WWQ: After the Fanfic

New Writer's Weekly Question #4:

Is fan-fiction a genre that is an acceptable form of expression, or is it just a version of finger-painting for adults? Explain.

Also:

Have you ever or do you currently write fan-fiction? If you yes for either question, why did you choose to do it, and what sort of benefit did you gain from this experience?

Extra Credit:

If you write fan-fiction, please leave a link either in your post or in the comments. Please link to something that's not R or X-rated, as this is a "family show."

This particular question grew out of a writing prompt involving Doctor Who, which has not generated much response so far. Given my current level of obsession with the Doctor, you might think this would be something I'd jump at the chance to do; but no, it wasn't. I couldn't make myself do that writing prompt at all, for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I pretty much deliberately left fanfic behind a decade ago; it just feels kind of wrong for me to do that now. The other is that I generally avoid fiction writing prompts of any sort. Given all the productive fiction writing I should be doing (and am not doing enough), the last thing I need is to take on an obligation to write fiction that doesn't add to my body of work with characters of my own devising.

Now on to the particulars:

Is fan-fiction a genre that is an acceptable form of expression, or is it just a version of finger-painting for adults? Explain.

Writing fan fiction isn't so much finger painting as the creative writing equivalent of riding a bike with training wheels, or starting with a paint-by-number picture and customizing from there. Most of your word building and character development is already done for you. All you have to do is add any customized characters you want, add plot and dialogue and theme (optional), and voila! You've got a story. Mind you, even that's not necessarily easy, and many fanfic writers fail to draft a competent story. Still, it does give amateur and beginning writers (and sometimes experienced ones) a leg up in writing the story, and it's good practice as well as being just plain fun. When you're a fan of a book series, movie, tv show or character, there's a definite allure to exploring what would happen if Character A met Character B and did C. Heck, as I waited for the Doctor Who story "Utopia" to air after seeing that preview clip, I found myself on several occasions running lines in my head for the Doctor and Jack to say. But I didn't write them down. No indeed!

Even so, it is certainly a valid form of expression, providing a creative outlet for writers and enjoyment to readers, and generally doing a franchise's copyright holders more good than harm. And it can lead to better things. Many fanfic writers progress to writing tie-in books, which are essentially authorized fanfic. Others move on to writing their own characters exclusively, incorporating what they learned while writing about Captain Kirk, the Doctor or whoever. And that's a good thing. Nor is fan fiction necessarily of less than professional quality. Most of it certainly is, but not all. Still, there probably aren't too many writers at that skill level who work exclusively in an genre for which they will never be paid for their work.

Have you ever or do you currently write fan-fiction? If you yes for either question, why did you choose to do it, and what sort of benefit did you gain from this experience?

I wrote one 14-page script in junior high or possibly high school, in which a friend and I saved the Enterprise. Pretty standard Mary Sue beginnings, really. A few years after that I wrote satirical fiction about Paramount lawyers, but not about Star Trek itself. I didn't write a full-fledged fanfic story until 1990 and 1991, when I serialized a Doctor Who / Quantum Leap novella in TARDIS Time Lore, with the pun titled Paradox: Two Doctors in Time. Other than that I wrote

• a short story for Julie B's Quantum Chain, about a disabled student filmmaker trying to stop a knife fight;
• a story about Sam Beckett getting home overnight, which I don't think was ever published;
• an unfinished story about one of Al Calavicchi's daughters, discovering she didn't exist in the original history;
• an April Fool's fragment for TARDIS Time Lore, "Time and Tide Melt the Snowman", involving the Seventh Doctor with Ian and Barbara; and
• the first installment of an unfinished serial about Ace being the Doctor's daughter.

None of it's online, or even on my hard drive. It was all well over a decade ago. But I enjoyed doing it, and the ones I actually finished helped me to avoid getting stuck as I turned to writing original fiction. Eventually the fan stuff fell away. I'm not ashamed of it, but I'm not going back to it, either. These days when I need a literary crutch, I bring in Black Rose Kate or Ariel Allegra to help me out.

If you'd like to participate in the Writer's Weekly Question, write up your answer in your own journal, and post your link here. Have fun!

Karen

P.S. I forgot to mention that I did get back to work on the DAW cover letter, finally. The main thing I did was tone down the pretentious and defensive sentence about a "hidden royalty trope" without removing it entirely. If my beta readers don't absolutely hate the letter as it stands now, I'll probably print out and mail the novel this week - and start count months since sending the novel to DAW, instead of the months since sending three chapters to Tor, which are pretty much irrelevant at this point. KFB