Does our entertainment culture value sampled products over original works? Is this creative sloth, or a calculated shot at maximizing profit via audience familiarity with tried-and-true stories?
When done by professional writers via publisher license, the trend gives us dozens of ‘Star Wars’ novels, John Scalzi’s affectionate and awesome H. Beam Piper reboot FUZZY NATION, and movies like BATTLESHIP or J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’ remixes.
By now, most folks in the writing business have heard of E.L. James’ racy BDSM romance series starting with FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, soon to be made into a motion picture. FSoG began life as ‘Twilight’ fanfiction. Some people probably also know Cassandra Clare’s ‘Mortal Instruments’ YA series (the first book of which is also going to be made into a movie) started as a legendary and controversial series of Harry Potter fanfics, beginning with a novel-length piece called DRACO DORMIENS.
This is nothing new. In fanlore, many sf&f writers have published amazing and well-received books that started off as fanfiction in another person’s or corporation’s copyrighted setting. They made the transition with grace, discretion, and skill.
The equation has changed because the large commercial publishers (and many literary agents) have seen the potential goldmine in re-purposed fanfiction, and are now actively courting it. I’ve even read a couple of recent blog posts about ComicCon, where publishers’ reps apparently asked attending writers about fanfic possibilities. And they’re not demanding the kind of effort Scalzi put into writing a completely new tale written in an old universe. Now whole sections, if not whole chapters, seem to be merely lifted from fanfiction, run through Find/Replace, and sent to an editor.
One can make the argument that such projects help bankroll the publication of lesser-known original fiction, providing a cushion of relatively easy profit for the publisher. In a younger reading culture that has grown up with sampled music and digital art, ‘fan fiction’ no longer has the unsavory connotations it had even 20 years ago.
Someone in the business asked me recently if I had any ‘Twilight’ or ‘Harry Potter’ fanfic I’d be willing to recycle. I may be one of the few people in America who has neither read nor watched anything ‘Twilight’-related (except for some hilarious South Park and Robot Chicken parodies.) While I have played in the Potter universe, those efforts are not long enough or interesting enough to justify filing off the serial numbers.
Plus, I like J.K. Rowling. She achieved something remarkable and introduced millions of readers to really long and complicated books. She doesn’t know it, but she is personally responsible for a bit of creative vengeance that still makes me feel warm-and-fuzzy just thinking about it. So I’m not stepping on her toes for profit.
But that got me thinking. I did write extensively in a rather obscure fandom years ago, more as a way of play-testing characterization and romance scenes without investing lots of world building. A few of those stories have been popular enough that I still get happy, weepy fanmail about them. One could be a brilliant gut-punch of a short novel, if I can engineer the necessary changes to the characters and the ending.
I admire and respect that author, too. She made her mark on her chosen genre, in a time and culture where she was considered at once a rebel and a clown. I owe it to her to be as careful as I can with what was, in the first place, a bootleg version of her universe.
So between contracted projects, I’m going to rewrite the thing as an experiment. I will strip out as much of the original universe as I can, and attempt to build an effective novel out of the remaining bones. Unlike James and Clare, I’m not courting a massive fan base. I might have 20 fangirls scattered around the world – I love ‘em all, but they don’t constitute a significant market block. But I think it will be fun.
The working title is COLD COMFORT. Stay tuned for developments.
Now I’m rather curious as to which obscure fandom you wrote for!
I renewed my interest in writing via fanfic (in an obscure fandom!) a couple years ago before moving on to original works. I don’t think I’d be able to “file the serial numbers” off of any of them. That said, I *will* admit to using some ideas that were initially going to be fanfics for future books.
It’ll be interesting to see how your experiment works out!
Hi, Thea. I’ll leave that fandom still nameless and obscure at the moment, though I’ll probably reveal it later.
One of the great difficulties about re-purposing fanfic is this: if we as fan writers have managed to stay true to canon originals, then ‘filing off the serial numbers’ often just guts the whole story. It simply won’t work with new settings and characters.
Because I’m weaving several different fan stories together, I think I can come up with something new and fun.