Fictional Fans

I should stop forcing puns into my titles...


So I don't like fanfiction. Don't read it, don't write it, don't like it. It's never done it for me. I don't have a problem with it, and if you're a fan of fanfiction all power to you, but to me it just feels chronically unsatisfying.

It's one of those things that follows Sturgeon's Law. 90% of Fanfiction is crap, but the other 10% is good enough to make wading through the crap worth it. Only thing is, that 10% is incredibly elusive. Why? Because there's literal years worth of fanfiction out there. Sure, there are ways to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, but the truth is, I'd rather just read a professionally written book.

Yep, there it is. I prefer paid professionals to amateur aspiring authors.

Oh god even I hated that sentence...

In all seriousness though, it's the same reason I'd rather watch Raging Bull than my friend's short film about boxing. Maybe my friend is the next Martin Scorsese, and I think it's great he's nurturing his talent and increasing his skillset, I just don't want to spend my time watching his baby steps.

Maybe that makes me a bad person.

Thing is, fanfiction is good. It's a healthy thing for aspiring writers. It allows you to work on very specific things while you improve your writing. You can avoid things like needing to come up with new characters (so you can focus on plot) or coming up with original plots (so you can focus on prose). It's a way for writers to develop their skill while contributing to a fandom they're passionate about. That's cool. Go them.

Still doesn't do it for me.

I think part of that comes from the fact that a lot of fanfiction is really wish-fulfillment. Once that wish has been fulfilled, the writer stops bothering. Moreover, their intention isn't to improve, it's just to write that thing they wanted the book to do. In that case, you might as well save time and just imagine that thing happening instead. You can do that in seconds. Writing takes a lot more time than that...

There's also that part of fanfiction that's really self-congratulatory. I get why people write the wish-fulfillment stuff. It's because they want to see it and they know how much they wish someone else would write it, so they write it to cater to everyone else that wants to see it. Thing is, those people then get to see the thing they want and then they walk away from it. The only feedback is 'Yes, finally, someone wrote it. I've wanted to read this so bad for so long.' The writer walks away feeling good, even if what they wrote was a total mess.

That being said, everyone in that exchange enjoyed themselves. The writer got to feel good about their writing (deservedly or otherwise), the reader got to see the thing they wanted to see and the copyright owner got to add another one to the 'sue for retirement fund' file.

Maybe it's the inherent lack of improvement that bothers me. It's not so much the fanfiction, it's the people writing it. I think you have the right to do whatever you want, and you're more than welcome to call yourself what you want, but I reserve the right to think that title is undeserved. If I unclog my toilet, I won't be introducing myself as a plumber to everyone I meet. By extension, I don't think writing fanfiction qualifies you as an author.

Lots of authors have written fanfiction. The difference between them then, when they wrote fanfiction, and them now, when they're published, career-writers, is improvement. Authors moved away from fanfiction once they'd learned what they needed, and started writing their own things, where nothing came pre-built.

To top it all off, you don't have to use fanfiction to learn those skills. It's just one way of many. For every author who started with fanfiction, there's another that didn't.

Keep writing fanfiction. Keep doing what you love. Don't let me discourage you. Just be aware of what it is you're doing, and be honest with whether that makes you an author, or just someone who writes. Because the truth is, everyone writes, but only a few of us will shake a new hand and say 'Hi, I'm Roger and I'm a writer.'



Ok yes I'm still salty about Fifty Shades of Gray...