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

Tapping the Well

New Writer's Weekly Question #3: Do you have times when you just can't get to your imagination, or your imaginary places? How do you cope with this issue? How do you manage your reality with your imaginative process?

Hmm. I like the way this one is worded. It implies that the well of imagination does not itself run dry, but we sometimes have trouble operating the bucket. That strikes me as about right. I suspect that weird stuff going on in our heads all the time, but for the most part we're unaware of it. The trick for the writer (or artist of any sort, perhaps) is to dredge up some of our buried weirdness, impose order on it and thus turn it into art.


For myself specifically, it's almost never a case of feeling that I've entirely run dry, even when I'm being remarkably unproductive. My failures of imagination are nearly always task-specific. Just half an hour ago, I was looking at a Joshua Wander story I got stuck on almost exactly two years ago. The passage above is on page 28 of the handwritten draft of that part of the story. As you can see, it ends in the middle of a sentence, mostly because I didn't know what exactly Rachel does next. I still don't.


When I get stuck on something like that, I generally abandon it for a bit, and hope the answer will come to me later. This never works, by the way. I do better if I write some other scene from the same work, or make myself work on the stuck scene anyway.

The same sort of thing happens with this blog sometimes. I am determined to post an entry every night (night being defined as any time before I go to bed, even if it's 7 AM), but I don't always have an idea for an entry. This is often a major reason why I don't go to bed at a reasonable hour. Take this entry, for example. I started it around 9:30 this evening, which is unusually early for me. But after the words, "I still don't," I wasn't sure where I was going with this essay. So I watched Doctor Who and edited Wikipedia, and now it's 1:40 AM and I've made it through two more paragraphs. As with Rachel in the mirror shop, I made no progress on it during the time I was off doing other things, but the hope is that my subconscious is working in the background, and I'll eventually be able to draw on that.

How do I get to it, though? These are the three things that sometimes work for me:

1. Prime the pump. When I'm off reading or watching tv or writing something else, in theory I'm giving my subconscious new stuff to think about, raw material for new essays or storymaking. This can either be direct inspiration - watching Doctor Who and then writing about it, for example - or completely new, seemingly irrelevant stuff. That's at least as helpful as the other kind. There's a reason aspiring writers are advised to read widely. It gives the imagination something to work with, not just story elements but a sense of how they fit together, what works and what doesn't, and what might be applicable to the writer's own work.
2. Sleep deprivation. No, I'm not kidding about this. When I'm really, seriously tired, all sorts of daft nonsense surfaces in my brain. Catch me at just the right level of tiredness, in the right mood and with no other immediate obligations, and I can pour a bunch of reasonably interesting words onto a virtual page fairly quickly. This can backfire, though. Aside from health concerns and a huge upswing in typos, the time comes when the brain stops cooperating, and there isn't much I can do but go to bed. That's what happened last night, incidentally. I got to a certain point in my little narrative with Ariel, and then my tired brain stranded me there without a closing line. Since Ariel is essentially a function of my imagination, she couldn't help me. So I gave the entry a totally lame ending, went to bed, and slept for 10 hours.
3. Write it anyway. At some point I have to just start writing the thing, even if I don't know where it's going. I usually don't know where a story is going anyway, but I can get through it if I just keep writing - or resume writing. I think the problem with Rachel, aside from the fact that it's a mystery story and I've never plotted a mystery in my life, is that I had a neat idea that really, really won't work at that point in the story. I'll have to write something else, and hope I eventually write my way into a plot that works.

As for the underlying question behind the one posted above, I don't generally find real life stresses getting in the way of writing. Time constraints, yes. Distractions and obsessions, yes. But not stress at work, or family crises. If anything, writing is a welcome respite from Real Life. Isn't that what imagination is for?

Karen

P.S. The Writer's Weekly Question is open to writers, aspiring writers and non-writers alike. See "It's Creative, but Is It Art?" for details.

Then Again, There's Always Archduke Ferdinand

This entry will be a two-fer, if I can get through it in a reasonable amount of time. I've already had four hours of sleep, so I've got a shot as a decent total if I don't go overboard now.

1. "That guy who shot Archduke Ferdinand"

I mentioned the Weekend Assignment to husband John over the weekend, about taking one person out of history for the greater good. He came up with the above response. Initially at least, it sounds like a better answer than the one that Kate, Ariel and I settled on. John's remark was prompted in part by this voiceover by the Doctor, toward the end of the Doctor Who episode "The Family of Blood":

In June, 1914, an Archduke of Austria was shot by a Serbian. And this then led, through nations having treaties with nations, like a line of dominoes falling, to some boys from England walking together in France on a terrible day.

(I can see I need to write much more extensively about "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", but I think I'll put it in my underused LiveJournal, where I can hide spoilers "below the cut." But not tonight.)

According to a Wikipedia article, though, the Causes of World War I were more complex than that. (Aren't they always?) The "guy" in question, one Gavrilo Princip, was part of a group of six assassins, with support from members of the Serbian military. Beyond that there were all sorts of built up tensions and diplomatic failures. Bottom line: the Great War would probably have happened anyway, even without Gavrilo Princip. Oh, well. It was worth looking into, anyway.

2. Some Other Room:

Behold the New Writer's Weekly Question #2:

Have you ever worked in a writer's room? If so, what was it like and what were some of the dynamics that made it work, or not work. Was it a conducive environment for true creativity?

If not, would you want to work in a writer's room for a tv show or other endeavor like this? If so, why do you find it engaging? If not, why? Do you believe that true creativity can be attained in such an environment (since you've never worked in one, your answer will be theoretical, of course).

In answer to the first part, no. I've never been part of a roomful of professional writers, brainstorming for some television series. That said, let's move on to the theoretical part of it. I see that as having two major components, which I will address separately:

1. Does your writing benefit from a collaborative process?

I've had collaborators on basically one type of project, and it was non-fiction. Teresa Murray and I used to interview actors, writers and producers as a team, both asking questions as Teresa (and occasionally her twin sister Tracy) recording the answers. Teresa usually did most of the transcribing, which I then edited. For our Starlog articles, we pulled a few all-nighters and took turns at the Mac, turning the raw interview into a proper profile.

I'm not sure I would do it again. Teresa was good, and we worked well together, but I think it was stressful for both of us.

I know for darn sure that I wouldn't do a collaboration on fiction, at least not on entire story. I wrote I think three Ficlets a couple of months back, which are designed to be collaborative. Each of these "short short stories" is meant to be the inspiration for one of more mini-sequels that anyone can write. But of the several sequels people did to my Ficlets, only one really worked for me, none were what I had in mine, and all of them were stressful for me. There was nothing inherently wrong with them; I just couldn't handle other people playing in my sandbox. So I stopped writing Ficlets, although I will probably give it another shot at some point. (Okay, I just wrote one. There.) I suspect that if there's ever Mâvarin fan fiction, I'm not going to enjoy reading it.

However, outside input can be helpful. I'm constantly bouncing ideas off Sara or (less frequently) Sarah, and pay attention to suggestions by Paul and Julie and Wil and Linda. Other people see things that I don't, know things that I don't, and get provide a perspective that's simply not available inside my own head. The problem, as I've found with that darn DAW cover letter is that the combination or too many viewpoints and my own insecurities can backfire, confusing me and halting my progress for a time. That's essentially what happened at Clarion ''77, not just to me but to the workshop as a whole. By Week 6, nearly everyone stopped writing, discouraged by contradictory, often negative feedback.

2. Can you work effectively in a group setting?

As an accountant, I work in a cubicle these days, rather than the "hermit cave" I had at my previous job. Generally speaking I prefer to work alone, but I like being able to consult with others as needed. There's something surprising pleasant and collegial about standing around discussing accounting principles - not that this happens very much, but I like it when it happens.

In the writing arena, I wouldn't care to do an actual story, sketch, script or what-have-you as part of a group effort, for reasons outlined above. Nevertheless, group brainstorming can be helpful and inspiring. After church today I sat at Coffee Hour at St. Michael's, making the acquaintance of the husband of the head of the Creative Writing department at the University of Arizona. No slouch himself, this guy has traveled with the White House Press Corps, and with candidate Bill Clinton (who apparently likes to play Hearts at 2 AM), and written for Smithsonian Magazine and other science publications. When other parishioners heard this, they wanted to put him to work, getting people to write for the church newsletter (and, as I pointed out, the church blog). He was left trying to gracefully decline the request, but the basic idea was sound. He and I also discussed my cover letter issue, and I found that helpful. For a few minutes there, the Parish Hall almost was a writers' room of sorts, fun and stimulating, albeit chaotic and easily sidetracked.

Even so, as with the accounting work, as with the Clarion Writer's Workshop, as with my friends and beta readers, as with the Ficlets, that group input is something that really only works for me on a limited basis, at certain stages of the process. For the actual writing I need to fly solo, ignoring most of what other people said and taking only what I can use. I suspect that's what happens with the writers who work in actual writers' rooms. They make brainstorm together, get and give notes, bounce ideas off each other and contribute the occasional gag, but at some point I suspect most of them leave the room, singly or in pairs, and just write the darn sketch on their own.

Karen

Ten Feet Beyond the Road

Jess is back with a new blog, and

New Writer's Weekly Question #1:

In creating the world your characters live, work, and play in, what sorts of things have you had to consider? How do you go about creating a world that allows your characters to do what they need to do, and yet make the world accessible to your readers?

First of all, let me link to an important resource for this, which is also on my sidebar:

Patricia C. Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

As the name says, it's for building fantasy worlds, but I imagine parts of it would be useful for science fiction and other genres, with a bit of imagination and adaptation.

Now, I've told this story before, although not in much detail:

Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight (he's the guy with the beard, right) taught the last two weeks together. Damon seemed to contradict a lot of the writing advice we'd had to that point, even some of his own. He also discouraged the heck out of me when he said he had the impression that Mâvarin ended "ten feet beyond the road." I disagreed strongly, but the truth is that I wasn't big on concrete detail in those days. I've worked hard over the years to overcome my talking heads syndrome, in large part because of Damon's remark. Damon also taught about the business side of writing, which I found more helpful at the time than the actual writing advice. Oddly, though, I've since bought a book of Damon's writing advice, and it all resonates with me, nearly thirty years later.

The material of mine that Damon Knight was critiquing consisted of early drafts of the first three chapters or so of The Tengrem Sword, later to become Heirs of Mâvarin. I was no good at physical description back then; when you don't tend to notice what things look like, you probably won't describe them well, either.

But when I finally found a way to write past page 70 (short version: wrote in restaurants, and mostly didn't try to plot things in advance), mentioning how something looked (or sounded, or smelled) was something I tried to make myself do. And as characters fretted about what to do next, I worked through their immediate options, figured out the implications and wrote the scenes.

Among the things I've had to learn about Mâvarin:

• It's not really a fake-medieval setting. For one thing, it's an alternate universe version of the eastern U.S., not England. for another, the technology is closer to the Age of Homespun than the Middle Ages.
• There are no dragons, unicorns, minotaurs, griffins, harpies, etc. in Mâvarin. However, they exist in the mythology of Londer, so mages with the right talents can make a conceivably make a monster (but seldom do).
• The average mage has two or three magical talents. Rani has four.
  
• Some spells are "cross discipline" and require only generalized magical talent, not anything specific.
• The main road from north to south parallels the River Misis, sort of a cross between the mighty Mississippi and the Eric Canal. There are barges on the river.
• There are big controversies within magical communities around different styles of magic, especially spirit magic.
• There's a book on an island in the middle of the ocean, which unlocks the secret of traveling to other versions of reality.
• Londer is basically Victorian. Mâvarin is backward by comparison.
• Del stayed in a blue bedroom.
  

More later. Must sleep now!

Karen