# Fanfic writing isn't BAD



## GraemeLion (Aug 6, 2009)

Sheesh.

I see a lot of people apologizing for having written fanfiction.  I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  Writing is writing.   Yes, fanfiction does pull the character creation out of your hands.  That is detrimental if you ever want to be a published author.  However, it also allows you the opportunity to explore a world you know further and to enhance your writing skills.

Character design is something authors must eventually learn, but it's not the only something that authors must learn.  There are a variety of plot concerns, grammar, spelling, structure, and marketing tools an author also needs to know that lead to publishing.  

The greatest visual artists of our time copied other people's artwork in an attempt to learn the craft.  Many works of art out there are based off earlier works of art.  Many of Shakespere's writings borrow heavily from other stories and their worlds.

People need to stop treating fanfiction like some cursed black mark that they have to hide from others.  If you write it,  learn from it, and it makes you a better writer, it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Just so long as you understand that eventually, you're going to have to take the training wheels off to get to the next level.

(And ironically, if you get really good, you might be commissioned to write 'licensed works.'  That means you get to put the training wheels back on  )


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## Tiarhlu (Aug 6, 2009)

Well there's just so much BAD fanfiction out there that people have knee jerk reactions the second you say you do it. It tends to be a harboring point for Mary Sues and poor characterization.

I think most of the fanfiction I've done has been quite good. With the exception of one, there were always new characters so I got to wet my creation chops.


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## GraemeLion (Aug 6, 2009)

Tiarhlu said:


> Well there's just so much BAD fanfiction out there that people have knee jerk reactions the second you say you do it. It tends to be a harboring point for Mary Sues and poor characterization.
> 
> I think most of the fanfiction I've done has been quite good. With the exception of one, there were always new characters so I got to wet my creation chops.



Well, that is true.  Fanfic does harbor some pretty bad fic.  IT's just that I see people that say things like : "Sadly, I just write fanfic" , or "it's fanfic, so it doesn't count."

Those type of statements make me bristle.

One of the best writers I've ever seen writes fanfic.  Published author, and he writes fanfic.  Because it's fun for him.


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## panzergulo (Aug 6, 2009)

Fanfic is good if it's written well. Sure, those who aren't interested about the setting/universe the fanfic writer uses aren't necessarily interested about their works, but it doesn't mean it's written poorly. I have never written a true fanfic I can remember, although I borrow a lot from other works. In a sense, you can't avoid it. Every storyteller takes something old and something new and makes a soup of their own from it. The more influences the better, I often think. It blurs the seams nicely. A fanfic writer just takes this to another level and uses a lot more borrowed material. But it doesn't take away from the storytelling value of the story.

I read a pretty good Star Wars fanfic a year ago. It didn't really borrow anything but the setting. All the characters were the writer's own. It was rather interesting. The only downside is that I read it on a site that isn't anymore. Pity, as such.

I think the bad stigma of fanfic writing is because of Mary Sues... Tiarhlu has a point there. Nothing caresses a young writer's ego better than picking the hottest character they can think of and create a character of their own (alter ego) and set these two into a romance setting... or just into a sex scene... Or, alternatively, put the alter ego to rescue the original characters of the setting or defeating the original villains of the setting. Yeah, I bet there's a lot of bad, bad fanfic out there. I rarely read any kind of fanfic, so I can't tell for sure.


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## duroc (Aug 6, 2009)

There are good examples out there, you just gotta look for 'em.

This may or may not qualify, but it's still excellent.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/775216/


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## SailorYue (Aug 6, 2009)

faanfiction is a great way for a would-be writer to get started. especially if you make OC's

my mom when she saw me writing FF wuld say im plagerizing. FF technically IS, but as long as you use a disclaimer its not stealing, its "borrowing" 

ice only started writing one of my OS's, but im having trouble with FF ideas waking up and filling my mind with mush -_-


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## Asswings (Aug 6, 2009)

SailorYue said:


> faanfiction is a great way for a would-be writer to get started. especially if you make OC's
> 
> my mom when she saw me writing FF wuld say im plagerizing. FF technically IS, but as long as you use a disclaimer its not stealing, its "borrowing"
> 
> ice only started writing one of my OS's, but im having trouble with FF ideas waking up and filling my mind with mush -_-



I hope you correct your horrible spelling when you write stories.


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## SailorYue (Aug 6, 2009)

Ticon said:


> I hope you correct your horrible spelling when you write stories.


the only words i misspelled in that post were fan and ive. get a life instead of baging on somone who makes a few typos


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (Aug 6, 2009)

Fanfic is overdone. As with ever other bloated medium/subject, there are some good and bad parts, and generally a lot of surrounding negative stereotypes.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 7, 2009)

I see it more as a stepping stone to better kinds of writing, like the OP said.  Training wheels.
I've never done it, though.  Never read any of it, either.  I like original works for what they are, and I don't much care to read someone else's interpretation or expansion of it.  Nor do I care to write my own.
But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing to get into.  Just, I hope most people realize that it's not particularly fruitful.  They should only write it because it's fun, because you're really probably not going to get much more out of it than that.

Maybe some day, just because I can, I should try writing a fanfic of something.  I've honestly never done it... never even considered doing it.  But it could be amusing, I guess.  I'd have to pick something with really bland characters, though, because I'd never be able to write something using characters I actually like.



> the only words i misspelled in that post were fan and ive.


And 'would'.  Also, 'im' is not a word.  
We all do appreciate proper spelling and punctuation in this forum, though.  Please try a little harder, if only because it's polite.  Mostly because it avoids attracting negative attention.


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## SailorYue (Aug 7, 2009)

i DO try. and i DIDNT misspell would.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 7, 2009)

> my mom when she saw me writing FF *wuld* say im plagerizing.



All you really need to do is to capitalize the words you're supposed to and to add appropriate apostrophes to contractions.  Believe me, it won't take you but an added 0.06 Calories of extra effort, and it will make your posts look 200% more worthwhile.  And no one will get on your case ever again.
That's all I'm saying on the subject, so that the thread doesn't stray from the original topic.

Anyway, do sprite comics like 8-Bit Theater count as fanfiction?  Or is that something else entirely?


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## foozzzball (Aug 7, 2009)

Fanfiction is a trap because inevitably it gets written with the hope that other fans will pick it up, read it, and admire you.

It's the 'I'm gonna be a big fish in this here small pond' issue. This can be dangerous. It's why furry authors should write (and read) plenty of non-furry material, too.


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## SailorYue (Aug 7, 2009)

foozzzball said:


> Fanfiction is a trap because inevitably it gets written with the hope that other fans will pick it up, read it, and admire you.
> 
> It's the 'I'm gonna be a big fish in this here small pond' issue. This can be dangerous. It's why furry authors should write (and read) plenty of non-furry material, too.


well getting positive feedback is a great thing. i rarely got bad feedback, except this one n00b who said i was alot like the character i was writing about, which i didnt understand.


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## Lamont (Aug 7, 2009)

Isn't fanfiction just porn for people who have 56kb dial-up?

Jokes aside, fanfiction is actually becoming well known and widespread across the world. It isn't bad at any means. Everything merging into popularity needs time to fit in and get used to. There's a fanfic competition at this anime convention that I'll be going to tomorrow. I wonder what it will be like. 

(Hmm. Does anyone think that fanfiction has become quite popular because of the rise of otakuism? I see a link, but I know that fanfiction can be based off a lot of things and not just anime. Just a thought.)


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## panzergulo (Aug 7, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Anyway, do sprite comics like 8-Bit Theater count as fanfiction?  Or is that something else entirely?



'8-Bit Theater' is a parody, I think. In parody you don't usually use the original characters of the setting, but you use a representative of each character in it (e.g. 'Bored With The Rings'). In case of some parody the names are so general you can't really change them, which I think is the case with '8-Bit Theater'. "The black mage" isn't a name, it's a profession, a rank and a way of life... Well, the webcomic actually uses it as the name of the character if I remember correctly... but anyway, the character isn't the same as in the game, or, in other words, he is a strong exaggeration of the character, as are all characters in that webcomic.

Yup. It's a parody, not fanfiction.


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## foozzzball (Aug 7, 2009)

SailorYue said:


> well getting positive feedback is a great thing. *i rarely got bad feedback*, except this one n00b who said i was alot like the character i was writing about, which i didnt understand.



Darling, sweetiepie, muffincakes.

That right there is the problem with fanfiction.

If you had gotten enough bad feedback you would know that the shift key, which you have helpfully used to make your emoticon have a big eye and a squinty eye, is also to be used at the beginning of sentences and at the beginning of proper nouns - 'I' is a proper noun.

And don't protest that this is just acceptable laziness, or me being pedantic, because by getting in the habit of writing clear text in all contexts you are reflexively going to write clear prose that will reqiure less editting. There is no way this can be a bad thing.

Positive feedback is a great thing _if_ you are full of enough bile and self-loathing to consistently pick apart your own work and determine why it is awful. If you are not, other people have to do it for you.

(Also the n00b was probably trying to tell you that you had written one of these --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_sue#Self-insertion)


Also!



Lamont said:


> Jokes aside, fanfiction is actually becoming well known and widespread across the world. It isn't bad at any means. Everything merging into popularity needs time to fit in and get used to. There's a fanfic competition at this anime convention that I'll be going to tomorrow. I wonder what it will be like.



Boy. A fanfic competition at an _anime convention_. Wow, fanfic's clearly a serious literary art form!

You know what fanfic is? Fanfic is a party game to play on the internet. If you take it more seriously than that you have serious problems - the artistic merits of fanfiction, as an artform, are debatable. It is a meaningless game played between fans of a given work. The only possible arguments in its favour are tied to specific works - specific works do not an artform make.

There is something related to fanfic but only the mad attempt to link it up with fanfic, and that is 'intertextuality'. An example of 'intertextuality' is East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. This is a retelling of Genesis within the context of (it is claimed) his family history.

(You could also claim parody falls under the banner of fanfic - but, really, is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fanfic? _Really?_)


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## GraemeLion (Aug 7, 2009)

Actually, Fooz, I'll have to find it, but there was a symposium regarding the effects of fanfic on the "new authors" that are coming out into print with original stuff now. 

It's an interesting read, and the result is that a lot of these authors publicly allow fanfic because of how they got started.   It's curious to also see authors use Creative Commons and choose to not have the "No Derivatives" on their work.   That's defacto allowing fan fiction.

Plus, the Ring Of Fire series actually solicits fan fiction and publishes it in electronic form as part of the "Grantville Gazette."  Some of those get published in print form.

The world is changing.  Authors are finding that their worlds can be expanded upon if done correctly, and then more money can be made off the expansions.


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## foozzzball (Aug 7, 2009)

redcard said:


> Actually, Fooz, I'll have to find it, but there was a symposium regarding the effects of fanfic on the "new authors" that are coming out into print with original stuff now.



'New Authors', huh? Then they're liable to be under twenty five and, hence, generally being promoted on the basis of 'young and hip and awesome' rather than 'writes decently'.

I'd like to point out that you can learn from games. That's the point behind many of the old kind. This doesn't change the fact that they're inconsequential.

Also, there are symposiums on every topic imaginable. People take silly things far too seriously. (I'm one of those people, but with different silly things to you.)



> It's an interesting read, and the result is that a lot of these authors publicly allow fanfic because of how they got started.   It's curious to also see authors use Creative Commons and choose to not have the "No Derivatives" on their work.   That's defacto allowing fan fiction.


Allowing fan fiction makes a lot of sense from a business perspective - this is getting people to engage heavily with the work and thus discuss and promote it for you. This isn't an endorsement of an artform.



> Plus, the Ring Of Fire series actually solicits fan fiction and publishes it in electronic form as part of the "Grantville Gazette."  Some of those get published in print form.


Eyeballing this, I don't view it as fanfic in the usual sense. This kind of thing has been going on as long as intellectual property has existed - see tie in novels for movies, games, tv shows. (Equally, these fall prey to similar problems of typically being dreck. There are exceptions, but, rule of thumb? They're trash.)



> The world is changing.  Authors are finding that their worlds can be expanded upon if done correctly, and then more money can be made off the expansions.


No, more money can be made off the fanatical fanbase who have been encouraged to engage in the communally masturbatory exercise of writing fanfic.

Frankly, people who try and pass off fanfic as a serious literary endeavour are barking up the wrong tree, and I will explain why, very briefly, in three statements.

1 - Fanfic bears resemblance to children making up stories about the world around them and sharing them. I know _I_ claimed to be related to Robin Hood as a kid. One of my childhood playmates made up stories about the sweets 'living' in their kitchen. In short, people do this naturally and have always done this naturally - the only modern difference is that intellectual property, like television and games and books, is shoved so far down our throats it enters our worldview immediately.

2 - People have been 'remixing' previously available elements of culture ever since the Illiad was written down. (Odysseus was probably not Homer's creation, and he shows up everywhere. There are a gazillion versions of King Arthur's life story.) There is nothing new or exciting about fan fiction, it has been around - and been denigrated - over the centuries. Homage, parody, intertextuality, it's all been done.

3 - People who write fanfic are, inevitably, fans. They are obsessed with something. There is something called 'Genre Ghetto', and essentially it is all about how the more obsessively something is treated the less applicable it is to the rest of society. Science Fiction and Fantasy have been floundering around in the ghetto for about a century now. Fanfic is a ghetto-within-a-ghetto. Trying to pretend otherwise is a desperate scream for validation by people who marginalized themselves by writing fanfic.

You want fanfic to matter? Do something none of those children, and none of those authors across the centuries, and not one of the fans have done. Write fanfic that matters.

Go on. Write fanfic that matters to me, to you, the random man on the street, the people who read serious literary fiction, the moms who read a little trash in the afternoons to unwind, the kids looking for quick amusement.

Until you do that, and do it regularly enough to transform the entire genre of fan-created derivative works, until you make every person who lays claim to the label of 'fanfic' stop treating it like trash, writing fanfic will continue to be nothing more than an inconsequential game people play on the internet.

And that's fine. I like games.

But no matter how much fun I have playing monopoly, I'm still no real-estate agent.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 7, 2009)

panzergulo said:
			
		

> '8-Bit Theater' is a parody, I think.


I figured someone would try to make that case, but I'm a little doubtful.  A parody usually has the purpose of ridiculing the work it's based off of.  8-Bit (and others, as well, like Bob and George) doesn't really do that.  It has the same *basic* story (in that the characters do the whole orb-collecting thing), but aside from that, no... it's not Final Fantasy.  It doesn't even really make fun of Final Fantasy.  It uses the character templates and puts them in humorous situations.  I mean, the author actually put in the real Warriors of Light (that would be, the real party you play in the game), but then killed them off later.  That tells me that this is just some kind of fanfiction set in the world of Final Fantasy.
But it's not really what you normally think of when people talk about fanfiction, is it?  Maybe it's 'parodic fanfiction'.


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## Aeturnus (Aug 7, 2009)

Like I said in another thread, I still write fanfics. For the most part I use them for practice, and whenever I want to take a break from my non-fanfic stuff.


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## SailorYue (Aug 7, 2009)

typig posts is diferent the tying fics. i DO use the shift when typing names and i when i write my fanfics, but posts arent as IMPORTNANT, and Ryuichi Sakuma isnt a MAry Sue... he's far from it. he IS one of the mangaka's characters. yes he sometimes acts chidlish, but thats his persona. the reviewer just came off like an asshole.


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## Roland (Aug 7, 2009)

SailorYue said:


> *typig posts is diferent the tying fics. i DO use the shift when typing names and i when i write my fanfics, but posts arent as IMPORTNANT, and Ryuichi Sakuma isnt a MAry Sue... he's far from it. he IS one of the mangaka's characters. yes he sometimes acts chidlish, but thats his persona. the reviewer just came off like an asshole.*



Ow. I did you a favour and highlighted everything in that post that is wrong. 

The problem with fanfiction; almost everyone is terrible at it.  It's not about taking the original characters/plot from the creator, it's about butchering said character/plot beyond recognition and complaining when you don't get recognition because anyone reading your story can't get past the first paragraph.


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## SailorYue (Aug 7, 2009)

i dont get whats wrong with my post... and i try to keep the characters IN CHARACTER. i dont take liberties with them at all


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## TShaw (Aug 7, 2009)

You donâ€™t get whatâ€™s wrong? Okay, let me give an example. Say youâ€™re on a bus and someone sits next to you. They look like a typical homeless person, unkempt beard and hair, food stains of various ages and types on their clothes, they even stink to high heaven. Would you waste any time getting to know someone that cares so little about their outward appearance?

Now think about your attitude and the appearance youâ€™re showing here in the writers block when you maintain that punctuation, grammar and spelling donâ€™t matter to you. Personally, I have the habit of ignoring anything they write if they donâ€™t bother presenting themselves as if they donâ€™t care.

It doesnâ€™t take more than a few seconds to go over something youâ€™re about to post, no one expects perfection but at least show some respect to the rest of us if you want respect in return.


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## Digitalpotato (Aug 7, 2009)

Fanfiction isn't bad considering there exist works that aren't just gay porn and nonsensical pairings and character rape.


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## SailorYue (Aug 7, 2009)

its not like im advertising any of my oneshots here. no one here would care since theire all under 500 words!


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## ShaoShao (Aug 7, 2009)

My problem with fanfiction is I spend hours analysing characters before I feel safe to use them. And then they end up in a 'drabble' or 'AU'. Almost always an 'AU'. Which means more hours figuring out how their transport, totally-made-up biology, society, religion, etc. etc. works and rewriting how their relationships and personalities came to be.

I think I'm worse than Mary Sue authors. I don't make a character to shift everything into Awesomeland. I make Awesomeland itself and place the characters into important roles/positions. I feel more freedom to do that with borrowed characters because if I showed anyone the worlds and casts I make myself, they'd surely criticise them for being too fantastical or pathetic. orz


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## panzergulo (Aug 8, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> I figured someone would try to make that case, but I'm a little doubtful.  A parody usually has the purpose of ridiculing the work it's based off of.  8-Bit (and others, as well, like Bob and George) doesn't really do that.  It has the same *basic* story (in that the characters do the whole orb-collecting thing), but aside from that, no... it's not Final Fantasy.  It doesn't even really make fun of Final Fantasy.  It uses the character templates and puts them in humorous situations.  I mean, the author actually put in the real Warriors of Light (that would be, the real party you play in the game), but then killed them off later.  That tells me that this is just some kind of fanfiction set in the world of Final Fantasy.
> But it's not really what you normally think of when people talk about fanfiction, is it?  Maybe it's 'parodic fanfiction'.



Yup. I still think it's parody. But that's just me.



TShaw said:


> You donâ€™t get whatâ€™s wrong? Okay, let me give an example. Say youâ€™re on a bus and someone sits next to you. They look like a typical homeless person, unkempt beard and hair, food stains of various ages and types on their clothes, they even stink to high heaven. Would you waste any time getting to know someone that cares so little about their outward appearance?
> 
> Now think about your attitude and the appearance youâ€™re showing here in the writers block when you maintain that punctuation, grammar and spelling donâ€™t matter to you. Personally, I have the habit of ignoring anything they write if they donâ€™t bother presenting themselves as if they donâ€™t care.
> 
> It doesnâ€™t take more than a few seconds to go over something youâ€™re about to post, no one expects perfection but at least show some respect to the rest of us if you want respect in return.



It's surprising how low people value words in the Internet, despite the fact that our words are the only thing we leave after us. I'm not English native, but when I'm on an English forum or site, I try to do my best to write correct language. I might be blunt when I'm telling my opinions, but at least I make my posts readable.


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## Digitalpotato (Aug 8, 2009)

Main problem I have is that I wind up more or less going off in my own direction.

one of my biggest fanfics (which I admit wasn't well-written) started off as taking place in the world of Crystalis...except it mutated so damn much it had absolutely *nothing* to do with Crystalis except the fact that the characters found a sword  

It's mostly because of my fanfic habits. *shrugs* I tend to avoid using existing characters. No it's not because I don't like shipping even if I did like a few pairs (that were often canonical anyways) but it's cause they never relly fit in outside of references. Or unless I pulled a Lunar: Eternal Blue and had them like get pulled out of a plothole. 

That is the serious ones. The crazy ones are just making you wonder if I had hallucinogenic drugs inside my lunch noodles or drank too much caffiene.


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