On the Pros and Cons of Fanfiction for Writers

The Pros and Cons of Fanfiction for Writers

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I don't write fanfiction. If I'd had access to the internet at a certain age, I most definitely would have, but the fact remains that I discovered fanfiction at around 20. By that stage I had already muddled through about five first drafts of my first original story, and then four sequels, and then two other original works.

The mere idea of using someone else's character's terrifies me. I don't know them. Not like I know my own. I could probably give it a go, but honestly, I feel like I should leave it up to those who are already good at it.

I do, however, read a lot of fanfiction. Namely because I find the dynamics between characters within interesting. There is some excellent fanfiction out there. I've read fanfiction that I enjoyed more than published and paid for stories. In fact, there was about an 8 month period in which I read nothing but fanfiction.

Why? Because I knew exactly what I was getting into. Twists related to the plot and the worldbuilding, not the characters. I read primarily for the characters. Your plot could be amazingballs and spectacular and be shooting rainbows out of it's third eye and if I did not connect with your characters? I would stop reading. On the opposite side of the coin, I've been known to ignore gaping-size-of-the-pacific-ocean plot holes if I like the characters in something. All is forgivable if I'm in love with your characters. Except the worst of prose. Or racism and sexism. That tends to send me running.

So what are the pros and cons of fanfiction for writers? Obviously, this is only my opinion, but it's something I've thought about a lot, especially as there are writers who make the transition to original fiction, some who don't, and some who just want some good old fashioned respect from the rest of the world. Fanficition does tend to get waved off as teenage girl crap (which is an issue in and of itself - who the hell made "teenage girl" synonymous with "no cultural or story relevance"?)

Pros:

• The Sandbox Argument

Fanfic gives a writer a place to experiment. She/he can focus on one aspect of their writing without having to worry about others. They can fiddle with language, with sexualities, with different narrative POVs. I've seen a bit of second person in short fiction, but more of it in fanfic. And some of it is horrible, but a lot of it isn't.

• Community

 You meet people in fanfic. People beta your work because they love the characters and the worlds you're writing about as much as you do. You get cheerleaders and find other people who finally get you, you meet people who have the same crazy ideas you do, you rework each other's pieces, mix things together, translate works you've loved into your own language, create audio versions of work you've loved... It just goes on and on. It's a nice place to be. Also, instantaneous feedback. There's no 20 drafts before you let someone see it, then only letting certain people see it, then waiting six weeks for a publisher to get back to you to say they didn't like it.

• Fun

This is inherently connected to the topic above. Fanfic is done for the love of it. It's fun. It's something you do to unwind and relax. If people don't like your work, they tend to just not comment or kudos, most of the feedback is positive, because this isn't a space for line by line critiques. It's a space for figuring things out and having fun with characters that you love.

• Narratives outside the male, white and middle aged

This is one of the big reasons it took me so long to get back to reading original fiction again. For all the shortcomings that fanfiction can have, it does tend to be rather inclusive. Here you get queer narratives, the narratives of young teenagers, the narratives of women with kids, the narrative of their kids - it's a welcoming space. You want your two main characters to pair off, despite the fact they are of the same sex? Go ahead! Want to have a minor character rise up and be the hero? Go ahead! The world is your sandbox.

Cons:

• Less set-up required

 This is partially what makes fanfic so useful as a sandbox - you don't have to worry so much about introducing your worldbuilding and characters. Everyone knows your characters already. Exposition is not the issue it is in original fiction.

On the other hand, this also means you don't get much chance to practise weaving exposition into narrative. You also don't get much chance to world-build or create original characters. Like anything, these things take practise to do Fanfic skips this set-up and exposition for the large part.

•  Back-scratching

As mentioned before, fanfic is done out of appreciation for the original material. People write because they enjoy themselves, because they find it a way to wind down, because they wish to contribute to the community.

As such, there's not much in the way of constructive criticism. If a person doesn't like a work, or how it's written, they tend to just click on or not comment. No-one wants to be the wet blanket. (And by constructive critique I mean a line by line - this sentence didn't work for me because of a, b or c reason sort of thing). This is partially made up for behind the scenes with beta readers and the like, but not everyone has a good beta reader.

• Bad reactions to cannon events

Like any community, fanfic can be a bit... disturbing sometimes. Witness the death threats to the actress playing Mary Morstan in Sherlock because she would "get in the way" of the major pairing in fanfic, John/Sherlock. Witness how Uhura is often sidelined and made a horrid person in some Spock/Kirk fanfics. GinnyBashing is a tag on A03. The Internet exploded when they realised that Tauriel was included in the second Hobbit movie. Then there's showing porn that you've written/created from edited together vids to the actors involved (linkage here to the esteemed Rachel Acks tumblr ). Although to be fair, members of the media have been known to do the same, and this hardly accounts for all of fanficerdom. Most fanfic'ers don't do this stuff. But there is a visable presence that does act out in the oddest ways. Like anywhere I suppose.


So yeah. Fanfic can be awesome, it can be difficult, it can be a useful place to learn, it can be overly hand-holding, it can be a way to express yourself when you don't fall into the dominant narrative space. If I ever do decide to write it, I will be joining a cohort of people who write primarily for fun, and that's not necessarily a bad thing


1) Sourced from: http://freerangestock.com/details.php?gid=&sgid=&pid=2913 Attributed to: Bradley Strong 

Details in Narrative - Anchoring the Reader, Painting Chekhov's Gun Bright Red, and Sentence Rhythm

Okay. Detail.

I've read some very good stories today. One was exceptionally short - a retelling of sleeping beauty, but with an entirely different and satisfying ending. It clocked in at under 1000 words, but contained an exceptional amount of detail.

Note: It told an entire story in under 1000 words. The details that it picked were vitally important. They lent themselves to the mood, what the character noticed, and showed us how the in-story world structured itself. It showed us what was important to the characters. It lent a rhythm and cadence to the story. It also showed us what was important plot wise.

And that's probably the three most important jobs of detail in narrative: To situate and anchor the reader, to give rhythm to your paragraphs, and to tell us when to pay attention.

Firstly, on anchoring the reader:

The easiest way to explain and think about this is to compare two genres. Lets go... contemporary romance and fantasy. Say both books have Character A walking into a room and Character B waiting in the room to talk to them. You have a myriad number of things to describe, lots of narration to provide. So how much detail do you include?

Given that we're talking specifically about anchoring the reader? The fantasy is probably going to include more detail than the contemp romance. In the fantasy, I would focus on the things in the room that tell the POV character who this stranger is, maybe focus on the things that he's either wearing that can tell us about his status, how these two relate, ect.

But more than that, I can describe things to add to world-building. When my character leans up against a desk and notes with surprise that it's made of wood -because wood is generally spelled into uselessness by the woodland fae, and thus mighty expensive - that's interesting because it shows you a bit about the world, and about how the character relates to it. She hasn't treated this expensive thing in a blasé manner, so she probably can't afford it. Which means they're meeting in the room of someone wealthy, and that this conversation is probably related to those of wealth.

Note, I don't do much more in that example other than describe the table through the POV of the character, and her surprise at it being there. This piece of  narrative description isn't just describing something, it's giving insight into character, the social structures of the world, the fact that this world has a magic system, and also hints at the involvement of others in this conversation about to come up. It's not just describing something - you're making those words work for you.

In the contemp romance, the details would focus more on the characters, and how they relate to the room. Whether Character B seems comfortable in the space, whether his clothes suggest something about status, or where he's been in the last five minutes. The descriptions may focus on the things the Character A finds attractive about him, or how he uses the objects in the room.

We know what a room looks like in our world. (This is presuming this contemp romance is based in a western country.) It doesn't need describing or explaining because it doesn't add anything to the story other than a detailed description. Most readers do fine with a basic description to figure out where they are and what's going on. Detail is used to try and negate that confusion and to situation the reader in the characters and the world you're creating.

This leads nicely onto my next point : detail tells the reader what is important in the scene.

Say you've just started a book. There's a basic description of a street, and then the author spends a paragraph describing an old, beaten up car; the way it's out of place, the way it hasn't moved for days, the fact that is has a myriad of scratches in the paint down the left side.

As a reader, I'm placing my bets on that car being important in some way, shape or form. I am now focused on the car. If done well, the author may have even built up some anticipation about the car.

Be aware that you are doing this when you write detailed descriptions. You are literally circling Chekov's gun on the mantle piece with red texter and tossing glitter over it. A detailed description is almost a promise to the reader.

And lastly rhythm. 

Sentences, paragraphs, and chapters have a rhythm. I'll talk in one of my later posts about macro level pacing, but let's concentrate on the sentence level rhythm for the moment.

Narrative draws the inner eye of the reader. As you add detail, you're making the reader focus on what you're describing, making them slow down before you move them onto the next point. If you're descriptions are sparse of detail, the reader is going to move from one thing to the next in quick succession: bang, bang, bang. Detail, or lack of it, is something you can manipulate in a sentence to slow down or speed up the rhythm of a paragraph.

I hope that gives you some insight you haven't had before. Enjoy all,

Sian

Discovery Writing (or Pantsing) World Building - How it Informs your Plot and your Characters

Otherwise known to me as gardening. Bizarre gardening, but gardening none-the-less.

Imagine, for a moment, a plot of land. Nothing growing, nothing there but fresh, fertile soil. The sort of soil that smells of cows and sweet rotting things.

You pick a particular corner, and you start building a path. As you build this path, you scatter seeds around you, plant trees, roses, place streams and rocks down. But you only really create the garden around the path. You sort of make it up as you go along. The things you just planted inform what you next plant, but if you decide to just go ahead and whack a gum tree in the middle of a bunch of roses, no-one will stop you. You decide to maybe plant the roses in a nice circle, framing the gum tree, so it makes sense.

Your path will have offshoots, and you'll set up the garden around those offshoots, and then come back to the main path. When you finally finish the path, you'll look back, adjust some things, plant some things in the gaps that are visible from the main path.

Your first visitor comes along, and you take them through the path, down all the little offshoots. You notice they're getting tired about halfway through, so you resolve not to take your next visitor down the little offshoots. The plants are still there. You can still point them out to the next visitor if they want to know.

And maybe some of the other visitors ask about the bits beyond the garden they can see. So you think about it, look what else you've done, then plant some more stuff.

This is essentially what my world building looks like. The path is my story and plot, the offshoots are little plot bunnies I chase that don't really come to fruition, and the friends I'm showing through are my alpha and beta readers. I make up the world that informs the plot first, then fill in the rest later. I make it make sense by looking at what else I've created, and fitting new information into that. If something seems totally out of left field, but I love it, I'll just go and make the world building around it fit.

Notice the offshoots. There are many many times when I'm writing something and it makes no sense at all on the read through. So I change it, or get rid of it, or rebuild my plot. But that offshoot had value because I learnt more about my world and my characters while writing it.

Another important thing to realise is that your characters reflect their world. When your character does something, think about why they do it, and that might give you your next clue for what to plant next. If you get stuck, take a step back and look at where you've come from. Maybe build a stream in the middle of everything so when you show people around this garden of yours, they have to jump over it. World building can cause complications for your characters just as much as anything.

And if something random pops up, justify it. Sometimes you'll just be coming up with bullshit. And sometimes it will present new character motivations, political manoeuvres, and plot points. Discovery writing is literally about that - making shit up and seeing if it works. If it doesn't work, then that's fine - you've learnt something about the story you're writing, trust me. You've learnt something about your characters, about how they react to the other people and places around them.

The trick in pantsing and discovery writing isn't finding a plot. It's recognising what is plot, and what isn't. It's figuring out which part of the garden you've created to show to people, and which part to keep in your own files, for your amusement and joy. Because while pantsing can be frustrating, you can't get closer to that joy of creation, because you're literally creating everything, all at once.

Happy Holidays  All,

Sian

Conveying you world in flashes of detail

For me, the first major issue I come across is figuring out what the hell is going on in my story. I do plan the plot out before-hand, because it saves me from having to do four first drafts, but my planning is more like:

Needs to establish relationship and find out about Otherkind.

So there's no character notes, no description, nothing. I know where the plot is going, but not much else. For me, the first draft if figuring out secondary characters, scenery, dialogue, emotions - the tendons and muscles that go on the bones of plot.

As the story progresses, it gets easier, because I'm using the same characters, or similar scenerary, so I don't have to go and invent everything. I know what everything looks like, and how everyone acts.

Inevitably I end up writing an awful lot of drivel, just so I can figure out what the hell is going on.

And the second draft, for me, is condensing all this knowledge down into moments and flashes.

The human brain is a remarkable thing. Perhaps you've see the chain email or text, where all the letters are rearranged except the first and last letters of each word. You can still read the paragraph - your mind fills in the blanks.

To me, a writers job is to give that first and last letter to the readers. You need to give the reader flashes and moments that their brain can take and extend. This may seem like it's less work for you, but it's not. Because when you write half a page of description, you're conveying facts. And people can't make up facts, so you have to cover them all.

When you describe in flashes, you're conveying mood and emotion. That mood is tacked onto a couple of facts, and the reader is able to fill that description with all the images they have associated with that mood.

One example I have was when I was describing the neighbourhood that my main character grew up in. I described a train ride through the city, the slums, the houses, the way the roads went. That was fine when I was writing it for me.

The second time round, I described the train station - a hunk of concrete sitting in the middle of the rubble of last year's houses. I described that the dirt-track roads, with the occasional brick lain down - testament to a fools attempt to civilise the area. I described the rotting carcass of a dog, which underneath the preparation area for a street vendor who sold street food.

These are details that show you things. They show you the area is run down, hobbled together, a place that has lost a great deal of it's hope. A place where people don't care about food poisoning, because they're probably going to die of starvation in a week anyway.

Those descriptions took up a paragraph when clumped together. But it took time to think them up. I had to sit down and write a list of what I needed to convey about this place to my readers. Facts, mood and emotion had to be conveyed in a couple of details.

It takes time, but it's well worth it. So when you've written down the facts of your world, contemporary or otherwise, go back and look for the mood and emotion. Look for the facts you need to convey. Combining them in details gives the reader flashes of your world that they can extend. This makes for readers involved in creating your world - and there's nothing better than that level of involvement.

The Effect of POV on Detail in Description and Narration

It's funny, really. When I first sat down to write a manuscript, I didn't realise the process I was entering in to. I mean, I was 13? What 13 year old realises all the effort, the multiple drafts, the world building....

It was a wonderful, innocent time.

Regardless, I'm writing a new peice again, and it's the same as it was the first time. I feel like I'm dancing on the edge of a cliff, making up new bits of the land as I go.

But it's getting easier. The characters, plot and world are gradually coming to me. It's good. And because I know that there's a long process in front of me, I'm thinking about the next step. Which is the addition of detail.

But where do details come from? I think this has a lot to do with POV, myself. Each character is going to notice something different. When you're writing in first person, you can only describe what the characters see and what the characters think about them. So when you're narrating from the POV of a character who is used to the world you're in, you can't explain things that they already know about.

This presents many problems, which I think I'll talk about later (a post of first person will be forthcoming, me thinks :) ) But I think that it's interesting that you have something similar going on in third person limited. You can explain slightly more outside of the characters head, but I think the third person limited works best when you think about the world of the story from inside the characters head and embellish it with what they notice.

So what's the different when it comes to detail? Well, IMHO, it is that in third person limited the narrator can inject. They can tell you things about the world and story that the character couldn't. This can become overused and badly done, but it can also be done well. When it is, it lends itself to both easy description (you can explain things that need to be explained that the narrator wouldn't explain) and you can make your writing come alive (as in you can describe things in a way unique to the MC.) The best of both worlds. :)

Third person omniscient, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish. You can dive into characters heads, describe what they're seeing, describe things in their POV... but the way things are explained, exposed and described is in a different voice entirely. The voice of the narrator, the teller that sees all drives the story and the descriptions.

I experimented with this in a short, and it was amazing. I still had to think about how the characters would describe things, but... it was me describing it. I didn't have to immerse myself for every single word (would they use but, or would they say however?) in the characters minds, it wasn't as exhausting.

Because that's what POV writing can be. Exhausting. Utterly so. I once started a story (Varrick, actually, for those who have been following along) and it was told from the perspective of a forty year old man who had seen way too much and had way too much death on his hands. I remember coming out of a chapter and falling asleep for the next two hours, irrespective of the coffee consumed before hand. It was draining in a way I never thought a book could be.

I think it warrants thought before you start. How intense it this POV? Is it going to be able to tell the story I want it to tell? Am I ready for the investment that 1st person requires?

Anyway, I'm off to get ready for work. It's going to be another late night - I have at least 5k to write, and now that I've been called in for work, it's going to be interesting trying to fit it in.


Enjoy creating~

Sian

Worldbuilding

Firstly, when I say worldbuiling, I do not mean it just in the creating worlds/societies/magic systems/technology way that it is often taken to mean. Work set in contemporary societies also requires world building - often via the characters. If you're writing a modern day romance, then the world and time is already a given, but you characters, their pasts, and how they deal with the world isn't.

But that fits more into the character building side of things. I, personally as a alternative fiction writer (which is what I'm turning out to be) want to talk about the more traditional forms of world building.

Depending on what you plan to write, you are going to approach worldbuilding in a different way. But regardless of whether you are writing urban fantasy or hard science fiction, there are a few points that I personally think should always be considered when building a world:

• Rules

• Consequences

When I say rules, I don't mean that you should limit yourself. If you wish to get rid of the laws of physics, fine. If you wish to have faster than light travel and not explain how, then that too is okay. But in my honest opinion having a world without rules means there is no story to be had in that world. Your main character can come up against any challenge and defeat it way too easily. They could wipe out the antagonist with their mind, if they wished. The antagonist could wipe them out with his mind. Actually, in all likely hood, such a world never would have developed sentient society. Any life would have wiped each other out before they evolved past the caveman stage.

I also think that you must have rules and limitations in your world in order to promote conflict. Without some sort of conflict, there is no story. How many rules you have, and how easy it is for you MCs to get what they want and need is up to you and the genre you're writing in.

Which leads me to another point about developing rules in your world. consistancy. Make what can and can't be done consistant. Please. Otherwise things will start to feel incredible Deus ex Machina-ish.

Consequences must (IMHO anyway) also exist in order for the story to be interesting. If you have a character that can stop time, give them a consequence for using that power. Or they're going to use it all the time and things will be way to easy for them. Have it wear them down. Have evil spirits show up and attack them whenever they use it.

Life is not supposed to be easy for your characters. Make it hard by building consistant rules into your world, and giving your world consequences. whether it be a world of magic, science fiction or contemporary.

Enjoy creating,

Sian