I'm glad you linked to angriest's post, because it's kind of awesome and says much of what I was thinking of saying in the essay on fanfic I've been thinking about but haven't had time to write. Also, he gives the NA's due credit for being the most awesome media tie-in novels ever, which of course they totally were. Fans of other shows can dream of reading tie-in novels that ambitious, that surprising, but it's most unlikely that they ever will. I would feel sorry for them but I am too busy gloating. :)
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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timeasmymeasure
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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*