Writers get possessive over fan fiction
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It seems that Diana Gabaldon has caused a minor storm online, by launching an attack on fan fiction.
What’s fan fiction? It’s where people create derivative works to share among friends. Usually entertaining, often funny, and also helps promote the originals.
If you’ve been online for more than a few months, chances are you’re already familiar with this through various parodies of popular film and TV series.
There are a whole bunch of fan fiction films of various quality based around popular film/TV fiction universes, not least Star Wars and Star Trek.
One of the great classics is probably the “Troops” – from the US reality police shows “Cops” – in which a TV crew follow a bunch of Stormtroopers as they patrol Tatooine, running into a few plot lines from the first Star Wars film.
Of course, the overwhelming rule with fan fiction is simple – it must always be non-commercial.
That way, there are no trademark, copyright, or other intellectual rights violations. The originator sees no threat to their income stream, nor has their works exploited for profit but without authorisation by third parties which might otherwise compromise their commercial enterprise.
This is a line the great Star Wreck fan fic broke – a brilliant film parody that brought Star Trek and Babylon 5 universes together, it made the mistake of trying to charge for copies of the DVD. Film studios got involved, and the Star Wreck had to refilm the space ships to appear less directly like the ones they originally copied, in order to allow their fan fiction to be commercially distributed.
So how does this affect fan fiction as it relates to written fiction? Surprisingly, a lot.
Overwhelming, authors take an extremely dim view of people writing about their characters under any circumstances.
Even though written fiction is a smaller commercial market than the film industry, even though fan fiction based on books has a far smaller audience base, it seems that authors are loathe to allow any degree of control outside of their own.
After Diana Gabaldon posted her attack on fan fiction for literature, other authors stepped in – George R R Martin stepped in to agree with her, while Charlie Stross remains one of the few writers who appears happy to allow for it.
We’ve seen the same issue come up in the chronicles forums, where resident published authors speak out at the lack of controls and concerns over intellectual rights. More pointedly, their argument all boils down to “they are my characters, not yours – leave off!”.
The initial reaction is surprise – fan fiction isn’t a threat to anybody, and it can be an excellent marketing tool.
However, as Charlie Stross points out, it can expose the author to a number of legal issues – and authors generally don’t carry the weight of a full legal department that film distribution companies usually do.
Even still, while the possessive attitude of some authors to their characters is understandable to a point, it’s perhaps time they relaxed their attitudes and embraced their fans more, warts and all.
After all, the only actual possible danger to the authors is that the fan fiction will be more popular than the authors themselves. But let’s face it – if the author is generating fan fiction in the first place, chances are that they are not going to be uncrowned.
Diana Gabaldon has since deleted her attack on fan fiction – perhaps that’s an encouraging sign of a much needed relaxation in attitude.
Comments (11)
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Personally, I think that authors should be moved, first of all, that they managed to affect their readers so deeply as to inspire derivatives. Being a writer myself, I hardly understand why the first reaction of most authors is to act offended. It’s almost like their characters have managed to walk off the page.
Commercially, however, I can see where concerns arise; even if the work is being indirectly “promoted” by fan-fiction, it may also being misrepresented, especially if the fan-fiction is not very good.
I think the bigger concern surrounding fan-fiction is that a lot of new writers use it as a crutch when they ought to be creating their own stories. It can be fun at first, I suppose (I’ve never tried it), but I’ve seen some writers get addicted to it, when their time would be better spent creating their own work.
I think fanfiction is a great form of flattery. It means someone enjoyed the story, characters and setting so much that they didn’t want to stop when they reached the end of the book. If someone likes a fictional scenario so much that they want to write their own ideas of what happened before/after/during the novel or what might have happened if an event occurred differently, it means that the writer of the novel created something that really stirred the imagination.
Writers should take it as a complement when fans write fanfic.
Obviously this raises the two sides to the argument, 1: That it is well meaning and sincere in its desire to flatter. 2: That it is unoriginal and promotes derivative sub-standard writing.
I tend to veer on the side of the second. Writing should always come from the heart. If it does not come from yours, then perforce it belongs to someone else. Flattery leads to lazy writing, just as tracing a picture leads to the lack of cultivation for the artist’s inner voice. To mimic is to always fall short. To strive to better through your own creation is to grow.
As a new author, I would love to have fan fiction. It would mean a) that I was successful because people are reading my books and b) those readers are enjoying my characters and are inspired by them.
“After all, the only actual possible danger to the authors is that the fan fiction will be more popular than the authors themselves.” Actually, I think there is some threat from fan-fiction.
1) Most fan-fiction is bad and I don’t want my brand to be associated with bad writing. If a few bad fan-fiction authors make my fanbase look dumb, I think it could scare away prospective readers.
2) A substantial portion of fan-fiction is sexually creepy. I’m a mostly family-friendly author and (like Disney) I’d hate to be associated with that. One of my competitive edges against other authors in my field (superhero action/comedy) is that my stories are closer to PG/PG-13 than R. I think mature fan-fiction muddles that.
3) It may dislodge more desirable websites from Google searches for your name/product. For example, a search for “harry potter” turns up a Harry Potter fan-site (MuggleNet) before any site by a bookstore. When somebody Googles my series name, I’d like Amazon or another major bookseller to be in the top 2 results. (According to one survey, only ~30% of Google users look past the top two results on the average search).
4) Commercial fan-fiction (which is mercifully rare) may compete with my stories for sales. This is probably more of a concern in the comic book industry, which tries to make many, many sales to each customer. (Most novelists only have a few books to sell, but a comic book writer may have 10+ issues).
In short, I am highly supportive of fan-fiction that is well-written, PG, free and ranked worse on Google than I am. It’s a pretty small sliver of the total.
–B. Mac
Editor, Superhero Nation
I’ve seen this issue debated and discussed at length on many forums, including this one. As such I’ve shifted slightly in my opinions, but must admit that I still don’t understand writers who feel personally offended by fan-fiction.
I also think that, depending on circumstances, an author can do more harm than good if they go after their well meaning fans with too much of a legal sledgehammer and written vitriol.
But I do recognize that many writers don’t share that view, and obviously I respect the right of any author to decide their own stance on the issue.
As an aspiring writer trying to get published, I tend to take the Charlie Stross position quoted in the link from original article. I’d have no problem with fan-fic of my work, (in fact I’d be flattered) as long as it didn’t impact my legal or financial position, whereupon I’d have no choice but to go after said work with a flamethrower.
Fanfiction is similar to piracy insofar as it’s a tax writers must pay for success. There are worse things in life, like say, failure.
To be honest I tend to support the authors in this due to the fact of the current culture of legal representation.
Say a fan decides to keep the characters to thier original premise, writes a story where the character goes and finds a dragon and fights it.
The author of the original characters then, with no knowledge of the fan fic tale then sends them to do the same thing. Next thing they know, the fan has decided to sue for the author alledgedly ripping off the story demanding a sum that can float a country.
Its a dangerous situation and if you’re going to be that creative why not write your own story with your own characters?
Being a writer myself, I would say that fan fiction could be very useful for both the author and fans! Think about all the new quotes or wisdom fans could create! Some of my readers helped me with their suggestions for some of my future books, I guess fans could be really helpful for any author too. That way even plots could become more interesting, with new, unseen characters and adventures. That’s how my water dragons’ appeared, or my Fiery men… Many fans or authors could share similar experience too I guess?
I would think that most creators of Fan Fiction, are genuine fans, interested only in paying homage to someone who has caused an emotional reaction within them that led to a desire to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard etc etc.
But of course, we are all money hungry whores, only interessted in how we can squeeze an extra buck out of our gullible fan base. How dare they be inspired by his/hers/my/their work.
I don not think this is how most authors think, but please remember, without fans, you are unemployed. The natural state of the author.
i think this is a non-topic. the only aspect we need to think about here is when the corporations themselves do this shit. when they take a book, turn it into a movie and completely massacre the plot and characters. thats what we need to prevent.