A friend recently drew my attention to an article outlining some famous authors' views on fanfiction. I was a little surprised by some of them. Somewhere on this blog I mentioned that I used to write and read Harry Potter fanfiction - and to be honest I still occasionally go back to the fandom - so I was already aware of JK Rowlings' views on fanfiction. I wasn't aware that there was a huge controversy over it or anything, but after reading this article I decided to dig more deeply and encountered the views of Diana Gabaldon, Robin Hobb, and the whole controversy with Marion Zimmer Bradley...
The one thing that struck me was how little these authors - and some of the fans who are defending their hysterical diatribes - actually know about fanfiction. If you've only ever been to fanfiction.net once or twice I can understand not being able to see through the sludge, but if you're going to post your views on your official website and start calling all fanfiction writers names then you should really do some research first.
That is why I decided to write this article. And before you get the idea that I'm going to be completely one-sided - fear not! I have nothing against authors not wanting people to mess with their worlds. As an author myself (I write original as well as fanfiction, but my original stuff has yet to be published) I can understand both points of view. What I don't agree with or understand is the hysterical name-calling that some of these authors have resorted to. Word of advice: if you don't want people to write fanfic in your world just say so. Don't even give a reason, just express your wish, but don't go into long rants that are sure to make most of your fans angry.
Without further ado:
Why do they write fanfiction?
The authors who made angry or hysterical comments seemed to be puzzled about why people write fanfiction. They expressed this by either wondering out loud about it or making completely false assumptions. Here are a few of the many real reasons why we like to write fanfiction (with appropriate examples):
1) In order to keep ourselves engaged in the fandom while we await future/upcoming installments or sequels. To share our thoughts and prediction about what will happen next. For example, before the sixth Harry Potter book came out many fans would wrote their predictions and ideas and wishes into novel-length fanfics of the sixth year. This type of fiction is in no way intended to replace the original or take away from it. It keeps the hype going until the canon comes out and the author's canon is always respected.
2) To pose or answer a compelling "what if?" question. This can be anything from "what if Sirius didn't die?" to "What if Draco turned good?" to "What if Neville had turned out to be the chosen one after all?" to "What if the Time Turners hadn't all been destroyed?" to "What if Harry hadn't disarmed Draco and become the owner of the Elder Wand?"
3) To answer the question "what comes next?" after the official story written by the author has finished.
4) To explore the point of view of characters that the author didn't give us much information about. This can be a prominent character like Minerva McGonagall or Theodore Nott, the stringy Slytherin boy who doesn't like to join gangs that was mentioned in passing about three times in the original books, or Blaise Zabini whose mother murdered seven husbands - there's definitely a story in there! And please don't tell me this takes ANYTHING away from the author's originals. Expanding on the life of a character that the author originally put in as a background mention character hurts no one.
5) For those who also write original fiction it can also be an excellent way to PRACTICE the art of writing.
6) The sense of community that the fanfiction author gets from interacting with other fanfic writers and readers when they share stories about the characters and world that they all love. They also share writing tips and tricks which no English teacher will ever share with you...>.>
7) The irreplaceable value of interacting directly with the reader and hearing what they have to say about your writing. Sales reports and a paycheck can't compare to this, neither can the pro reviews published in newspapers and magazines. This is the reader talking to you directly and tell you what they enjoyed and what they didn't enjoy. The fanfic community is very good at giving constructive criticism. I once had a reviewer leave me a page-long review explaining that if they had written the story they would have started it at around chapter 12 and told the rest of the stuff that happened in chapters 1-11 as flashbacks. This person spent so much of their valuable time breaking down how they would have organized it. This was extremely valuable for me as a writers and it taught me a lot about different styles and pacing a story and so on.
8) The ability to break away from the "author is awesome perfection and cannot be criticized" subtext that is present in many English classrooms. When I think back to all of my English classes this one idea was always there, hidden in the curriculum. You analyzed why the author did this and what the author meant by that and how the author got across this or that feeling, but you never said things like: "The author's message didn't come across as well as it could have because of this scene or that line of dialogue." Not only was this unheard of, but students just aren't given the tools to talk about the books they read in this way so even if someone attempts it it's hard for them to get the message across and easier for the teacher to shoot them down because he/she is offended that they didn't like or "get" the book that was chosen. In short, you don't learn to really critically think about and analyze fiction in an English classroom, but fanfic writers have no inhibitions when it comes to talking about the weaknesses. This is not only valuable in and of itself, it's also valuable if you want to be able to recognize the weaknesses in your own writing and become a more awesome writer.
9) For fun. Not everyone wants to pursue writing as a career or get money from it. Not everyone cares to build their own worlds or create new characters. Some people just enjoy spending a couple of hours here and there writing fanfiction in their most beloved fictional inverses and sharing it with other fans.
I think that's enough, but there are so many more reasons. Hopefully with these few examples/reasons I've been able to better illustrate the wide variety of fanfiction that's available out there and also to show some of the many learning opportunities that fanfiction provides.
Why don't they want us to write fanfiction in their world?
I can completely understand an Author's unwillingness to see fanfiction based on their work. For J.K. Rowling there were only ever going to be 7 Harry Potter books and the plots had already been somewhat planned out ahead of time, so by allowing fanfiction she reaped the benefits of keeping the fandom alive, but didn't have to worry about being restricted in future writings - people always knew and respected that she was going to give us seven canon books and those were the author's intended, official stories. Other authors have a completely different situation when it comes to their worlds so it's not as easy for them to accept fanfiction.
For example, take Anne McCaffrey.For a long time Anne McCaffrey didn't want fanfiction to be written in her world. This always made perfect sense to me, because after the first Pern novel all the rest were essentially fanfiction! She was writing her own off-shots and backstory fics and parallel fics from different points of view. Her method of writing was that she did, frequently, go back into her own world and explore all the little what ifs and side-characters and remote corners of Pern. If she had allowed fanfiction then within days the fans would have already covered the territory she was intending to eventually go into, they would have already finished populating Pern for her and she would have little left to write. Of course, she could have just ignored this and kept writing her own stuff, but it wouldn't have had the same impact.
So she didn't allow fanfiction and I and many other authors respected that. She also didn't say rude things about fanfiction writers. No harm done.
Then again, she eventually began relaxing her control over Pern and allowed her son to play in the world with her. At this point I was thinking that it would have been much better if she had simply allowed fanfiction. Fans would have come up with much better things, and if it had turned out bad at least it would have remained unofficial - whereas Todd just ruined the world for me. (see Dragongirl: A Cautionary Review). Eventually, she posted "Fanfiction Guidelines" and relaxed her stance, allowing fanfiction under certain, common-sense, rules.
There are many authors who allow/tolerate fanfiction under similar restrictions: don't make money off them, don't pretend you have any affiliation with or approval from the author and enjoy!
However, I understand that authors would still have concerns. There is some pretty bad fanfiction out there. And I don't mean writing-technicalities bad. There's stuff out that is pornographic or that sends very negative messages or what have you. Count the number of human beings writing fanfic and you will come close to counting the number of weird and distasteful possibilities out there. There are many fanfics out there that parents, or teachers, or concerned friends, or random human beings really wouldn't want a child reading. So it makes perfect sense for an author to be concerned when this fanfiction is being written about their own characters/in their own worlds. The bottom line here is that this is the internet. It's like the wild: There be monsters. People need to learn to use it in a responsible way that works for them and learn to avoid these kinds of things.
What the fanfiction community has done is create ratings and tags and warnings to indicate that a story contains elements that may be offensive or distasteful or too mature for a certain audience. In this way precautions are taken to ensure that - on moderated fanfiction sites - people can choose to avoid things that aren't appropriate for them. This works very well in the HP fanfiction community and I'm sure it's the same in other communities too. And if fanfic writers are still overstepping the author's stated wishes in this respect then by all means, send your lawyers after them and try to get the site shut down. However, there's no need to make generalizations about ALL fanfiction writers or to pretend that all fanfiction is badly written junk. It's not. If you know where to look you can find amazing, high-quality fanfiction that it much more appropriate than some of the stuff that some famous published writers are getting away with.
In conclusion fanfiction is much broader than these authors seem to think it is and even if they have some reasonable and legitimate concerns about it there are ways for them to address these concerns without insulting the entire fanfiction community and making hysterical/nasty comments.
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