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I haven't even read
angriest's posting Why Fanfic Makes Us Writers yet, because I'm still catching up on the postings which inspired it, as well as the responses.
Just one which caught my eye comes from
hoshikaze, who has quit fanfic for original work, and who comments: "You have that much more to plan out with original fiction." I've spent a decade ruefully learning this lesson.
But it's not the worldbuilding. When you write a Doctor Who novel, even with the series' inbuilt flexibility and the publishers' willingness to experiment, you already have a compelling mental picture of the plot and the characters' choices. You know instinctively how it's going to go. I wasted a lot of time - years, really - doing intricate worldbuilding, when what I needed to know was how to plot.
More generally: most fanfic is unreadable rubbish, but this is also true of most of the slushpile. Hence, derivativeness is not the problem. (IMHO, the problem is navel-gazing, whether on the part of fanfic communities or wannabe professionals.)
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Just one which caught my eye comes from
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But it's not the worldbuilding. When you write a Doctor Who novel, even with the series' inbuilt flexibility and the publishers' willingness to experiment, you already have a compelling mental picture of the plot and the characters' choices. You know instinctively how it's going to go. I wasted a lot of time - years, really - doing intricate worldbuilding, when what I needed to know was how to plot.
More generally: most fanfic is unreadable rubbish, but this is also true of most of the slushpile. Hence, derivativeness is not the problem. (IMHO, the problem is navel-gazing, whether on the part of fanfic communities or wannabe professionals.)
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Date: 2007-05-11 02:19 am (UTC)Argh, my brain hurts.
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:02 am (UTC)I do have to give the early Harry Potter fanfic authors credit in this regard. Back in the early days, many of them were writing ambitious multichapter (sometimes book-length) stories -- sure they were often heavily romantic, but they did have real, sometimes quite complicated and action-packed, plots. It wasn't until later that the fluff and smut pieces really took over. The same was true of The X-Files and a decent percentage of Doctor Who fic prior to the new series.
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:26 am (UTC)It's TRUE! I'm even guilty as charged!
*is so amused now*
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Date: 2007-05-11 02:53 am (UTC)Anyway, the points about fanfic I was going to make if I wrote my essay was that there are, at least potentially, some fabulous things about fanfic and fandom which are excellent training for writing original fiction -- but there are also things which are very bad for the original fiction writer and tend to develop flabby creative muscles.
The fact that most fandoms frown on original characters, for instance, is a very bad thing for the would-be published author. Without practice in writing your own original characters -- original main characters whom the reader has to care about, or at least be intrigued by, in order to appreciate the story -- it can prove very, very difficult to make the jump from fanfic to successful published fiction. And you just can't get that writing fanfic about other people's characters whom your audience already knows and likes. The skill set required to accurately capture and reproduce an existing character's personality, speech, and so on is a different one from the skill set required to construct a successful new character from scratch.
And then there's the worldbuilding, which doesn't have to be a problem if you get plenty of practice taking fanfic characters into exciting new scenarios we've never seen them in before, but is going to cause you real consternation if you're accustomed to setting your stories on the Enterprise or Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital or Hogwarts.
The problems with fanfic writers learning to plot, however, generally come from authors who are used to writing het/slash/smut pieces, vignettes and drabbles, and other forms which tend to be light on plot. I don't think multichapter genfic writers are apt to have quite the same degree of that problem, and I'm actually rather surprised given the complexity of your past novels to hear that you feel plotting is an issue. Maybe you could explain that part a little more?
I'd written two original novels before I started posting fanfic to the net. Maybe that helped me evade the plot trap. My weakness (until recently, anyway) tended to be more in the area of theme, which I don't think I can blame fanfic for. Rather, I blame a childhood reading awful "Christian" novels in which the reader was beaten over the head with a moral that effectively ruined the story as Story (if there was ever a Story there to begin with). In an effort to avoid that kind of glib preachiness I actually leaned right over the other direction and left my poor editor asking, "It's got lots of stuff happening, but what is the book really ABOUT?"
Wow, that was long and rambly. My apologies. *skulks off*
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:00 am (UTC)The New Adventures were revolutionary in terms of what they did to Doctor Who fandom, and someone really should write the definitive non-fiction book about them. I keep wanting to, but keep thinking someone over in the UK with better access to the authors should do it.
The main thing they did I think was democratise fandom. Suddenly we could write the stories, and we could decide what the Doctor was like, and who his companions were. I think one of the big problems that's making DW fandom so fractured and argumentative at the moment - over and above the new series/old series issues that affected Star Trek fandom back in the late 80s - is that a fandom that for a few years actually had power over its object of interest has suddenly become by-and-large powerless again. And that's quite a hit to take and keep running with.
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:09 am (UTC)It'd be lovely if the BBC at least started up a range of PDAs again with an open submissions policy, but I doubt it'll ever happen now that the franchise has exploded into a multi-million pound cash cow.
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Date: 2007-05-11 04:10 am (UTC)Those of us more on the inside knew that no way was it a democracy; it was a benevolent dictatorship, where the grand poobah listened to his cabinet but always retained the power to overrule them.
This doesn't undo your point about it being a shock to fandom's system, though... fandom didn't have actual control, but they had a _relevance_ which they now conspicuously lack.
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Date: 2007-05-11 01:17 pm (UTC)YOU HAVE NO CONTROL"
-- "Merchandise," Fugazi
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Date: 2007-05-11 07:08 am (UTC)I liked my original characters in my nano novel MORE than the companions (Tegan and Turlough) I'd written; they were easier to work with, more adaptable, and I didnt have to keep them in character or stick to canon - i could create it as I went along, which actually worked better for me!
I'd love to make the jump to original novel. I really would. Give me time, space, let me get the Shelf Life thing over with, let me get an original idea, and I will.
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Date: 2007-05-11 09:57 am (UTC)I managed to get away with some very seat-of-the-pants flying in the NAs - one book which visibly suffers is Return of the Living Dad, where the Evil Scheme⢠is revealed out of nowhere and then almost immediately abandoned by its perpetrator. Without Bex's awesome editing I'd have been sunk many a time.
When I started trying to write original fic, though - and this is 1995 I'm talking about! - I encountered a different but related problem: I had no idea how to plot. I knew in my gut what happened in a Doctor Who story, but lift me out of that water and my gills collapsed. Or something.
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 04:03 am (UTC)This is probably analogous to Kate's comments about fanfic vs original stuff (with my inability to act thrown in).
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Date: 2007-05-11 06:09 am (UTC)Leave people their illusions:-)
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Date: 2007-05-11 06:45 am (UTC)I have to go write plotless gay pron. Lulz!
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Date: 2007-05-11 01:14 pm (UTC)Comics = reverse fanfic?