![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
While I've been going through the submissions process on the 'I Do' anthology, I've had a lot of submissions from fanfic writers who (I think, rightly) saw getting a story into the anthology as an opportunity to get their foot in the door of writing professionally.
It's been the first time that I've had the chance to look at the fanfic style of writing from the outside, and that was very interesting. It's also, I think, been the first time that some of the fanfic writers on the project have had the opportunity to hang out with pro-fic writers, and that's been a bit of an eye opener too.
So in the spirit of newly being confronted with some differences between fanfic and profic - and meeting a number of people who would like to turn pro but feel a bit unsure of how to go about it, I thought I'd write down my thoughts on the subject. In part two, if I can find a piece of my old fanfic to de-fanon I might do a case study of how to turn fanfic into pro.
But the first thing I want to talk about is differences in the basic elements of what makes up a fanfiction and a profiction story.
Profic starts from nothing
The most basic of basic differences between fanfic and professional fiction is that fanfiction is written from a basis of shared knowledge with the reader. Writer and reader share a vast amount of knowledge about who the characters are, what their back stories are, what the world of the setting is like, what the style of storytelling in that universe is like, what sorts of things are likely to happen, and what things have already happened in the past.
The fanfic writer riffs off this shared database to create something that stands in relation to everything that has gone before in canon and (to a certain extent) everything that every other fanfic writer in that fanon is doing. Fanfiction is a conversation between a group of people who all know and already love the subject that each of them is talking about.
Original fiction is nothing like this.
When you start writing your original story, you start from nothing. Your reader knows nothing about your world or characters. You have to tell them everything. They also start from a basis where they may hope to like your world and characters, but they don't do so yet. Original fiction is a monologue, where you as a writer try to create the interest and love that comes as a given in a fanfic audience.
This makes a difference to almost every aspect of your storytelling.
Setting
You cannot assume your audience knows anything about your world. Even if you're writing contemporary fiction you can't assume that if you set something in New York, everyone who reads your story will know New York as well as you do.
This means you have to establish your setting. If you're writing fanfic set in Lothlorien, it's enough to say 'They entered the Golden Wood' for you to know your readers are seeing in their minds either Tolkien's Golden wood, or Peter Jackson's rather spooky silver and blue version.
In original fiction, however, your readers will see nothing unless you put it there in words. If your hero enters an enchanted wood, it's up to you to tell us what it looks like. Is it brooding, dark and gnarled? Is it misty and full of strange lights? Is it hyper real so that all the colours seem oversaturated? We won't know unless you tell us.
And this carries on for every paragraph and page - your world is not solid unless you make it so, and has no detail unless you supply it. That means that at every step of the way you need to be thinking about what the surroundings are and supplying the information to the reader. In fanfic you can say 'it was the Black Pearl' and know that everyone is seeing the ship as it was in the movie. In original fiction, to get the same sort of affect, you'd have to say something like; "the black galleon's hull was the shape of a pregnant woman's belly. The sea knocked against it with a boom and the acres of drab black canvas above strained against the wind. A ghost ship, it seemed, with that figurehead of a blank-faced angel, the groan of its black net of rigging, and its unnatural speed."
Characterization
The same thing is true, perhaps even more so, with characterization.
In fanfiction we know what the characters are like. We know what they look like and we know what their characters are like from the canon. Again, it's enough to say 'Captain Jack Harkness ran down the stairs' for a reader to picture him complete with flapping military greatcoat, rumpled hair, dashing smile and the promise of Ianto quietly following. We know that he's the hero of the show, and will always come through in the end, usually with a little narcissistic quip. We know he has darkness and missing years in his past, and he'll shag anything that moves, but he's also got a surprising streak of romance. And he's probably going out into the streets of Cardiff to do something improbable with an alien. All of that gets instantly conveyed to the readers just by mentioning the name.
Now imagine you said instead 'Captain John McHugh ran down the stairs'. What does that convey to the reader? If you're lucky and have attentive readers it tells them that he's a military man and he may be in a hurry.
We don't even know what he looks like, let alone how old he is, what he's wearing, what his character traits are, what his history is, where he's likely to be going, what he's likely to be doing, or why we should care. Is he the hero or the villain, or is he an expendable red-shirt? We can't tell.
All that information has to be built up from a starting point of nothing, by you. This may mean starting your story a lot earlier than you intended, so that you can introduce the character in such a way as to let the readers get to know and care about him before you fling him into the major peril of the story. Even if you just throw the readers in at the major peril, you will have to work in the details which make John McHugh become someone that they care about. You'll have to mention his messy blond hair and the missing right premolar that gives him such a crooked smile. You'll have to find a way to get across that he never wanted to hunt aliens for a living. Actually he dreamed of being a concert pianist, but he was thrown into the life when alien spores infested his bathroom and ate his dog. His sister thinks he's a bit of a wanker and calls him 'Captain' as a joke because she's a Torchwood fan, but the nickname stuck. His boyfriend works in Tescos and makes him bacon sandwiches for breakfast, which he eats while reading Fortean Times and secretly worrying that there are no aliens, he's just going quietly nuts.
And you'll have to work in these details in such a way that they fit seamlessly into the plot, so that the reader learns to love him while they are also being carried along by his adventures. You can't stop the action to build up the character, but you won't care about the action unless you also care about the man.
Fanfiction writers devote a lot of time to making sure that their characters stay in character, and this is excellent training for writing the protagonists in original fiction as long as you base those protagonists on fandom originals. But it isn't really enough to write your particular fandom couple of choice really well - even if you successfully change their names and back-stories - unless you have also learned how to build up original characters from the ground up to surround them with.
Ideally, in fact, you'll want to abandon your fandom couple and launch out into creating your own perfect pairings. But creating a character from scratch is a different skill, which fandom generally discourages you from learning. (I know that original characters are frowned on in many quarters, because fanfic audiences are there for the canon characters only.) I recommend checking out a selection of 'how to' writing books for pointers on character creation. Or if that doesn't appeal, try mixing and matching traits from characters you already write to create a new blend.
Plot, or story structure.
Again, this is different because you are starting off from a basis of having to explain everything to the reader. One of the delights of fanfiction is that the canon is already known by all the readers. So if you want to write a story about how Qui-Gon Jinn reacted to the death of his apprentice, Xanatos, then you can start with Qui-Gon turning his back on the smoking corpse and spend a thousand words of grief and angst on the walk back to the spaceship. You don't have to get across who Xanatos was, who Qui-Gon is, what they're doing there on a world with an acid pit and a spaceship - people already know this. You can tell the story entirely from the POV of Obi-Wan, focusing on his jealousy because even though Xan was a dark Jedi, Qui-Gon seems to care more about him than he does about Obi-Wan. Or Obi-Wan's fear that he might be the next padawan to go the same way.
You can take risks and experiment with the story structure because so much is already known by your readers.
But in original fiction the reader doesn't know any of the backstory unless you've told them it first. So this story could not be told in this way and make sense.
You would have to start it long long before, when a young boy (lets call him Tod) became the student of a proud and maverick young knight (Kai). You'd have to show the bonds of affection developing between them, and then the rift and the descent of Tod into evil, with Kai's desperation to get him back. Then you'd have to show how, despite his doubts in his own ability, and the pushy, unpromising nature of the boy, Kai had reluctantly taken on another student (Ben), whom he was afraid to come to care about in case the same thing happened again. Only then could you write the scene where Ben watches Tod drown himself in an acid pit rather than accept Kai's forgiveness, and have it make sense.
Summary
In original fiction you start from nothing. This means there is much much more that you have to build up before you can tell the story you want to tell. It's necessary to build the world and the characters as well as the plot.
Because you have so much more information that you have to get across to the reader, the best way to do this is to structure your story in a simple way. You want everything to be clear to the reader, so introduce your characters and their world first, then establish what their problems are, then allow them to confront the problem, struggle with it, and surmount it.
In general, unless you're a genius, complicated forms of telling the story (particularly flashbacks) should be avoided. If you need to break off for a flashback every other paragraph, perhaps you should have just started your story earlier. Your reader is too busy trying to get to know who everyone is and what's going on to be able to cope with perception games, time shifts and the expectation that they already care about these characters when they haven't yet been given the chance to get to know them.
Original fiction is, I think, harder work, because I for one find it hard to create something out of nothing. But it's very rewarding because once you have that something, it's so much more yours than fanfic is. And having said that, I really want to get to know John McHugh some more now. I wonder if I could give him a proper story to work with... :)
To me they seem wholly different creatures... like writing for a TV series, using a writer's bible, would create different skillsets than making it up as you go along.
So to extend the analogy, if you want to turn pro, at some point you have to take the training wheels off and go it alone.
But if, for example, you decide to write a sequel to the Lord of the Rings, telling how Faramir and a host of OCs tried to make a lasting peace with the Southrons, then you're already straying out into the territory of describing places and people which aren't in the canon, and creating a plot of your own. The long, plotty fics which are populated by OCs, characters who were incidental in the canon, and maybe one or two major characters *are* a good training ground, I think. But they're rarer than the 'turning a microscope on canon' fics, I think.
Another great tool was RPG. I wrote Standish before I'd done any RP, and it's rather lacking in dialogue - but RP taught me a lot about pacing etc. I've certainly got better at dialogue since that.
It doesn't suit everyone, but - especially if you can find some really GOOD critique-betas like I did - it can be - as I said - a great nursery slope.
Plus, I disagree about flashbacks - but then, my story had three flashbacks on 6k words. :)
I personally loved them and thought they added special poignancy, but I'll admit I'm novice at this stuff at best.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I understand what you're saying about flashbacks.
I used to do a lot of flashbacks, but I feel now that they pull you away from the story that you're supposed to be following in the present. If you've only got a short amount of time to pull the reader in, then you can't really risk throwing her about from one time to another and breaking up the flow. *g* I admit I got my 'don't do flashbacks' advice from various 'how to write' books too, but having tried it their way, I see why they say it.
Looking forward to part two.
I've seen a lot of fanfic authors make the jump to published authors, some have done so better than others for the reasons you've cited: an ability to describe worlds of their own and create characters their readers get to know during the course of the story.
A big help for me are character sheets. I've made one for each of my characters so I don't mix up descriptions and ensure some sort of continuity in my work.
To me, fanfic was and is a great training ground, and I try to put as much care into it as in my original writing. That's why there are so many original characters in my stories; introducing them, giving them backstory and personality is to me both fun and training.
And yes, I wish now that I hadn't been such a canon purist! Most of my fanfic is just not translatable because it's just too dependent on an understanding of canon. Woe to me for spending so long on understanding who Celeborn's brother's nephew's cousin was ;)
I do character sheets too! Otherwise I lose track of what the characters' names, ranks and eye colours are from day to day ;)
I did original fiction before I did fanfic, and interestingly enough, fanfic did open the way for me to go "pro-fic", as you put it. But the two are definitely not the same.
But most of my longer stuff is Silmarillion-based, so I've done an awful lot of worldbuilding and character-creation, since so many Silmarillion characters are names and deeds more than personalities. When you're writing Elwing, or Finarfin or Amrod and Amras, you really are basically creating original characters.
So fanfic for me has indeed been handy practice for whose aspects of original fic, I suspect more than for some other fanfic writers.
And I have never understood the objection to original characters! If you want to write Dwarves, or Haradrim or Hobbits or Variags or Easterlings or indeed anyone who doesn't live by themselves in a cave, you have to have them!
I always had a bit of a problem with OCs because I was reading the fanfiction because of the canon characters, so it was those characters that I wanted to see in the spotlight. But I quite agree that sometimes you just can't do without original characters if you want to tell any kind of complex story at all.
Frankly, I enjoy turning my hand to a piece of fanfic every now and then but I live in mortal terror of pissing off the faithful. I LOVE reading it though, and it has become something of a de-stressing guilty pleasure of mine.
As always, you have written a great post on writing in both styles, and anyone who likes to write either would benefit from it.
You could write a lot more posts on writerly topics since you are made of AWESOME. I'd particularly benefit from some posts about how write historical fiction. (Or how not to.)
Hee! Thank you! I don't think I'm much of an authority, but I'll try, if you'd like me to. Have you seen my two posts on the topic on the Macaronis blog?
http://historicromance.wordpress.com/20
and
http://historicromance.wordpress.com/20
Many of the things you explain seem obvious to me, but I wonder if this is because I did not start out as a fanfic writer, but wrote fanfic only as a phase between writing original stories (not professionally, but still... The same techniques apply). But I suspect it does explain why I usually preferred writing OC-based fanfic or using sketchy canon characters - that brought writing fanfic closer to writing original stories.
the best way to do this is to structure your story in a simple way.
And that's what I desperately need to remember - your advice is valuable for non-fanfic-writers as well. I am entirely too fond of flashbacks and somewhat Byzantine plots involving people and places last mentioned in passing 5 chapters ago. :-(
I'm very much a character-driven writer, so for me fanfic and original fic share their reason for being written - to demonstrate that this particular character is wonderful ;) But then I've always been very keen on being super-canonical in fanfic, which has turned out to be a drawback because there's hardly anything of my output which can be easily adapted to become original. The fact that your fiction was always so very unique that it couldn't possibly have been written by anyone but you, is something I've always envied.
*g* I wouldn't say it was a hard and fast rule that simplicity is better than Byzantine complexity. But I do think that it takes a much higher degree of skill to pull off Byzantine complexity. I think you can make it look easy though :)
xxx
Oh, and I second that recommendation of 'Steering the Craft' by Ursula Le Guin, but it's worthwhile getting a more basic 'how to write a novel' book too, because (IMO) you've got to learn how to do the basic things first before you will be able to tell where it mightl be better to break the rules. At least, I went through a phase of reading 'how to' books, and rather than cramp my style, I feel that I really benefited from them.
Do not scare me with the flashback caveat ! ;) "Conversation" is all based upon flashbacks and they're giving me a lot of trouble - I acknowledge it - but also a lot of fun in devising how to merge them into a continuum. I've also come to the point where I'm starting to understand the usefulness of having a sheet and a picture for all my original characters. It all started with Georgiana's infamous husband.
At the beginning he was to be an old man, loosely based upon the Duke of Devonshire (the real character - nothing to do with the Duchess film !!), but my Georgiana refused to have any literary chemistry with him. Luckily enough, Reynolds came to my rescue again and now I have a brand new and tolerably young Earl with political interests who is behaving very well. The scary thing is that, in the meantime, I discovered that formidable comedy which is Blackadder III, and the Prince Regent is fastly becoming the main source of inspiration for my Honourable Mr Norrington ! ;DD
One other thing I find difficult/different? It's the actual writing of fanfic, not just the subject matter. A lot of my older stuff is really poor on technique - now that I'm learning much more! - and has to be so significantly rewritten, I might as well start from scratch LOL. I think in fanfic, you can get away with less discipline, yet you and your readers still enjoy it.
Yes, original is harder work for me - but it's much more rewarding to create your *own* characters. And pairings and villains of choice!! LOL
I do think fanfic encourages you to write shorter stories though, as the payback to effort ratio in terms of comments is better if you write four short stories than one four chapter story. It isn't terribly supportive to novel length stories, in my experience.
After two fandoms where sequel films destroyed my love for the originals and left me with canon that was a mess, I'm now very glad that I have my lads to myself. If anyone's going to mess them up, it'll be me!
I don't actually understand people who prefer writing fanfic, because of exactly that: the restrictions. I've dabbled in fanfic, bless it, it did get me back into writing - in another language. I wrote in German, only ever original, way back before the internet (yes, I am *that* old) and dabbling with POTC years later in English (now that I can't even think in German anymore) got me back into the groove, but I dropped the fanfic quickly, because I hate the corset of someone else's world. Granted, I don't even read fiction because of that, but then I am strange and prefer to read facts while the story go on simultaneously in my head.
Anyway, personally (and it is entirely my personal opinion without any judgment!) I don't understand why anyone would want to restrict themselves by working in someone else's world, because to me there is nothing more wonderful than creating the characters, settings, backstories, everything, it's like a brand new love story every time: from the flirting with the characters that are slowly coming to life from he grey OOZE of the creative mind, to the falling in love and getting to know them, to the excitement of going to bed with them (hahaha!) to finally being mature and strong enough to let them go and let them get on with their lives outside of the written word and to send a last kiss and smile after them when the final word is written.
I applaud fanfiction writers for the skill of staying true to something, that's very difficult, especially when you need to get the "voices" right.
And I shall shut up now, because as you can see, your excellent post really did make me think. :-)
It's because the story *is* about, say, Frank Castle and not about any of my characters. It *is* about something outside of me, which I am making part of myself by writing it. I'm using somebody else's demon and give him life in another incarnation.
It's not training (gods, like fanfic writers need an EXCUSE to "waste their time" on fanfic!!!) - this apologetic tone "oh, it was really just training for me...." "oh, I learnt so much from it (implied: but now I'm grown up - too grown up to be childish with fanfic anymore...)" ... what's wrong with enjoying the *genre*? Why do fanfic writers have to assume the position of humility like dogs baring their throats ("don't bite me, pro-author, I was just playin'").
It's a genre, not training, not a waste of time, people do it because that is the shape the story takes. And if I (a 99% "pro-author" with "just original character") end up writing a 50-volume fanfic series about the Smurfs, that's my right and my pleasure, and I will not go all humble about it, because it's my work, and it will be just as brilliant (or no) as anything I'll write.
Woah.
Edited at 2008-12-08 01:44 pm (UTC)
:)
I've nothing else intelligent to say on this matter, not because it's not interesting, I've never considered it, or I don't care, but because I'm still not really feeling so great so my mind's not in any form to churn through it. Thanks for the observations and maybe I'll get back to this. I definitely agree with a lot of what you've said-- but I think I have a different perspective than many fanfic-to-profic writers because I got my first start writing original fic and turned deliberately to fanfic because I knew that an audience, any audience, would teach me more than writing alone would, and I knew I could get a much better audience through fanfic.
That is an interesting thought about the value of having an audience, and yes I agree. Reviews of my fic certainly gave me a good insight into the things that were working and those that weren't - and also gave me the impetus and confidence to keep going, when I might have given up without them. I do miss that!
I tried several times: Once with a children's book about a girl who is adopted by a witch (was going to be a bit of a comic morality tale about family and social services and the grass being greener) but shortly afterwards I discovered Pratchett and found that he'd already done it, and funnier. Then I tried another, about demons and stones but couldn't decide whether it was going to be adult or children. I could START a book, but I had no idea what to do NEXT.
Fanfic helped me stop worrying about that so much, I could just write. I didn't need to explain what Lucius was, because everyone knew. I had leave though to recreate him in my own image - whilst, and I was strict about this with myself, keeping entirely to known canon.
I wrote my first fanfic piece (a novella of 66k words) almost immediately after reading a few stories and it was fun to do, but I also immediately realised that it was pointless. I wanted to sell stories, I wanted more than just feedback. So I started Standish within days. That being said - I worked parallel - I stayed in fanfic for a further 3 years whilst writing original at the same time.
I have encouraged other authors to make the (very very scary) from fanfic to original and I can understand their reluctance to do so. Fanfic is a safe harbour, you get generally good feedback--critical review isn't really a custom well received--and you rarely have any rejection worse than "No, you can't join xxxxx community, sorry" but the rewards of original--although paved in blood and sweat and paranoia--are SO worth it too.
I suspect the rewards of original fic are probably worth taking another post to do justice to!
As for flashbacks, well I think you can tell how I feel about those. I like them. I can't think of the titles, but I really liked when a chapter began with them at the very least in some het novels.
Don't mind the rambling too much. I'm in a sad mood today and I wish I had something constructive to add to the conversation. Even if I were to get published, I'm not sure I could ever articulate things like this.
Take Love Once Lost, for example. You could write the story of Thomas and Robert out in full at the beginning, then have Robert's death, then show Thomas falling apart in his restrained way. You could have several scenes where his family observe him behaving in a self-destructive way. Then several more scenes where his family all get together to tell the Admiral that he has to do something about it. This would get rid of any need for flashbacks, btw, because we would already have got to know and love Robert. That way when he returned as a ghost it would be reassuring and delightful for your reader too. It would have more emotional punch because it wasn't in a 'this is over and done with' flashback. In among those first chapters you could also start telling Andrew Stillwell's story. Who is he? How did the Admiral guess about his inclinations? Why did the Admiral keep him on staff and trust him despite that? Get us to know who Andrew is before he meets up with Thomas. That way we care about Andrew too, and we feel the baffled frustration of the Admiral and care about *him* as well.
Then of course if you still need more words, have Thomas refuse to have anything more to do with Andrew once he's learned that the Admiral put Andrew aboard to take care of him. Have Thomas and Andrew both go off to look for a heroic death, and nearly find one, and rescue each other, and *then* they can live HEA ;)
See what I mean? By making Robert, Andrew and the Admiral more important characters and giving them their own subplots you can add lots more length and complexity. And by adding more problems, or making the ones you've got more serious, so that they really disrupt the progress to the happy ending, you can also add more scenes.
I won't argue with you about flashbacks. I think they're something like omniscient POV; which can work fine in the hands of a great writer, but which in the hands of those of us who are mere mortals only ends up making the story look messy. I think they're hard to do well and easy to do badly, and so they ought to be approached with caution and restraint.
*g* And I don't think I've managed to be very articulate either, but since the alternative is silence, we might as well speak :)
Needless to say I am bookmarking this post. You've been so helpful *smooch*
Hee! Thanks for the bookmarking, and good luck with your original fic! :)
I have to say writing fanfic's helped me a lot, though - I've learned about POV, show-not-tell and structuring a plot just through reading other peoples' meta and getting comments on my fics. Plus, I would most likely never have started to write without the friendly environment of fandom!
Oh yes, fanfiction is great! I've got lots out of it too, and I agree that there are some wonderful resources in the meta line available. *g* and show-not-tell is a big one that *is* the same in fanfic and original :)
I will certainly do the case study, but probably next week, as I'm recovering from dental surgery this week and feel a bit pathetic ;)
Thank you!