The Missing Link

[oselle]

I know that a lot of you here are also writers, so this is a discussion for you.

I don't think writing fanfic is a waste of time, but let's face it -- the hours are dreadful and the pay sucks. At times, I find it very spiritually satisfying to do this but there is no way I could describe it as just a fun hobby -- it's definitely work. Especially trying to find time to fit it in between my day job and keeping up some appearance of a normal life (by which I basically mean, doing laundry and remembering to eat). There are times when I'm in the zone and it flows fast and smooth but other times when it's just frustrating and depressing, and even when it flows fast -- those are the days when I blow eight or ten hours straight on it and then I feel all sick and bleary-eyed and I realize that one whole day of the weekend is shot and I'm screwed. So like I said -- the hours are dreadful and the pay sucks. Really sucks.

I've read a lot of really great fanfic, and then I've read some that seemed to surpass the boundaries of the genre enough that I wondered why the author wasn't turning her hand to original fiction. I mean, if someone's going to do that much work why not do it with at least a hope of winding up with something more than a story to post on LiveJournal? I wonder this about other writers, but when people ask me the same thing...I have no answer. I don't know why I don't write original fiction -- I used to, when I was very young -- but I haven't attempted it in at least 30 years. I literally wouldn't even know how to get started with an original work. There's just something there that's missing and I can't pinpoint it at all. I think it has something to do with a trepidation about developing a wholly new character -- but then how many "new" characters are really out there? I know the sorts of themes and characters that interest me, and they're the building blocks for a lot of published fiction so why can't I pick them up and build something too?

What do you think? Is there a missing link? And if so, is there a way to find it, and put it to work?

Comments

[maychorian.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction is work, yes, but I think it's also somewhat less work than original fiction. Most fanficcers do it for love, and while you can certainly love your own original characters, you're not sharing the love with a large group of people over the internet or some of other medium, either. There's a sense of community that is usually missing from original fiction. That's a big reason why writers need clubs and get-togethers and discussion groups--to dispel the loneliness, to share the love.

I think it's some sort of cost-benefit ratio, in the end. I write because I love to write and I can't imagine not writing. But before I fell in love with SPN, I hadn't written more than ten thousand words in the previous three years. Those ten thousand were great and I loved them, but they didn't sell, the love wasn't shared, and I was alone. With SPN suddenly I was writing thousands and thousands and thousands of words and enjoying it a very great deal and joining in with a huge amount of love and...

The benefit, there, outweighed the cost. Original fiction just didn't have a high enough ratio for me at that time.

Maybe it will again. I still have original ideas and I want to be a "real" writer someday. But for now, I'm happy, really, really happy in my creative life, and after years of dryness, that's incredibly welcome.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You've definitely got a point about the cost-benefit ratio. I wrote when I was a kid and then I wrote nothing for more than 20 years -- and it was fanfiction that got me writing again, something I'd almost completely forgotten I'd ever been able to do. And it was just...extraordinary. A revelation. Exciting.

And all the more exciting because the audience was right there. One of the daunting things about writing originial fiction is definitely that loneliness of NOT having an audience, or at least, of not having one until you get published. Tolkien said, regarding publication, that "art without an audience is no art." He probably would have kept writing his stories all the same, but having an audience was key.

The wonderful thing about writing fanfiction is that it IS a writer's club, with no pretention and very little competitive bullshit. But it's a club based upon love for already existing characters. You don't have to sell your readers on this Dean Winchester guy, they already know him. How do you sell readers on someone they've never met? How do you get them (and yourself) to care?

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Honey, I could have written this post. :)

I haven't written my own fic in years ... until very recently, when I finished a short story (2,204 words) and sent it off for a competition.

I have no idea whether I can ever be a good enough writer to actually write a novel. The idea is tremendously daunting. I can only take baby steps at a time. But I CAN feel some ideas for more short stories starting to germinate, however slowly ... and that is encouraging, because for years there has been nothing.

And there is no doubt that for me writing fanfic has been the springboard.

Mary Hoffman says: "Write fan fiction; it will get other writers’ voices out of your head."

Her writing tips are here:
http://www.maryhoffman.co.uk/tips.htm#advice

I've also taken out a subscription to a women's writing magazine: the standard submitted by readers is very high (but by no means perfect -- some entries are more obviously amateurish than others).

It's taken me years to get to this point. Baby steps, as I said.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I skimmed that link and is it me or am I picking up on a little Harry Potter hate? "Don't let an entire plot hinge on a birthmark?...Don't build in merchandising opportunities?...Don't get hung up on names?" LOL, that's HP in a nutshell!

I'm all for baby steps but I wish there were some way to push past that. Fanfiction is a great outlet and I really feel like I've developed my own voice and style over the years but I just can't see myself ever making that leap.

Good luck with the competition!

[tripoli.livejournal.com]

I think it has something to do with a trepidation about developing a wholly new character

I haven't written anything original in a few years either, but I was surprised to hear you say this--I love your OCs, they're one of my favorite parts of your writing. And I know it's different, because I like writing with OCs and still have no interest in writing original fiction, but if you have trepidation about it, dude, you hide it really really well.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Okay, a few things:

First: thanks for the complement! :)

Second: I find OCs strangely easy to create because they just seem to grown organically from the premise of the story. I never sit down and ponder my OCs, they're just sort of...there. Dean's in a restaurant and...there's a waitress. Dean's stranded in Mississippi and...there's two old guys who help him out. The thing about OCs is that they're all supporting characters. They don't have to carry the whole weight of the story. They come in, serve some function in relation to the protagonist, and then exit stage left. No doubt I'd feel the same about supporting characters in an original work.

It's that protagonist who's the problem. It's possible to write great fiction with a fascinating cast of supporting characters and a fairly bland protagonist -- Charles Dickens excelled at this. Most of his protagonists hardly rise above the role of narrator but everyone around them is unforgettable. I absolutely love Dickens but the kind of stories that really move me, and that I'd want to write, are the kind where there's one hero who you just fall in love with, who you want to follow to the ends of the earth, who you never want to let go. He's the guy who ultimately has to carry the whole weight of the story, no matter how many interesting characters help him out along the way. With fanfiction, my hero's already in place. I still have to give him a story to carry, but he's there, he's the lodestone around which everyone and everything revolves. That's where the trepidation comes in -- how to create that one great character to be the heart of the story.

Re: you have to love a character or a story

[roque-clasique.livejournal.com]

OMGIOD I just said the same thing at the same time you were saying it!!!!! Look below.

Great minds think alike!

Re: you have to love a character or a story

[oselle.livejournal.com]

YES, see my response to tripoli8 upthread.

[roque-clasique.livejournal.com]

I write a lot of original fiction, and have found that fanfiction has improved it ENORMOUSLY, especially in terms of plot...

but I believe that really the missing link is love. I love Dean Winchester. I love Sam. I love Castiel (! who knew). I care deeply for the characters, and that's why I write fanfiction. I find it very difficult to care as deeply for my original characters, and in this sense writing really IS a labor of love -- if I don't love my characters, it shows.

Besides and including -- we understand the characters of SPN. We don't have to guess what they would do, or how they would react, because we already know. Half the work has been done for us! We just have to make it believable.

One of the reasons, I think, that I don't love my original characters as much, is that all my stories are about women -- varying sides of my own self, probably, and while I am grateful to be me, I wouldn't say I love me. I am certainly not sexually attracted to myself. But Dean? Yes.

I have a million more thoughts on this original fiction v. fanfiction issue, and if you're still interested after a bajillion other people respond, let me know ;) I think you'll have more than enough food for thought here, though, if the first three comments were anything to go on.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes, love. See my response to tripoli8 upthread.

I years ago, a fanfic writer that I liked wrote about some book she was reading, and she said how obvious it was that the author was in love with her hero and how she found that "embarrassing." Now yes, that can be embarrassing when someone does it as artlessly as say, Stephenie Meyer, whose every description of Edward Cullen elicits nothing but a cringe from me. But Twilight wasn't around when I read that writer's review, and I remember wondering why anyone would want to write a whole book about a character they didn't love. It seemed to me to be the key ingredient.

With fanfiction, I've already got the the guy I love. I can write about him because I'm passionate about him. It's not just that I "know" him or don't have to guess what he would do -- I'd say, especially at this point, that "my" Dean is based on a lot of my own perceptions, not necessarily where the show has taken him. But yeah, I love the guy.

How do you get that excited about your own character? I don't know why this is so hard because I have a very clear idea of the type of character that I tend to fall in love with. Conflicted? Check. Bit of an antihero? Double-check. Throw in tormented and kinda gorgeous and you've got the whole package. That's not exactly a startingly unique character, so why is it so difficult to create one from scratch?

all my stories are about women

I know one thing for sure: I have no interest in writing any story, fanfiction or otherwise, about a female protagonist. Because I know that character would just inevitably become me and I can't imagine anything more agonizingly dull than writing about myself. Which may seem surprising considering how much I blather on LJ but even here, I'm not usually talking about me. Am I? God, I hope not.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

For me original fic and fan fic are two totally separate monsters. For me, fan fic is purely fun (and yes, it can be hard work and low pay, but other times, it's so great to have an already-made audience). I know when I was at my most prolific in the 2002=2004 or so time period, I probably took my fan fic the least bit seriously and I was really literally just in it to have fun with the characters and setting. It felt like a break from my original fic, which I do take very seriously. Now I do write fan fic a lot less but I tend to take it more seriously (except when I'm not). But my original fic. It's like...well, it's this world and scenario and cast of characters that are in my mind and my mind alone and I've shared with some people and I'm very much in love with this world. I almost couldn't give a crap if I ever really finish it and/or publish. It's enough to get to dip into it when I want. And also it's therapy for me.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I do find writing fanfic fun but I take it very seriously. And in some ways I do take it seriously because I feel responsible to uphold these characters that everyone already knows and loves. How do you maintain that same sense of responsibility, that same seriousness, with an original character that starts off wholly amorphous, that no one knows anything about? How do you build a world for him to move through? I know that even when I was a kid and I was writing my own stories, this was a problem for me. Maintaining the care for my own characters and their world that I had for those created by other writers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was going to say exactly what was said above about your ability to create characters--I love your OCs.

But I also completely understand the difference between making up a story out of thin air and seeing one grow organically out of a fanfic idea.

Fanfic and Original fic are both incredibly hard, but I think some people don't get that it's just a different...impulse? There's things that overlap, but the impulse is different. Fanfic isn't original fic where you don't want to make up the world/characters imo. It's like the idea comes from a different direction or something. Some people like to do both, some people like to do one and then come to want to do the other. But I never think there's anything specifically strange about wanting to do one without an eye or inspiration (yet) for the other. Probably because when I think of fanfic writers I really like some of the ones I think are the most talented aren't writing original stuff.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

First, thank you also for the compliment!

It's like the idea comes from a different direction or something.

Yes, but what I don't get is that most of my fanfics are very AU anyway. True of my SPN stuff and certainly true of my old Birthright stories. It's just this little seed of a premise that excites me, like that one episode of SPN that I got three stories out of. So if I'm writing AUs anyway based on a seed of a premise...why the hell can't I come up with my own seed? And just write a sort of..."AU" about that?

[corbyinoz.livejournal.com]

Great question. I know a few people have encouraged me to do original work, and ultimately I'd like to. No, I'd love to. But...

I think in part it's having an inbuilt audience - a group of people that you know is going to respond and engage with your story. They're enthusiasts; you enjoy their work, so you want to be part of that communal process, give some back. I think that's the big payoff for me, apart from the actual writing itself.

I love creating OCs, and always do in my stories. They come alive to me, I'm invested in them, so there's no reason why I couldn't be doing it for all the characters. Except - I wouldn't get the pure fun of sharing in the fan experience. Honestly, I think that's what it is for me. God knows the longer stories take a ridiculous amount of time and effort that could be usefully pit to work toward original work.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The fan experience is important because it's so great to enhance something that people already love. And when someone reads one of my stories and tells me, "This is canon for me now," or "This is what I wish would happen," that's just about my favorite kind of praise because it tells me that I've done for someone what other fanfiction writers have done for me -- taken something they already love and made it even better.

Ah, but wouldn't it be great to be the person who creates that thing that people love, from scratch? It's like...I envy JK Rowling more than just about anyone on earth. Can you imagine creating -- out of your own head!! -- a story that so many people became so passionate about? Shit, I even hate Eric Kripke, even though he's (IMO) almost totally botched his own creation, he still knows that thrill of creating something that people just embraced and fell in love with.

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

First of all, this is a totally fascinating discussion!

Second of all, I absolutely think you could (should) write original fiction--you write wonderful OCs, you have a really distinctive voice, and a distinctive vision of the world (I was going to say moral vision, but that sounds odd--you know what I mean, right?). I think it's a mental leap of faith, more than anything--when I think of the people I know who are writers, successful and unsuccessful, it has to do with a certain self-belief that they are writers...But, I absolutely think you should take that leap. Running out of time, pshaw--think of Tolstoy, who didn't get going til he was in his 60s.

Third: As someone who has always done a lot of (public, published, if little read) non-creative writing as part of my job, but has never, ever written anything "creative" til this year, I've been thinking about what is making writing fanfic fun/interesting to me. I think it's that, while the ratio is different for everybody, writing fic is part creative, part social (making virtual friends based on shared interests, writing prompts, giving prompts) and part interpretive (giving one's own take, interpretation, of a pre-exisiting thing). For me, the latter two predominate--for you, I would think the first does...

Also--it's a hobby: and I mean that in the best possible way. It's something you can strive to be good at--but there's nothing (no paycheck, no rl reputation) riding on whether you are or not (as, there is for me, in writing under my own name). On lj, it's not even really "you." There's something liberating in that, for me.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

it has to do with a certain self-belief that they are writers

Hmmm, yeah. The very idea of calling myself a "writer" kind of makes my guts clench. I should probably work on that.

One thing I worry about with original fiction is that I won't have the same discipline that I have when I write fanfiction. With FF, no matter how much of an AU I'm writing, there are still certain parameters that I obey, and without them, I worry that my writing would just...drift. Like that "distinctive voice" would just become shapelessly bloated and all over the place. That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, does it? But it's like the idea of all the freedom inherent in an original work would just encourage sloppiness. And I hate that. I hate writing that just slops all over the place.

Regarding that "ratio," for me, participating in fandom (i.e., talking about the show or gossiping about the actors) is the social part. Writing stories is definitely about the creativity. I do enjoy the immediacy of feedback to my writing, but the writing is done in isolation -- I don't even use a beta anymore, and I hardly discuss my stories with anyone before I post them. I won't even read other fanfiction when I'm in the middle of a story, and sometimes I've even foregone watching the show (which is why I tend to do most of my writing during hiatus).

But public reception is certainly important -- when I started writing "Lazarus Came Forth," I'd never done a multichap (and had only written one short SPN fic before that one), so I disabled comments on the first two chapters because I knew if it got a weak response I might be discouraged from continuing it. But by the third chapter my curiosity got the better of me and fortunately the responses were good enough to keep me slogging through.

I also write professionally and while I think I do it pretty well, I'm totally unemotional about it. The only time I get pissed off is when some client asks me to revise something in a way that I know reads poorly -- and that does happen. Some of my clients, especially my travel clients, really think they're great writers and they're...not. Finding 50 synonyms for "breathtaking" to describe your destination is not great writing. *cringe* But I will say that writing fanfiction has helped me write better ad copy, though it doesn't quite work the other way.

[eken95.livejournal.com]

I'm not a writer but I think that when you love a show ideas pop up all day long. As to ff writers writing professionally a friend of mine started in ff and now writes,produces and edits a whole range of books, but still linked to a show. She is just finishing her first original novel

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Well, do you know how she did it? How she made that leap?

[aubergineautumn.livejournal.com]

World building.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's definitely important but is it the missing link? Because people seem to do an awful lot of world-building in their fics. I think it's more like "basic premise building." You need that single, one-sentence idea:

Orphan boy finds out he's a wizard and is invited to attend the world's best wizarding school.

Bland high-school girl falls in love with a teenage vampire.

Two brothers roam America hunting supernatural entities.

Premise.

[arabia764.livejournal.com]

I write J2 AU's and I think they pretty much are original characters - change the names and it's original fic. I'm not big headed enough to think that it's good enough to be published but even if I felt it was, I don't think I'd try. The reason? I'm not thick skinned enough. If publishers turned it down or criticised it I'd be really upset.

My fics are my babies, my way out of what is at times pretty shitty rl. On lj I get praise - I've been lucky, those that don't like it hit delete or don't read it rather than telling me. When you're fragile that's what you need.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely understand the shitty RL thing. I don't write for escapism though, it's too much hard work for that. If things are especially bad, I can't write at all, and if the writing isn't going well, it makes the shitty even shitter. Though if the writing is going well, it can be a real picker-upper, just the way a string of good comments can be a good (albeit short-lived) mood lifter. I actually wish it did come easier, and that it offered a little more in the way of escapism.

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

I've really been enjoying reading this discussion, and thinking about my own answers. I have no desire to write professionally -- well, actually, I write professionally for a living, but it isn't fiction. But no desire to be a novelist or a short story writer outside of fandom.

I think it's love, too -- I can't write in any old fandom; it has to be one I love, and whose characters I love. I do write OCs, and have on occasion fallen in love with them, but I don't return to them again and again, the way I do a show's characters. Those people I can never get enough of, it seems.

This also plays in: I've had several friends and my husband try to publish novels, to no avail. I think I'm a pretty good judge of quality, and I will argue till I'm blue in the face that my husband's unpublished novel is significantly -- no, wildly better than stuff I've seen that's been published. I have zero desire to enter into that fray and be disappointed. Not when I can spend my free time daydreaming about my beloved characters and then writing stories about them. That I sometimes get nice feedback for my stories? Makes it even more worth the time and effort I take with my stories.

Great question.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You know, the internet has made self-publishing achieve a degree of respectability that it never had before. You don't have to wait for Random House et al to "discover" you. I have an article from Time magazine that mentions some credible self-publishing companies -- and some of those authors have gotten real, paying book contracts as a result. Are you interested?

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I had to come back here and say one other thing, relative to someone's comment upthread about believing that you ARE a writer. When I read your stuff, there is NO DOUBT in my mind that you are a writer. You just are, and that's that.

My writing is decent, but it consists mostly of average-average-average-NICE MOMENT-average-average-average. Your writing is consistently top notch, all the way through. I feel safe reading your stuff, because I know it's going to make sense and have a good story and good dialogue. Some writers you read their stuff with clenched teeth, knowing that at some point it's going to veer off into Crazytown. I never, ever get that feeling with you. I only feel excited that I get to read something of yours!

I broke my own rule about not talking about fanfic to "outsiders" to tell my sister how awesome you are. I want people to read your stuff because YOU ARE AN EXCELLENT WRITER. Period. ♥

[oselle.livejournal.com]

LOL, did she read it? And what did she think of it? I've had a couple of people read and comment on my fics who say they don't even watch the show and that blows me away. Because that tells me that I've made this universe believable and compelling for them, even though they don't know anything about it. See, that's the thing...if I can do that, what is stopping me from creating my OWN 'verse?

[bonwriter.livejournal.com]

This discussion is particularly fascinating to me, because I come to it from the other side. I write original fiction exclusively, although I've become a voracious reader and admirer of fanfiction since discovering Supernatural.

I can only guess at the impulses that drive one to write fanfiction, but I imagine it has something to do with the immediacy of the audience response. It usually takes me two years to write a novel, and no one -- neither my agent nor my editor -- is at all interested in seeing it until it's done. Then it's at least another year before it hits the bookstores. That's three years before I can hope for any kind of reader feedback. And even when the book's a pretty fair commercial success, the fanmail only comes in trickles. Since there's no built-in "post comment here," readers have to be highly motivated to take the trouble to write a letter.

So for me, writing is a solitary and sometimes lonely pursuit, and by the time there's any kind of payoff in terms of reader reaction, I've already moved on to the next project and can't quite relate to the emotional response from a reader who just put the book down.

As a result, I've come more and more to write purely for my own pleasure, without regard to any community of readers. I often envy fanfiction writers that community; the good ones like yourself must develop a certain confidence that their stories will be read promptly and enjoyed greatly and that they will receive some glowing comments in short order. But the downside might be a reluctance or even inability to ignore the community and pursue one's own vision. Maybe that's the missing link: writing original fiction can require an author to cut herself off and work in isolation.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

writing original fiction can require an author to cut herself off and work in isolation.

This is a good point, and I do think this would be difficult for me. Weirdly, though, compared to many other fanfic writers, I do write in relative isolation. I don't participate in group fanfiction "events" like Big Bang, I don't write comment fic or respond to prompts. When I'm writing a long story, I won't read other fanfiction at all. I don't usually discuss what I'm writing with anyone until I post it and I don't even use a beta reader anymore. This is the only way I can write. Talking about it is kind of like...letting the genie out of the bottle. I don't know. It takes the magic out of it.

But on the other hand...the feedback keeps me going, at least on a long story where I need a reason to keep going. A couple of years ago I started writing a very long SPN fic called "Lazarus Came Forth." I was unknown in this fandom and knew that the story wouldn't get much response and that I would find that discouraging. So I disabled comments on the first two chapters. By Chapter Three? I couldn't take it anymore. I knew I still had months of work ahead of me if I was going to finish the thing, and I HAD to know what people thought. At first, it collected very few comments. But they were good comments, comments that told me people were really into the story and excited for more. And then the story started picking up some buzz and more people started reading it, including some writers in the fandom that I really admire. So that was a big deal. Would I have finished the story without a good response? Probably...but it wouldn't have felt anywhere near as worth the effort.

"Worth the effort:" that's huge. I assume you're making a living as a writer and that right there makes it worth the effort, even without the fanmail. Three or four pages of LJ comments on one of my stories is awesome -- but being able to cash a paycheck off something I wrote, and never have to drag my ass into that shitty job of mine again, would be a whole lot better (no offense to my readers). I think if I could write something that actually sold it would give me the heart to keep doing it. But trying to write that first novel...ahh, that would be a killer. With fanfic, I've got no paycheck but I've got an audience. With that first orignial work, I'd have no guarantee of either one. And would be trying to pull it off while...dragging my ass into that shitty job of mine. How do you not lose heart?

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Late to the party, but ...

Writing original fic is a solitary endeavor.

Writing fanfiction makes me part of a community. People read my work. They tell me they like it. I get to chat with them about it. People write things I think are amazing, and I tell them so. And we all get to know each other.

Far more satisfying than any relationship I might have with an editor and a corporate checkbook.