). Like yourself, I have found fanfiction to be very easy to write for TV shows, especially the cancelled ones. I admit that I am a big Trekkie(Star Trek fan), and I often find myself creating different situations for the characters just to see how I believe they would react. It wasn't until three weeks ago that I actually decided to take up these ideas and write them down before starting to make them into stories. I suppose the reason I write fanfiction is that I can write something while taking it at my own pace, making it more enjoyable all the while. Though heaving deadline is a good motivator, and can inspire interesting ideas or twists on a story.