Fan-fiction - Why?

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Thank you for calling what I do "pollution". I guess you can determine from my posts here that my writing is inferior and leaves a lot to be desired. Gee. Thanks.

Actually Ww, I don't think I mentioned your efforts at all. I have no idea what fan fiction you write, so I certainly didn't mean to.

I'm sure there are many excellent pieces of fan fiction out there and yours could very well be among them. However, all I stated was that all the relatively few stories I have tried reading myself turned out to be of a very low quality. I'm not at all sure that I see how that equates to saying that all fan fiction is pretty crap.

I'm fairly sure it is true of most fan fiction though and hence I choose to abstain from it altogether.

[elcreative]

But that can equally be applied to all fiction... or most anything... something called Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap, it's the other 10% that's worth going for...

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

However, all I stated was that all the relatively few stories I have tried reading myself turned out to be of a very low quality. I'm not at all sure that I see how that equates to saying that all fan fiction is pretty crap.

I'm fairly sure it is true of most fan fiction though and hence I choose to abstain from it altogether.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by gmw

What makes these different to fan-fiction? I don't know the history with the "Miss Seeton" books, but in my other examples here the new works are published with at least the permission, and often the blessing, of the original author or his estate. In theory this gives the reader some comfort in the idea that the book is consistent with what the original author intended - and if the original author is still about, that this new book is not going to conflict with anything further that they decide to write.

Look at the "Pern" books that Anne McCaffrey's son Tod has turned out. While his mother might think her son's stories are awesome, her fans shake their heads in disbelief and wonder what on Earth he's trying to do there. The stories give a bare nod to Pern canon and retcon things that have been part of it since the days of Weyr Search. Approval by the original author does not, apparently, guarantee quality. I've read better Pern fanfic. A lot better Pern fanfic.

Or ... beware, I'm going to say it ... I dread the thought, but I must ... The Phantom Menace. A series of commercials for toys tied together by Jar-Jar Binks. A disaster on film. I don't think there's anyone who considers it within an order of magnitude of the quality of the original, or even the original trilogy. As bad as many of the Star Wars novelizations have been (though Timothy Zahn has done some good ones), that official, Lucas-written, Lucas-directed, Lucas-produced disaster called The Phantom Menace went beyond awful and well into "OMG can we just forget it exists?"

I think in the case of fanfic, it's more a matter of knowing your authors. You quickly come to recognize that some people are obsessively true to canon (and some try to make canon and reality coincide even when they don't), while others fly off in all directions to various degrees. You pick the author who shares your point of view. If you happen to like Todd McCaffrey's writing, there are fanfic writers who do stories like that about just about everything; if you want total consistency with canon, there are people who dissect it word-for-word (I've seen an argument go on for two years about the location of a place which doesn't actually exist!) in order to get everything just right. And there are writers everywhere in between. In other words, very much like authorized sequels, continuations, and expansions, except fanfic writers do it without the approval of the rights owners.

As far as the people who say "oh, I tried to read a couple of fanfic stories, and saw they were all crap" ... well, how often have we as ebook readers had to defend our hobby from people who read some half-baked piece of dreck their cousin's friend's sister wrote and conned them into reading, or some random abomination found on Smashwords? Rather often, I would say, but we don't decide that all indie writing is terrible because we know better. The same is true of fanfic. As with any unmoderated writing, finding authors whose works you like, seeking moderated groups, and finding the gems among the pebbles make all the difference in the world.

[Penforhire]

Ah, the thread reminds me, another mention of a good successful writer who writes "fan fiction" -- how about Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series, as extended by Eric Van Lustbader? Both of those guys are giants in their field (can you tell they're old fav's of mine, lol). IMO, Lustbader is better at writing combat scenes and pacing in general.

Should we be offended by Lustbader picking up Ludlum's work? How is it different than other fan fiction?

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Should we be offended by Lustbader picking up Ludlum's work? How is it different than other fan fiction?

If we want to consider that category, how about V.C. Andrews, who died a couple of books into her "career"? Or Victor Appleton, who never even existed -- he and his descendants were Stratemeyer Syndicate house names used by multiple authors.

[captkjaneway]

Originally Posted by elcreative

But that can equally be applied to all fiction... or most anything... something called Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap, it's the other 10% that's worth going for...

Indeed, I have read my fair share of published original crap, and have also delved into some fan-fic which again has produced some crap.

Looking at threads such as the space opera thread, surely as has already been stated the Star Trek, Star Wars, CSI etc novels are all fan-fic, expanding established characters or storylines created by someone else.

[chamekke]

By the way... for those people who do enjoy reading fanfiction, the fan-run, non-commercial Archive Of Our Own (also known as "AO3") has a download feature - new since Sept. 2010 - that enables you to download any fanfic on the site in MOBI, EPUB, PDF or HTML format.

Anyone may visit the site to browse, download and read; but to obtain an account and upload your own fics you need an "invitation". (I have several if anyone wants one - just PM me - or you can simply submit a request from the homepage and get onto the waiting list, which at the moment is quite short.)

I won't say everything on the site is great, but certainly some of the best writers in my minifandom have their work up there, and as a result I've happily downloaded several dozen of my favourites onto my Kindle

[wyndslash]

i wish i could download some original fiction from my favorite archive sites to my kindle. maybe i'll email them about it...

[OtterBooks]

Philip Jose Farmer made much of his career out of fan-fiction. He got sued a few times, I think.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

[...] Approval by the original author does not, apparently, guarantee quality. [...]

I did say "in theory" I could give you a list of authorised/approved disasters too ... but the theory seems good and even works in some cases. From what I understand the Dune continuations are very close to the intentions of Frank Herbert, I just didn't like the one I tried.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

i wish i could download some original fiction from my favorite archive sites to my kindle. maybe i'll email them about it...

Copy & paste the story into a Word or Text document and save as an RTF. Use Calibre to turn it into an ebook.

This is what I have done with some of my FF. I already have them in Word so it's just a matter of converting them.

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Copy & paste the story into a Word or Text document and save as an RTF. Use Calibre to turn it into an ebook.

This is what I have done with some of my FF. I already have them in Word so it's just a matter of converting them.

oh yeah, didn't think of that thanks but i kind of wish i could like...somehow get calibre to automatically fetch for me, but it doesn't have an rss feed hmm though most of the really good authors turned to ebooks

[chamekke]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Copy & paste the story into a Word or Text document and save as an RTF. Use Calibre to turn it into an ebook.

This is what I have done with some of my FF. I already have them in Word so it's just a matter of converting them.

Good suggestion! I've done this with a lot of fanfics too... copied them into a blank Word document and saved it as RTF. It works really well - and if you ever need to edit the original (e.g. you spot a typo that's just driving you crazy) - you can open your RTF doc from within Calibre, resave it, and reconvert it to your preferred ebook format.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Should we be offended by Lustbader picking up Ludlum's work? How is it different than other fan fiction?

One significant difference is that it's legal, whereas most fan-fiction is not.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

If we want to consider that category, how about V.C. Andrews, who died a couple of books into her "career"? Or Victor Appleton, who never even existed -- he and his descendants were Stratemeyer Syndicate house names used by multiple authors.

The ultimate "house name" is, of course, "Perry Rhodan" - the most successful SF series every published, with over a billion sales, and well over 2500 volumes so far published.