Friday, April 12, 2013

Fan Fic

I just sent another essay off to Strange Horizon. It's about fan fic, and I ended up wondering why I don't write fan fic. Friends do. I have in the past, the distant past at this point. I have written fiction about people who write fan fic (the hwarhath playwright in Ring of Swords) and people who cosplay (the hwarhath translator in "Holmes Sherlock"). But I have some kind of hostility to writing within a copyrighted universe.

I would hate to believe the reason is snobbery.

3 Comments:

Blogger Leslie Bates said...

I've written Fan Fic as well and I had fun doing so. But our time in life is limited and some people may be concerned with the materiel and spiritual return on their investment.

1:33 PM  
Blogger delagar said...

I run a writing workshop for young teens out of our local library here in NW Arkansas, which ends up being almost all young girls. Almost all of them write fan fic (tons of it). I encourage it.

It teaches them structure, pacing, plotting -- all sorts of invaluable lessons. And, most important, it teaches them to write for a real audience (they're all posting their fanfic on line), which these days they are mostly not going to get any other way.

Plus, wow, with fan fic, do they write a *lot*.

Is it publishable -- as in, can they sell it? Probably not. But they're 12 and 14, and probably most of them aren't realistically writing publishable work at this age anyway. But it's teaching them how to write work that will be publishable.

It's apprenticeship work, as I see it.

12:20 PM  
Blogger Eleanor said...

delagar -- Yes!

9:05 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home