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valarltdGood morning!
As you casn tell by icon (and for the really geeky, the title), I am a Star Wars fangirl. Always have been. Probably always will be. My level of fandom has fluctuated over the years and is at a bit of a low right now.
I also write GLBT romance, and occasionally het as well, for several epublishers. I only use profic to mean the commercially approved fanfiction. I have never written profic. I do write original, slash-style romances.
Today, we're talking intersectionality of fan and pro.
An annoying historical pause
I became a fan when I was in single digits. First of Disney's Robin Hood, and then later of Star Wars and then Star Trek. My earliest recorded fanfiction is a conversion of a Valley of the Dinosaurs comic book into script format so we could act it out. My first serious story came in 1983, Star Trek. I first heard of slash in 1984, shrugged and went on. My interest came and went, going through fallow periods when I was writing original stuff (with great good fortune that Trunk novel shall never see the light of day). Buffy pulled me back into fandom around 1998. It resonated as nothing else had and I had discovered fanfiction, including slash, on Usenet. It wasn't long before I went multifannish.
One of the lists I joined was Master_Apprentice. I read it from time to time, not deep into the pairing, but enjoying it. When I joined LiveJournal in 2002, I added someone whose work I had enjoyed. THAT started it all.
In 2004, the person put out a call for original, slash-style, erotic horror for an anthology. I wrote up a piece based on a crumbling hospital that I passed every day. When it was accepted, I subbed to the next anthology and the next. A call came out for a 10,000 word short to be published at Christmas, first one to get it to me gets the slot. And so my Gay Christmas Werewolves were born.
I started team writing in 2005, when I met my partner![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nbrooks in an online role-playing game. Once upon a Business Class, Han Solo fell in love with Bagoas. We both had to leave the game, but we kept working together.
And that is where the "Filing off the serial numbers" part of the story starts.
Fanfic as salable original fiction
Some will say "Just Don't Do IT!"
In many cases, they are right. A great deal of fanfiction is predicated on previous knowledge of the world, the characters and various tropes. Even the AU fiction requires a certain understanding of these. The best AU fic plays with all of them relentlessly.
But, in rare cases, there is a concept or a story that does work as original. In our case, it was a crossover. Because a Star Wars/Persian Boy crossover was so cracked out by definition, we had no trouble moving the character types to an original universe and giving them some original traits. I did swipe some large segments of what had been a Corellian Wedding for the latter part of the story. I removed the story I from which liberated this piece of invention from my site.
Things to ask yourself when you're looking at a piece of fanfic you're considering:
1) Are the characters adequately introduced? Fanfic is predicated on knowing the characters. If they were Joe Blow and Bill Schmoe, instead of Kirk and Spock, would you care about them?
2) Is the story too strongly tied to the universe? Will the important concepts translate? Can you make up your own methods of space propulsion or psychic power or both if that's what needed? This is a hard thing to define, really. At first glance, "Spacer steals pretty slave boy from evil owner and they have adventures" looks much the same as "spacer falls for psychic slave boy, spends half of story moping when boy is sold, has wild adventure when he's recovered." They should. But the first is an Ellora's Cave original. The second is fanfic that will never be translated to original fic because it's tied to the Star Wars universe and movie plotline too tightly.
3) What is the audience? Fanfiction comes with a built-in audience. Original fiction doesn't. A lot of publishers ask you "who is your target audience and what are your promotional plans?" Give this some serious thought.
A brief digression
There is one area where it's acceptable to write "fanfiction" and try to publish it: legends and public domain.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the latest example of this. Austen is public domain, so zombies could be added without violating copyright.
Naomi and I just finished edits on a Robin Hood novel for Ellora's Cave. I've written a Lovecraft homage for Torquere.
When doing this, it helps to be aware of the tropes, either to use or to lampshade. I had a character in the Lovecraft piece say "Stop looking at me like that. I'm fine. I'm not going to start shouting 'Ia! Ia! Cthulhu f'thagn' just before I blow my brains out." Most Lovecraft stories in the Mythos are just a countdown to the point where the main character does exactly that. (That's lampshading)
So, if you think your 50 page Troy slash has some potential, make sure it's true to the original and not just to Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, clean it up and send it.
For those who want them,
My fanfiction is here, for as long as Geocities stays up:
http://www.geocities.com/lady_aethelynde
My original is here, with some free samples;
http://www.angelsparrow.com
Happy Star Wars Day!
May the Fourth be with you...
*ducks and runs*
As you casn tell by icon (and for the really geeky, the title), I am a Star Wars fangirl. Always have been. Probably always will be. My level of fandom has fluctuated over the years and is at a bit of a low right now.
I also write GLBT romance, and occasionally het as well, for several epublishers. I only use profic to mean the commercially approved fanfiction. I have never written profic. I do write original, slash-style romances.
Today, we're talking intersectionality of fan and pro.
An annoying historical pause
I became a fan when I was in single digits. First of Disney's Robin Hood, and then later of Star Wars and then Star Trek. My earliest recorded fanfiction is a conversion of a Valley of the Dinosaurs comic book into script format so we could act it out. My first serious story came in 1983, Star Trek. I first heard of slash in 1984, shrugged and went on. My interest came and went, going through fallow periods when I was writing original stuff (with great good fortune that Trunk novel shall never see the light of day). Buffy pulled me back into fandom around 1998. It resonated as nothing else had and I had discovered fanfiction, including slash, on Usenet. It wasn't long before I went multifannish.
One of the lists I joined was Master_Apprentice. I read it from time to time, not deep into the pairing, but enjoying it. When I joined LiveJournal in 2002, I added someone whose work I had enjoyed. THAT started it all.
In 2004, the person put out a call for original, slash-style, erotic horror for an anthology. I wrote up a piece based on a crumbling hospital that I passed every day. When it was accepted, I subbed to the next anthology and the next. A call came out for a 10,000 word short to be published at Christmas, first one to get it to me gets the slot. And so my Gay Christmas Werewolves were born.
I started team writing in 2005, when I met my partner
nbrooks in an online role-playing game. Once upon a Business Class, Han Solo fell in love with Bagoas. We both had to leave the game, but we kept working together.And that is where the "Filing off the serial numbers" part of the story starts.
Fanfic as salable original fiction
Some will say "Just Don't Do IT!"
In many cases, they are right. A great deal of fanfiction is predicated on previous knowledge of the world, the characters and various tropes. Even the AU fiction requires a certain understanding of these. The best AU fic plays with all of them relentlessly.
But, in rare cases, there is a concept or a story that does work as original. In our case, it was a crossover. Because a Star Wars/Persian Boy crossover was so cracked out by definition, we had no trouble moving the character types to an original universe and giving them some original traits. I did swipe some large segments of what had been a Corellian Wedding for the latter part of the story. I removed the story I from which liberated this piece of invention from my site.
Things to ask yourself when you're looking at a piece of fanfic you're considering:
1) Are the characters adequately introduced? Fanfic is predicated on knowing the characters. If they were Joe Blow and Bill Schmoe, instead of Kirk and Spock, would you care about them?
2) Is the story too strongly tied to the universe? Will the important concepts translate? Can you make up your own methods of space propulsion or psychic power or both if that's what needed? This is a hard thing to define, really. At first glance, "Spacer steals pretty slave boy from evil owner and they have adventures" looks much the same as "spacer falls for psychic slave boy, spends half of story moping when boy is sold, has wild adventure when he's recovered." They should. But the first is an Ellora's Cave original. The second is fanfic that will never be translated to original fic because it's tied to the Star Wars universe and movie plotline too tightly.
3) What is the audience? Fanfiction comes with a built-in audience. Original fiction doesn't. A lot of publishers ask you "who is your target audience and what are your promotional plans?" Give this some serious thought.
A brief digression
There is one area where it's acceptable to write "fanfiction" and try to publish it: legends and public domain.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the latest example of this. Austen is public domain, so zombies could be added without violating copyright.
Naomi and I just finished edits on a Robin Hood novel for Ellora's Cave. I've written a Lovecraft homage for Torquere.
When doing this, it helps to be aware of the tropes, either to use or to lampshade. I had a character in the Lovecraft piece say "Stop looking at me like that. I'm fine. I'm not going to start shouting 'Ia! Ia! Cthulhu f'thagn' just before I blow my brains out." Most Lovecraft stories in the Mythos are just a countdown to the point where the main character does exactly that. (That's lampshading)
So, if you think your 50 page Troy slash has some potential, make sure it's true to the original and not just to Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, clean it up and send it.
For those who want them,
My fanfiction is here, for as long as Geocities stays up:
http://www.geocities.com/lady_aethelynde
My original is here, with some free samples;
http://www.angelsparrow.com
Happy Star Wars Day!
May the Fourth be with you...
*ducks and runs*
