Author Topic: Fanfic in the News  (Read 4345 times)

Offline MaineWriter

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Fanfic in the News
« on: September 16, 2006, 11:39:22 am »
Interesting article on the front page of the "Pursuits" section this morning:

Rewriting the Rules of Fiction
Amateur authors writing tales about favorite characters are drawing big audiences and landing book deals. Meet Harry Potter's grandparents.
By JOHN JURGENSEN
September 16, 2006; Page P1

She writes about a group of young wizards attending the Hogwarts School. She has legions of readers throughout the world.

Her name is Hannah Jones, and she's 19 years old.

Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe pursuit. Now, it's changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading to book deals. They are also feeding the appetites of readers and viewers who can't get enough of shows like "Lost" or "House."

There's a librarian in Rathdrum, Idaho, who spent 10 years posting her writings about a character from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" online; Simon & Schuster paid her a $150,000 advance to publish the works as a three-novel trilogy. In Brooklyn, N.Y., a free-lance copy editor has become one of the Web's best-known "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" fan-fiction writers, and has landed a three-book publishing deal for a young-adult fantasy series. When a comic-book store manager in New Jersey decided to take his first stab at fan fiction this year, entering a contest sponsored by Showtime's "The L Word," he got the attention of a literary agent, who signed him last month. And Ms. Jones will soon have her first book published.

One sign of the growing influence of these authors and stories is that media companies, usually quick to go after people who use their copyrighted material, are increasingly leaving fan fiction writers alone. Mindful of the large, loyal audience the writers represent, many companies are adopting an attitude one media professor describes as "benign neglect." While most professional writers say their lawyers advise them not to read fan fiction to protect themselves against charges of plagiarism, some say they check the numbers of fan fiction stories posted about their work regularly as a measure of their success.

The rise of fan fiction is part of the spread of amateur-created content online, from viral videos to music playlists and blogs. Increasingly, audiences have become used to watching videos posted by other users on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Reading fiction online is another extention of this trend.

Ms. Jones, who has been writing fan fiction since she was about 11 years old, got her start writing about TV shows and movies like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but took off in the fan-fiction world when she moved into "Harry Potter." The J.K. Rowling series is by far the biggest source for fan-fiction stories on the Web now, dwarfing franchises such as "Star Wars."

Ms. Jones is best known for a series called "The Shoebox Project,"3 which she writes under the name "Jaida" with a writer named "Rave." The story is a prequel of sorts, focusing on Harry Potter's now deceased parents, along with two other wizards, Remus and Sirius, imagining them as teenage wizards finding themselves in high school during the 1970s. Interspersed in the text of the stories are scrawled notes that look like they were written by the characters themselves.

In one critical turning point in the series, Harry's grandparents are killed by Death Eaters, minions of the dark lord Voldemort -- a plot point that mirrors the killing of Harry's parents, described in Ms. Rowling's series. But Ms. Jones says she was chagrined to learn later about an interview with Ms. Rowling where the author told readers that Harry's grandparents had died of natural causes.

The series, which Ms. Jones began the summer before her freshman year at Barnard College in 2004, is up to 25 sections and the equivalent of 600 pages. While Ms. Jones says it's impossible to track how many individual readers her entries have, nearly 5,000 people have signed up to be automatically notified whenever she posts a new part on LiveJournal.com4, the Web community favored by many fan fiction writers. Each installment generates hundreds of reader comments and reviews.

Ms. Jones was contacted by Frank Fradella, an author running his own small independent book-publishing company, New Babel Books, who had read her work on LiveJournal. Next month, he's publishing her first print book, a collection of poetry called "Cinquefoil."

Like virtually all fan fiction, "The Shoebox Project" was created without the permission of the author or publisher. Many authors don't object to the fan-fiction surrounding their work, seeing it as a sign of a devoted audience rather than an act of copyright infringement.

Meg Cabot, author of "The Princess Diaries," says she herself was once a fan-fiction writer, writing stories inspired by Anne McCaffrey's fantasy novels about dragons when she was in high school and college. "I never told anyone. I've started admitting it now," she says. She says she was delighted to discover that her books had inspired hundreds of stories by fans.

Although Ms. Cabot says she occasionally goes online to see the tally of "Princess Diaries" and "Mediator" fan-fiction stories, she says she never reads them. Legal advisers warned that if she did read fan fiction, she'd be opening herself to potential lawsuits from fans who could claim she'd stolen their ideas.

Some authors take a less friendly view of the genre, however. "No matter how flattering, it's still robbery," says fantasy novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, whose vampire works have inspired a number of fan-fiction writers. She estimates that her attorney has sent out about 20 "cease and desist" letters to writers and owners of fan sites. Ms. Yarbro says this has caused some of the writers and sites to take their stories down.

For much of its history, fan fiction centered on the science-fiction and comic-book worlds. While the subject matter of fan fiction has expanded greatly, to include everything from "Desperate Housewives" to the Bible, the genre has several entrenched tropes. Many stories take the form of prequels, imagining the back stories of central characters. Crossover fantasies also have long been a key element of fan fiction, pairing characters from different books or shows.

"Shippers" (the term is believed to be derived from "relationship") are writers that explore -- and often invent -- relationships between characters. A subgenre of this is "slash," which creates gay relationships between characters such as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from "Star Trek." Slash fiction is often sexually graphic, and fan fiction's association with slash has made some mainstream authors and TV networks wary of it.

Increasingly, however, media companies, undeterred by the stigma of slash, are looking for ways to capitalize on fan fiction and its large audience. A company called FanLib is working with networks and publishers to create fan-fiction promotions and contests for books and TV shows.

FanLib recently launched a romance-writing contest with HarperCollins's Avon imprint. "We're looking for ways to reach the real core readers," says Liate Stehlik, Avon's senior vice president and publisher. To avoid copyright problems, they had writers create chapters of a novel from scratch, instead of basing them on one particular book.

FanLib's first high-profile project was a fan writing contest earlier this year devoted to "The L Word," a Showtime drama about a group of lesbian characters. FanLib Chief Executive Chris Williams says that 20,000 people registered on the contest site, where one of the show's writers assigned scenes.

The possibility of being discovered was a motivation for aspiring novelist Ervin Anderson, who was one of the seven contest winners and the only male to win. The manager of a comic shop outside Philadelphia called Fat Jake's Comicrypt, Mr. Anderson, 35, works on his own fiction at night. He was a casual watcher of "The L Word," but when the contest was announced in the spring, he saw it as chance to get an audience with industry professionals. In the second week of the contest, voters picked one of his scenes5, which touched on eating disorders and mental illness. "Being a straight male, I wasn't sure I could compete. But everyone was very welcoming," he says.

With press clippings about the "L Word" contest in hand, he met with a literary agent and signed a contract in July. He's also entered the HarperCollins contest, and has read four romance novels by popular author Julia Quinn to prepare. "As a struggling writer, you've got to take advantage of every opportunity afforded to you. You really never know where your break is going to come from," he says.

At the same time, however, many fan-fiction writers shield their identities online and keep their pursuit secret from friends and colleagues. Meredith Elliott, who works at a theater company in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a following for her writings based on the TV show "House,"6 but has only told her mother about her hobby.

"There's a sense of guilt. I always feel that I should not be using somebody else's characters and should be doing my own writing," she says. "But then I remember I am doing my own writing."
« Last Edit: January 10, 2007, 01:32:58 pm by MaineWriter »
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Offline notBastet

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2006, 12:56:57 pm »
Thanks for sharing this Leslie!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2006, 02:54:21 pm »
Great story, wasn't it? I thought of all of you as I read it. Check out the actual story, because the graphics are really good too. The only thing missing was a picture of Ennis and Ellery, and a mention of the denizens of Brokeback Mountain fanfiction fans.
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Offline littleguitar

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2006, 10:17:00 pm »
That was a really interesting article...

I'm one of those who keeps it secret. Part of me feels guilty for writing fan fiction. It takes time away from my own work and I'm using some one else's characters... but at the same time I think it is completely worth while because it keeps me in practice and keeps me writing. Either way, none of my friends outside of bettermost know. Neither does my family. Sometimes I wonder what they would say if they found out somehow, or somehow stumbled across my livejournal page (my screenname would be completely obvious to anyone who knows me), LOL that would be interesting...
‘cause the truth is, I already give him everythin’ I got to give, more than I ever even knew I had; ‘n it all for him, all of it, him who is my brother, my father, my child, my friend, my lover, my heart, my soul; my Ennis.

-- del Mar Painting, Ch. 48 by b73

Offline RouxB

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2006, 01:13:46 pm »
Thanks for the article Leslie. BbM was my first exposure to fan fic-I never knew it existed and certainly never knew, until now, to what level it existed! I would love to venture into some other fandoms but, if my BbM fan fic addiction is any indicator, I would never leave my home again.

roux


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Marge_Innavera

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2006, 11:43:21 am »
I'm one of those who keeps it secret. Part of me feels guilty for writing fan fiction. It takes time away from my own work and I'm using some one else's characters... but at the same time I think it is completely worth while because it keeps me in practice and keeps me writing. Either way, none of my friends outside of bettermost know. Neither does my family. Sometimes I wonder what they would say if they found out somehow, or somehow stumbled across my livejournal page (my screenname would be completely obvious to anyone who knows me), LOL that would be interesting...

I'm so glad to hear that somebody else has developed a secret fanfiction life.  ::)

My own project has been a deep-dark secret since I started it; there are people on BetterMost and on DC who know but absolutely no one in RL.

One of my reasons is that I've thought of fanfiction writing as a sort of teenagerish thing to do; okay when you're a teenager or even a 20-something but when you're 50-something you can get pretty self-conscious about it. But the other reason is that I want to accomplish some personal things relating to my creative life with this project and for that I need a certain amount of privacy. It doesn't seem to be a violation for people online, who don't have a connection to my offline life, to be reading and commenting on it, even people who might not like it but somehow seems different for people that I have an offline history with. If I should ever meet people from BetterMost or DC personally, I kind of doubt that would be a problem since they already know -- hope that makes sense.

There are a few RL people, particularly members of Minnesota historical societies, who might be wondering where all these questions are coming from but they haven't asked about it yet.

My name in the forums, some RL people might guess at that as they know I'm a fan of National Public Radio's "Car Talk" show. But Talks To Coyotes, I think only one person, who is now deceased, has ever known about that in 27 years.  However, despite the fact that I'm not gay, not male and don't live in Wyoming there will be enough autobiographical stuff in my story that if someone who's known me for awhile should stumble on it they'd eventually think, "OMG, I think I know who this is!"
« Last Edit: September 18, 2006, 11:45:52 am by Marge_Innavera »

Offline twistedude

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2006, 11:36:20 pm »
My shrinki has read almowsteverything I've written, but only one other person, who insisted (he'd given me a lot of help)--he didn't l8ike it. My shrink does.

I canb't imagine trying to sell or publish anything I've written. I'd thijhk it was unfair.  I have tried writing another sketch--about me and my ex-old man. With mixed resuots. The trouble is, I'm not interested in writing, and until recenretly, reading aznything but fanfiction. have swallowed a fewe other booiks rerently, thoigh.

I recenltly wolfed down all of To Kill a Mockinghbird ( for the first time), and enjoyed it a lot.

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Offline belgianboy

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Re: Fanfic in the Wall Street Journal
« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2006, 03:02:13 pm »
Interesting--my shrink wanted to read my stories too, because it was apparent how significant BBM had become for me. (I described it to him as "devastating," and the story and writing about it have since proved very eye-opening and cathartic indeed.) When I look at my work, it's obvious why--there is SO much autobiography there. But he doesn't watch movies, and I certainly don't expect him to read the story. So I've figured why bother. And even though he's a doctor, I don't usually discuss my issues in the visceral terms I use in my writing.

Yet part of me is intrigued by what his response might be. But I don't know--I would have to write a good synopsis of the story, explain why it moved me and everyone else in the universe, describe the fandom and how it works, then explain my motivations for writing what I write. I'd just as soon spend the time writing another story.

In any case, I have been able to let all the autobiography out because of the online anonymity. Yet there is that feedback, that bond of writer and reader responding to so many of the basic human issues in BBM. As far as RL? I let my sister and a close female friend read a somewhat sanitized version of a series I posted in FanFiction.net (hard R, not NC-17).

But I'm allowing myself to be dragged out of the closet little by little. It really IS like coming out of the closet, because anyone who knows me would be shocked by my fiction. It's kind of like my quiet, sexually repressed self steps into a phone booth, and voila ... out flies Belgianboy, jizz guns blazing! I'm revealing myself to the very few friends who are aware of the depth of my passion for BBM (and its stars, ahem) and/or who have writing interests of their own. They are amazed to learn about this online world, and they are tickled to know that I write erotic fiction. I sure know that my material is not for everyone, including many BBM devotees. And I haven't yet spoken to any friends who have had the time to pursue the links I've given them. But I can't wait.

And if a stranger at a party asks me what I do, from now on I definitely will mention that I write erotic fiction. A conversation starter? You bet! :o

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Fanfic in the News
« Reply #8 on: January 10, 2007, 01:34:11 pm »
Kelda  posted this over on my daughter's blog. I wanted to share it here with fanfic regulars...interesting!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6245333.stm

Potter fanfic writer launches first book


The debut novel from a Chilean writer who shot to fame after writing her own "fanfic" version of JK Rowling's Harry Potter stories has been released.
La Septima M - The Seventh M - is the first of three books that 23-year-old Chilean journalism student Francisca Solar was contracted to write by publishers Random House, following the online success of her unofficial sixth Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Decline of the High Elves.

Launched at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, La Septima M centres on a mysterious series of suicides amongst young people in the fictional community of Puerto Fake.

"All the things I know about literature, about writing, I learned in the fan fiction world," Solar told BBC World Service's The Word programme.

"I owe it everything."

Online smash

Solar began her writing career when she found she was so disappointed with JK Rowling's fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order ff the Phoenix, that she wanted to write her own sequel to it.

The Decline of the High Elves became a massive online smash, generating 80,000 views and positive reviews from Harry Potter fans around the world.


 All these people wrote to me about the fanfic and said they liked it more than the official sixth book

 

"When I read the fifth book, I was so disappointed - I'm a very critical reader, and I'm a huge fan, so the expectation of this fifth book was great," Solar said.
"I took the principle characters and I did a story that is more rich than Rowling's story, because you can have access to the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters.

"In the Harry Potter saga, you can only have access to Harry's feelings and thoughts. That is a partial view of the Potter universe."

She admitted she had never expected the global response to her work.

"Many people from all around the world have written to me, from the US, from the UK, from Asia," she said.

"All these people wrote to me about the fanfic and said they liked it more than the official sixth book [Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince]."

However, the editors at Random House insisted they did not want "another JK Rowling" and wanted something fresh - hence La Septima M, which will itself be followed up by two further books to complete a trilogy.

Fan fictions - fanfics - are one of the staples of internet sites dedicated to popular books, films and TV shows, although most do not generate a readership of more than a tiny handful of casual browsers.


« Last Edit: October 02, 2012, 06:15:00 pm by Kelda »
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