By and large most fanfic writers can't be arsed to do much more than post it to a list or to the Pit of Voles (tm) (Fanfiction.net) and wait for the feedback to roll in. I don't think the problem of someone writing a story based on a story and selling it is all that common.
I would guess it wasn't (common), but I don't know enough about the community. I do know that it's a fairly tightly knit community (or I infer it at this point <g>), and there's probably a multitude of different opinions within fandom at large.
For the record, the only booklit fanfic I did was for Lynn Flewlling's stuff and went to a few people before she came out against fanfic. Once her opinion was formed (strongly against) I withdrew the piece and it hasn't been anywhere but my harddrive since. I don't get stories from other people's books. I get stories from my head, and from my life and my world.
This makes sense; it's, after all, where mine come from. Let me be clear: I wanted to write a Buffy novel. I started watching television when I was pregnant with my first child; I was so damn sick all the time I couldn't even read (I couldn't focus on the page; it made me throw up). So I lay on the couch for hours at a time, and watched TV. I saw the last 20 minutes of "Angel"; I saw the whole of "When She Was Bad", and I was hooked. I watch almost no television. This was unusual for me.
I understand the very real desire to write about other people's creations. Given how little I knew about fanfic, my first thought was to phone my agent and tell him I wanted to write a Buffy novel <wry g>. But the stories I wanted to tell were the darker ones, and that bent is distinctly mine.
And it isn't consistently that it's a media thing either, to go on a tangent. I adore Babylon 5 but don't write fanfic for it for two reasons. One - I don't really see any 'holes' except outside the arcs that were aired. Two - I don't think I could do it justice so I'm not even going to try.
Buffy was the only thing that had that effect on me, and I'm not sure why. I love Firefly, but I've had no like compulsion. I think it's because part of the Buffy arc is firmly entrenched in a more mythic coming-of-age; the Firefly stuff isn't. And there wasn't enough of it aired for me to have any certain sense of how the characters would settle out.
Shutting up now.
You don't have to, unless you find this tiresome -- I don't know a lot about fanfic, although that's changing my the minute in the last couple of days -- so I'm not taking offense. I may be causing offense, because I'm unfortunately good at that if I'm writing off the top of my head -- but I'm mostly trying to figure out what my views are, and to articulate them; it's a proceses that isn't finished yet.
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branchandroot
Re: Keeping things in the same medium
Date: 2004-10-20 02:37 pm (UTC)I would guess it wasn't (common), but I don't know enough about the community. I do know that it's a fairly tightly knit community (or I infer it at this point <g>), and there's probably a multitude of different opinions within fandom at large.
For the record, the only booklit fanfic I did was for Lynn Flewlling's stuff and went to a few people before she came out against fanfic. Once her opinion was formed (strongly against) I withdrew the piece and it hasn't been anywhere but my harddrive since. I don't get stories from other people's books. I get stories from my head, and from my life and my world.
This makes sense; it's, after all, where mine come from. Let me be clear: I wanted to write a Buffy novel. I started watching television when I was pregnant with my first child; I was so damn sick all the time I couldn't even read (I couldn't focus on the page; it made me throw up). So I lay on the couch for hours at a time, and watched TV. I saw the last 20 minutes of "Angel"; I saw the whole of "When She Was Bad", and I was hooked. I watch almost no television. This was unusual for me.
I understand the very real desire to write about other people's creations. Given how little I knew about fanfic, my first thought was to phone my agent and tell him I wanted to write a Buffy novel <wry g>. But the stories I wanted to tell were the darker ones, and that bent is distinctly mine.
And it isn't consistently that it's a media thing either, to go on a tangent. I adore Babylon 5 but don't write fanfic for it for two reasons. One - I don't really see any 'holes' except outside the arcs that were aired. Two - I don't think I could do it justice so I'm not even going to try.
Buffy was the only thing that had that effect on me, and I'm not sure why. I love Firefly, but I've had no like compulsion. I think it's because part of the Buffy arc is firmly entrenched in a more mythic coming-of-age; the Firefly stuff isn't. And there wasn't enough of it aired for me to have any certain sense of how the characters would settle out.
Shutting up now.
You don't have to, unless you find this tiresome -- I don't know a lot about fanfic, although that's changing my the minute in the last couple of days -- so I'm not taking offense. I may be causing offense, because I'm unfortunately good at that if I'm writing off the top of my head -- but I'm mostly trying to figure out what my views are, and to articulate them; it's a proceses that isn't finished yet.