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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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!

[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

[oselle.livejournal.com]

YES, see my response to tripoli8 upthread.

[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.

[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!

[roque-clasique.livejournal.com]

I absolutely will not let myself write about men. If I want to write about male protagonists, I write fanfiction. For original fiction, it's all about the women. Men have been writing about men for fucking YEARS, and have been writing about women for just as long... I can hardly stand to read any male writers these days, honestly. (or watch them... KRIPKE I'M TALKING TO YOU YOU SEXIST FUCK.)

Men are easier to write about, because, to get a little theoretical -- their bodies are not obscured by as much semiotic smoke. A female body, a female protagonist, is so riddled with signs and symbols and references that it can be very difficult to get to the plain truth of her. Women are fucking complicated, and have been complicated -- been complicated by society, by the media, by the countless books written about them by MEN.

And it saddens me a lot that you say you wouldn't want to write a female because it would "inevitably" become you. Therein lies an untruth, or a bigger truth you're not acknowledging -- you are your Dean, and your Cas, as much as you would be your Ellen or Jo or what have you. Authors cannot help but write themselves into stories, I think -- gender is not the dividing line between Me and Not-me. That is why the term "Mary Sue" infuriates me so much... Dean Winchester is my Mary Sue, for chrissakes.

I don't know, no one should get me started on this stuff, I just get riled-up.

[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?

[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.

Re: well dean winchester is a mary sue

[roque-clasique.livejournal.com]

RIGHT?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

you are your Dean, and your Cas, as much as you would be your Ellen or Jo or what have you

Of course there are elements of me in my version of Dean or Castiel (especially Castiel). There are things they think and experience in my stories that are directly taken from my own life. But that isn't self-insertion, that's just me, using my own experiences to create a story, which all writers do. But the very fact that they are men gives me the freedom to separate myself from them. I can do that with a female supporting character but a female protagonist? An original female protagonist, not one derived from fanfiction? Oh no, she'd just turn into a navel-gazing, insecure, chronically befuddled mess. Me, in other words.

I absolutely will not let myself write about men.

If you don't mind my saying so, this is going to cause a problem for you. One thing I feel strongly about is that you cannot approach writing with an "agenda." In your case, your agenda is "I must write about women because there aren't enough good stories about women and we need women to write about women because men have been doing it for too long." You take the risk of shackling your story to this agenda and it will limp around in its chains and never go anywhere.

Fealty to an agenda enslaves storytelling and can ultimately destroy it. I've seen this in fanfiction -- I remember in my LoTR days, there was this one writer who so loathed the dainty, "girlish" Frodo that she saw in other fanfics that she constantly made an effort to prove that her Frodo was "all boy." She even used that line in one of her stories: "Frodo was all boy." Hello, ANVIL. Her stories had no room to breathe because she was so busy trying to show us what a robust little feller her Frodo was. I've seen in it pro fiction too -- Phillip Pullman's devotion to his atheist platform pretty much sucked all the life out of his "Dark Materials" trilogy. You can't bury your stories under an ulterior motive. You can't bind them up in what you think you "should" do. You have to write the story your heart, not your brain, wants to write.

[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.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

God, I could not agree with you more about the "His Dark Materials" trilogy! The first one was good, and then it just got more and more ridiculous. I have no problem with a viewpoint novel, but come on! He was whacking us all with a cudgel by the end of it, and I was black and blue.

I have never written an original work of any kind. I wouldn't know where to start! Everything I've ever written has either been fanfic or true life essay-type pieces. I remember trying to build an OC once, and it was hilarious. Granted, that was 25 years ago, but apparently it scarred me for life, because I never tried again.

Re: well dean winchester is a mary sue

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I thought one of the key elements of the Mary Sue is that she's perfect. The proper Mary Sue will have one tiny little flaw that mars her perfection and that allows the author to say, "See, she's totally NOT a Mary Sue." Pefect example: the outlandish and constantly mentioned klutziness of Twilight's Bella Swan. I could almost HEAR Stephenie Meyer saying, "See, she's totally NOT a Mary Sue...she's a klutz!"

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The first book was good because Pullman was still telling a story. By the end it was all GOD IS DEAD!! ANGELS SUCK!!! WE MUST REVEL IN OUR UNDIVINE HUMANITY!!! VIA PREPUBESCENT SEX!!

Black and blue indeed.

[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.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

So much agreement on this. It's incredibly hard to create an original character who's real or loved the way a special fictional character you discover is imo.

[roque-clasique.livejournal.com]

That is a good point, about the agenda, and usually very very true. I think I expressed myself badly, though. At the moment, my decision to write just about women is not so much a "should" thing as it is something that comes from my heart, and my brain, and my body. I'm 23 and hopefully I'll have plenty of time to write about whatever I can, but for now... well, for now, I need to be writing about women. For reasons I've stated above, but really those are just part of a larger reason, which is that I'm only just figuring out what exactly it means to be a woman -- in the world, and just for myself. Far from causing a problem, I think my original stuff is better than it's ever been. (We'll see if anyone agrees with me though, yikes... I just applied for my MFA and should be finding out in the next two months whether anyone wants me.)

I guess I write original fiction in order to try to explain things to myself, or to solidify (or abstractify) ideas... same as in fanfiction, actually... but my original fiction is, at the moment, trying to explain how I feel about women. So right now it's very important to me that I write about women.

You are right that agendas are constricting.... but aren't you constricting yourself by not writing female protagonists? Your desire to separate yourself from your characters may be a factor in your difficulty in writing original fiction. It's nearly impossible to separate oneself from a work that one has created -- so many artists and authors are crazy and insecure and alcoholic precisely for this reason... a critique against my writing feels like a direct critique against ME. Fanfiction -- I am invested, yes, but not as much. Mostly because LJ isn't made for critiques, it's made for support and compliments, which is probably why I love writing fanfiction. It satisfies the writer side of me that wants to separate myself from my characters, and craves praise.

ANYWAY.

You are DEFINITELY someone who, as soon as reading your work, I assumed you must be a "real" writer -- you're just too good not to be. I was shocked to find that you didn't write original stuff. I think you could be truly great, truly truly truly great.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Aha, but you also said the missing link is love...and that you don't love you. And if all the women you write about are some variation of you, how do you ever expect them to evolve without that missing link? Hmmm? It may be "important" for you to write about women at this stage in your life, but what seems important isn't necessarily what you love. But you're right, you're very young and you have a long time to figure this stuff out. You can have your hits and misses until you find your way. I don't have such a luxury of time.

aren't you constricting yourself by not writing female protagonists?

I don't think so because it's not like I'm forcefully suppressing some deep desire to write about women. There's just no interest there at all. If I were to attempt it, then I'd have to constrict myself. Then I'd have to force myself to tell a story I didn't want to tell about a character that didn't interest me. The separation is liberating -- it's what allows that character room to exist. Without that distance, the character's just going to be squashed down by my life and my neuroses and I think there are more than enough neurotic chicks out there on the bookshelves, I'm really not interested in adding to their ranks. Not that there isn't a market for such characters, but I don't think I could even pull that off well. Because once again, there'd be no love. No love means no life -- stillborn fiction.

Don't mistake this as me saying that I don't take my stories and my characters personally. I do. When I talk about "separation," I don't mean that I write something and then hurl it out into the world and don't feel any connection to it anymore. But whatever character I'm writing about, fanfic protagonist or my own OC, that character has to have some breathing room from me, no matter how much of myself I actually draw on to write that character.

And thank you for the kind praise, as always.

[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.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's definitely the question. But it does seem like premises can come more easily from other canons than they do from your own head.