The Missing Link
Feb. 3rd, 2010 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleI 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?
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?
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 01:16 am (UTC)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.