Search This Blog

Sunday, January 25, 2015

"Bothersome Words" And Fan Fiction

While Googling today, I came across an article about lessons you can learn from writing fan fiction. I have written about the subject before, but this lady - I have met her at a con or two, but can't recall her actual name, though I follow her on Twitter - has written such a very good post on the subject of what professional writers can learn from fan writers that I think I will let you check in out through this link. She does say that quite a lot of professional writers are doing this anyway, but in general, it's a good thing todo, and, at its best, fan fiction does it.

At its worst, of course, that's another matter. And there is quite a lot of "worst". As a lover of history, I remember cringing at some of the Robin Of Sherwood fan fiction I read. And sometimes the authors found a historical nugget and forced it into their otherwise not-very-good story. And the number of writers who did the White Goddess thing made me roll my eyes.

But still, there are a lot of positive things about how people work on fanfic, so wander across and read this article. I put in a couple of comments at the time, several months ago. :-)

2 comments:

Lan said...

I would hope that any writer whether traditional or self published would be doing these things already!

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hope, yes, but not always the case, is it? And she does say a lot of professionals are doing it. She only suggests it as a good way of working, and one that is taken for granted among fanwriters in general. If you don't have to create a character from scratch, for example, you can concentrate on getting the characterisation right, and that's good practice for later when you do create a character from scratch. And if you get it wrong, there are plenty of people who will tell you! :-)