Defending my right to write fanfiction!

LOL I thought this was a joke at first. Fanfiction is fairly sad it demeans characters from works by authors who probobly take their work seriously enough to get mad when there Protagonist now has a third arm and is meeting Harry Potter (copyright...) in the lands of Mordor to stop Zaphod Beeblebrox from stealing the one ring. That's the first and only time i've attempted fan-fiction... you get the picture... it's not hard and not original... and is probobly infringing on numerous copyright laws.

Sam..can whatever your name is, that is utter rubbish. The disclaimers make ir perfectly okay, infact many sites of movies and books actually have fanfictions ections in their own forums.It encourged, actually. And if anyoen took the time to actually bother and write a fanfic based on my charcaters ecaused they admired them , I as an author-would be honoured. I absolutely hate authors like ann rice and nora jones who sue and harass people who write fanfic about there stuff. As one great author said, "If you introduce the settings and characters to the public , they become theirs and not just yours anymore" Infact fanfiction is creative, fulfilling, relaxinga nd enjoyable.I have actually imrpoved my writing style thanks to various fanfiction and I wrote when I was younger, and learned a lot before finally quitting to start my work.If I had started my novel before fanfiction I probably would'nt have improved as I did, and would never have gotten published, Kudos to J.KRowling for encouraging fanfic's.

I don't see anything wrong with with fanfiction. If a story's world is so good that it gives readers the impulse to add to it, it's just a measure of the story's quality. Is the quality of fanfiction really any worse than the quality of all other writing? That little of it is great, and the rest settles to the bottom? Of course not. Fanfiction writers are constantly labeled as being nerdy or obsessed, but the truth is that they're simply expressing their desire for more. The main problem I see with fanfiction writing is that you can never really be completely in tune with the original story. Until you can literally think and feel everything the original author did, you aren't going to write work that is totally consistent with the original story. That means fanfiction is *always* inconsistent; it's just a question of how much. In good fanfiction, it will be unnoticable to the average reader. And of course you can never take your fanfiction and make money from it unless the owner says so. :)

I agree 100%!! We need to be able to do crative thing and we somtimes we do need to exspres that.(dragonrider_on_fire wrote) > It has been suggested that writing fanfiction is poor. > Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I know, but in order > to (maybe) prove people wrong here is what im gonna do. Once > Ive finished my 10 lion king tales and the website im building > 4 them I will post a link 4 it on this forum. After that I > would appreciate some feedback from people here. I would love you all if thows who say that fanfictsions are poor to right about it so I can read, or thows who are defendinglike them tell me why. It's nice to know everyones ideal thinking.

As I said on another thread, most fanfic is derivative (by very definition) and lacks vision, originality, theme and scope. The other big drawback that fanfic producers suffer is that they don't read. Or at least nothing other than that which fits their narrow view of what is good. By all means write it - but keep it to yourself. Or take it to trekkie conventions and share it with your own kind. I edit for a glossy fiction magazine, and fanfic turns up in the slushpile from time to time. I have never, there or anywhere else, read a piece that is of publishable standard. And when you reject, it's always the fanfic writers who email back saying the work is good, the editors must be crap because they don't 'get' it. Pretty much like I'm seeing here; but I'd guess the average age of the fanfic writer to be 14-15, and at that age you know it all anyway. http://www.write-across-europe.com

Think about Wicked. It got turned into this huge Broadway play. It was a book about the Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch's life. It was fabulous, I read it. Fanfiction is great.

Well, there are a lot of stories based in "Wizard of Oz" characters by authors other than Baum. So I guess fanfiction has been around quite a long time, LOL! Anyway, fanfiction just recently gave me a chance to write something that has been on my mind for a long time.

I am a 15 year old who writes fanfic (Harry Potter, The X-Files, and Law & Order:CI, mostly) as well as original works. To me, fanfiction is a way of improving specific writing skills while not having to worry about the others. If you wanted to work on plot, for example, you might not want to mess around with setting and charecterization. Also, it's fun! To be able to take certain charecters and say "What if this happened?" is, at times, a nice break from more serious forms of writing. Fanfiction is getting more notice lately. A few months ago, I read an article in Writer's Digest magazine about Stargate fanfic writers that actually got hired as writers on the show. There were quotes by various fanfic writers who had gotten original works published, talking about how the fanfiction community's feedback helped them improve thier original works. As to it being against the law, that's not really true. It exsists in a grey area of the law. Many authors don't mind fanfic. JK Rowling has said she is "glad the books have inspired so much creativity." However, there are authors like Ann Rice who don't like it, and I think fanfic writers need to respect those wishes and not "hate" them (Sanya). And another note to Sanya: if you expect people to take you and fanfic seriously, proofread your messages better.

I just had another thought. What about otherwise original fiction which makes reference to already esablished characters? For instance, the movie "Monster's, Inc" refers to the Abominable Snowbeast, but that creature is not essential to the plot. Also, how is writing a work based on someone else's any less creative than writing a sequel to one of your own works? We don't normally say that there is no creative value to writing sequels. We usually view a series as a completed whole and see the whole as creative. It's sort of like working on a team. If you've ever written part of a computer program for a company that has coordinated the whole thing, you know your work has significance. If a group of co-authors decided to work as a team and some latecomer wrote a sidestory based on an already established character, that would be no different than if a new employee wrote a new subroutine, using already existing pieces of code. In each case, the entire work is creative as a whole, and each programmer or author did his or her part and equally deserves credit. With fanfic, no one has actually given the new author his "job", which in this case is to extend a story that is already a self-contained work and make it better, or more interesting, or more suitable to a narrower audience with particular tastes, or explore new themes, or create hybrids, or simply have fun. But that says nothing about the intrinsic value of the work itself.

"Also, how is writing a work based on someone else's any less creative than writing a sequel to one of your own works?" Please don't tell me you really don't know the answer to that one.

Yeah, duh, I'm stupid. I really don't know the answer to that one. I suppose JK Rowling ought to stop writing Harry Potter books. One is enough. All those sequels are very uncreative. (shrug) But there is just one problem with that line of thinking: all seven HP books form a complete whole, and the whole series is creative; therefore, all seven books are creative, or will be! Same goes with Narnia, LOTR, Oz, Snicket, and all other books that are in series. And you know what, Rowling encourages fan fiction. Too bad that a lot of fan fiction writers write crap, slash, and porn. But that doesn't mean that people who really know how to write shouldn't write any fan fiction. Here's a Narnia fic that I've really liked. Read it yourself, and tell me if you don't think the writer is good. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2211283/1/ C S Lewis never came up with the idea of gladiators in Calormen, lol! The story is really neat, and promises to be great once it's complete. Really creative, I think.

Oh dear.

I have a vague idea for a story where Starbuck from Moby Dick meets Townes Van Zandt. Does that count?

You can borrow my copyrighted "Lion King" allegorical dialogue if you want: Simba : "Isn't life in the Pride Lands great now that we've seen off all those racist neo-Nazi hyenas?" Pumba: "Yes, but I can't help noticing the huge number of muggings, rapes and murders committed by black panthers, and they still look at me like they want to eat me!" Simba: "That's big cat brothers for you!" All royalties to ABCTales please.

what is fanfiction? making up stories about characters in other books/films? like what happened to Jane Eyre when she became Mrs Rochester (the second)?

I have no idea. I have never read it Haze. That dialogue is really clever but it, in no way, fits in with my storyline. http://members.fortunecity.com/dragonrideronfire is my url but the site is far from finished (+ so r my fanfics) so most of the links wont work yet but if the url works (plz let me know if it doesnt) it should give a brief summary of my TLK fanfic.

The main problem I have with fan fiction (apart from the dearth of cheesy bad text) is that a lot of people who indulge, claim they do it simply for their own enjoyment. Then they go and put it on a website for all to see, which kind of blows their argument out of the water. Having said that, if they enjoy doing that, then good luck to them. But the fact remains that if it isn't an original concept, it's never likely to be taken seriously, which I suspect is their secret wish. There are a billion ideas out there, why not spend your efforts writing something you can truly call your own?

I cant do both?

Of course you can do both, that's the beauty of imagination, you can do anything you want to. But since this is so, why not do just that? I would not attempt to stop anyone writing about what they choose to, but if they are searching for a wider audience, they won't find it by hanging onto someone else's coat-tails. By its very nature it's always more original to lead rather than to follow. The original work that fan fiction writers admire so much wasn't born of people copying what went before though. So if they admire it, and presumably its writers, why not try to emulate their creative processes rather than simply plagiarising their work in an attempt to bask in some kind of reflected glory? There is clearly a lot of work involved in writing some of the fan fiction out there, however the vast majority of it is looked down upon. Most, probably because it's the ramblings of desperate wannabes, but not all of it is badly constructed. So why don't these people take that little step further and create something of their own? The very fact that so many fans are motivated to want to emulate it out of affection for it, means there surely must be an audience for their original stuff too. I gather you are a fan of dragon mythology, and that's a rich source of inspiration. Everything from St George, to full on sword and scorcery stuff. Yet original seams can still be mined from that genre. Look at Reign of Fire, or Q the Winged Serpent, both original in that they take dragons and put them in a different setting. That's got to be more original than say, taking one of Ann McCaffrey's characters and spinning it out beyond its sell by date.

There would only be the need for a truce if we were at war. I'm happy to say that's not the case. I'm just responding to a post, on a thread, on a website. I like the what happened next argument though, so if it makes you happy to do that, that's great. Anyway, I daresay someone could level critisism at the novel I'm working on if I chose to open it to discussion. I can see it now: 'what the f*ck are you writing a novel set in 1761 for, that's so out of date...' hee hee.