http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html (not linked, don’t care to show up in stats)
This isn’t the first rant I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks – I ran across another, lesser-known writer who’d ranted and frothed about fanfic but can’t find that link in my history anymore.
But the gist is the same — “it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and [loads of unfounded assertions and misunderstandings]!”
Robin Hobb: “Fan fiction is a good way for people to learn to be writers. If this is true, then karaoke is the path to become a singer, coloring books produce great artists, and all great chefs have a shelf of cake mixes. Fan fiction is a good way to avoid learning how to be a writer.”
Someone has a bias, here. The frothing that is the rest of the essay puts forth that Robin’s definition of ‘writer’ is ’someone who has an original idea and writes about it.’ Which by Robin’s standards would automatically populate Hollywood with imbecile fanfic writers. How many remakes are they putting in theaters this summer? How many comic book based movies have there been? Where did Jasper Fforde and Laurie King get their source material? I guess all those write-for-hire types churning out the novels for [pick a tv series] are not writers. Those weren’t their original characters, after all. Tsk. Lazy, lazy.
Some of the most original fiction I’ve read has been fanfiction — you’ve seen them. The stories that transcend the source material and become a part of your long-term memory, that transform the characters you saw on the tv screen into people and even deepen the two-dimensional experiences you have with watching reruns. Most fandoms have these gems that rise above the general rule that “99% of [genre] is crap.” Most of the ones I remember are Trek; I’ve read some astounding Farscape and wonderful Harry Potter fic that blew me away. Yes, a lot of fanfic is poorly done, but the ones that aren’t, those make the effort to find them worth it.
I’ve read “how to write” books that tell you “everything’s been done” and one that even offered up the wisdom that it held outlines of every plot there ever was, and that all that changes are the details, the flesh on the bones. Anyone with a college degree that necessitated some exposure to Shakespeare probably could tell you he was committing fanfiction — drawing on other writers’ material to create his plays.
Bad fanfiction parodies, decent fanfiction borrows, excellent fanfiction transcends —
I do wish some of the pros who waste such vitriol on fanfiction would bother to check their reality. They never even try to understand fan motivations before they tar and feather fans for daring to be so enthralled by their characters that they want more of them than the author is providing. And yes, a lot of fanfiction rewrites the original — bringing back dead characters, undoing what’s been done — the underlying statement isn’t “the writer did it wrong,” it’s “I loved what you did until this point and I can’t bear to see it all go away so soon.”
I could keep picking away at the essay, but I’m not a copyright expert, and I’m supposed to be hitting my to-do list. So I’ll let you have this handy refutation and go wash my car.