Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
What is the value in writing? What is it that makes Tolstoy more ‘worthwhile’ than Stephenie Meyer? Or even JK Rowling? Why is it that some writing is considered to have more worth than others?
If I am sure of one thing, it is that most people will have an opinion on this question. And it will probably be a strong one at that.
My point is not to answer this question, or even try. In my mind, there is nothing that makes Dickens more intrinsically valuable than the work I read on fanfiction.net or archiveofourown.org. There is nothing fundamentally better about the writing of Charlotte Bronte than of the lesbian romance novelists I read, or my friend Car’s stories.
What is valuable to me, as a reader, is that I can connect with the story, that I can embrace the characters and feel that somehow they are like me, or that they reflect some facet of my life. Isn’t this why most people read stories, or watch television or movies? To see some part of yourself that you can recognise or even aspire to?
So when I ask what is the value in writing, I am challenging myself and my own perceptions of what is the best kind of writing. When I self-deprecatingly comment that all I’ve written so far is fanfiction, why the sense of shame? When others ask “So do you have any plans to write something original?”, why do I accept the implied rebuke and equivocate, say that maybe sometime in the future I will?
What is wrong with writing fanfiction, damn it?
It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, especially today.
I tried to come up with a list of things that are good about fanfiction, and a list of things that are bad. This is what I came up with.
Let’s start with the bad:
– It’s lazy. What do you mean you can’t come up with your own worlds, and populate them with your own characters? You’re just riding on the coattails of someone else’s hard work, how do you expect to get anywhere by doing that? You need to work harder to really write.
– How do you expect to grow as a writer if you never have any original ideas? There’s nothing unique about fanfiction, it’s all the same old stuff repeated over and over, and anyway who the hell wants to read that?
– You think you’re a writer? Please. Fanfiction is like graffiti, and not even good graffiti at that. It’s like you’ve taken someone else’s work and just tagged it as your own, like some uneducated gang member desperately trying to get recognition.
– You’re profiting from someone else’s work, without giving them due recognition or compensation.
Well shit. Maybe I should just give up now.
But hold on, are there any redeeming features of fanfiction? Why do so many people write it if there’s nothing at all good about it? If we think about it logically for a moment, would there really be such a vast body of work produced if someone wasn’t getting something out of it?
Weighing in for the positive team we have, in no particular order:
– Pleasure. The ability to play with characters that you know and love, and put them in situations or relationships that are different from canon.
– Practice. Fanfiction is a wonderful, (usually) safe space to try new ideas, get creative, really mix things up. The fandoms are usually pretty forgiving of just about anything you can come up with. If you’ve ever read a crack fic you’ll know there is some pretty way out stuff being produced.
– You can create the stories that you want to read. I personally believe this is a massive part of the attraction – it’s a place to say “I wonder what would happen if…”, and just create that story yourself, instead of hoping that the author, writers, producers etc might provide that kind of storyline.
– And following from that, the fandom and particularly fanfiction is a real outlet for marginalised members of the community to put their own stamp on things, to alter what they see and read to better reflect their realities. As a lesbian I know this to be especially true. When the amount of TV shows and books with queer content is relatively slender, we have to go out and create that material for ourselves. So often TV networks will throw the queers a bone, so to speak, will dance around the possibility of a same-sex relationship but with the ultimate end goal of retaining the safe ground of heteronormativity. This is really where my own motivation comes from, taking that subtext and those little teasing moments and building something solid and representative. Something that is truly ours.
– Profit. There’s so much money to be made in fanfiction. Yeah, no. That’s a lie. Unless you happen to hit a very specific niche market at exactly the right moment (as EL James did with 50 Shades of Grey), the only profit you’re likely to make from fanfiction is a potential group of new friends, people who share your love of the fandom. It can definitely be an amazing experience connecting with people all over the world, but as for money? Unlikely. That’s not to say that people don’t profit from fanfiction every single day. Helen Fielding certainly hit the jackpot – and what is Bridget Jones’s Diary other than an unashamed piece of Jane Austen fanfiction?
We’ve heard for the negative, and the affirmative. Are we any closer to a conclusion about what makes some writing more valuable than others? I’m not sure about you, but for myself I do feel a bit better about it. Feel like I can let go of a bit of that internalised shame about writing fanfiction and own it with more confidence. Sure, there are some writers whose work outstrips everyone else, whose sublime prose or vivid characters reach right out and connect with almost everyone. And to be fair I don’t think that fanfiction is ever going to achieve that. We don’t write for a wider audience. Our audience is a group of likeminded people who are seeking something more from the fandom.
But that’s not to say that fanfiction is without value. I reiterate, what is valuable to me (and I’m guessing to many people) is the ability to connect with a narrative and find some reflection of myself there. To share someone else’s perspective and know that I am not alone in my thoughts and feelings and desires. And where the wider corpus of material produced in the world doesn’t provide that, we need to be proactive and make it so. If I watch Les Miserables and want to imagine a version in which Javert is motivated by his hidden love for Valjean, a version in which Cosette falls in love with Eponine rather than Marius, then why can’t I? If I want to imagine that Charlotte Lucas was really in love with Elizabeth Bennet, why shouldn’t I? People take existing work and repurpose it every single day – just look at the music industry or Hollywood. It has happened for centuries, and continues to happen today in so many mediums.
So why the stigma around fanfiction? There are some pretty cogent reasons why fanfiction is valuable writing, and I’ve really only skimmed the surface. What is it going to take to get some recognition of the fabulous work that is being produced every minute of every day? Why do I feel like it needs recognition, why the urge for validation? Ultimately, the only recognition anyone needs is the satisfaction of producing a piece of work that you can be content to claim as your own, and I suspect for many fanfiction writers it is that urge that drives them more than any other.
But maybe next time you
hear someone mention fanfiction, don’t be quite so quick to scoff, to minimise, to move the conversation onto ‘real’ writing. If you’ve never dabbled in fandom, maybe it’s a good time to just have a look. See what’s out there. Because if you’ve ever wondered “What if…”, if you’ve ever thought “Hey, what would happen if that character was different…”, there’s a fair chance that someone else has too. And you might just be blown away.
Liss is on Twitter at @lazy_boo