Achievement unlocked, guys! Life And Death is like an official stamp of approval on the gender bent fanfic I wrote in college and so I am THRILLED right now. I probably won’t have the time to read it for a while but omg mine. ?
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Where is the line drawn between literature and fanfiction? Length? Character development? Readability? Publication? The physical presence of the author? As far as I can tell, the answer lies somewhere between the latter two.
Even though she’s been dead for quite some time now, Jane Austen’s books still excite quite a bit of admiration. So enamored with her characters (namely Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy) do some become that they take it upon themselves to continue the story. While this shouldn’t be surprising considering the web space devoted to alterations and continuations of living authors’ work (fanfiction.net, for example), it is still odd to come across a book on a shelf in a store that has somehow escaped the odious label of fanfiction.
Personally, I adore Jane Austen’s work. Pride and Prejudice has an especially dear place on my bookshelf (it’s one of the only books I own multiple copies of), so when I ran across multiple versions of what happened to the Darcys after their wedding, I found myself intrigued. Since that day, I’ve read four different versions.
Each one was unique, but overall they ranged in worth just as the online unpublished fanfictions did. Some were far more developed and intricate while others seeemed merely interested in what happened between the sheets of the Darcys’ marital bed. I even found myself wondering if one of the authors had ever even picked up the actual novel or had simply watched the condensed 2005 Kiera Knightly/Matthw Macfayden version. Overt references to the movie abounded and always in instances where the book was drastically different. It amazed me that something like this could cross the line between the unpublishable and the literary. But, then again, maybe it’s best to just take it as one more reminder that subjectivity rules here.
Fanfiction (noun): fictional stories based on a popular book, movie, television show, etc.
In the past ten years, as internet use has become close to universal, there has been an explosion in the writing and awareness of Fanfiction. Websites like Fanfiction.net host hundreds of thousands of stories based on the characters and situations in popular media. Some of these are well though out pieces that stay true to both character motivations and author intentions, but others may only have the character names in common. The authors of these pieces are just as different, but many proclaim to have one thing in common: they dream of becoming a published author.
Some people can’t see any positive in allowing fanfiction to continue—some of the strongest opposition points out that it is pure plagiarism. In a way, they’re right—fanfiction utilizes someone else’s characters, rules, villains, places, situations, and ideas, twisting and manipulating them to a different author’s whims. Certainly certain authors have very specific goals and purposes for writing their stories—they wish a scene had gone a different way, for example, and rewrite it, or they want to show the story from the point of view of a different character—but others type out the original book and change very little. While those authors rarely claim their work to be unique, even calling it a variation is somewhat outlandish. Yet even those who write well and devote time, energy, and love to creating a wonderful piece of fiction may be wasting their time.
Fanfiction is, generally, unpublishable. Since the work is not really the author’s creation, they don’t have the right to reproduce it for monetary gain. I’m not claiming that no fanfiction ever gets published—just look at the Star Trek and Buffy series, and even the newest addition to the Godfather series—but these are rare exception that have been licensed by the creators to create. If you have a serious desire to become a published author, get out of fanfiction! Use it as something to practice with, a way to sharpen your storytelling skills, and then put it behind you. Let your favorite characters teach you about plot development, and then leave them to the author who created them. Somewhere along the way, discover your own voice and style, your own characters and stories, and spend your time building them.
Who knows? Maybe, if you do, a young, aspiring author will be writing fanfiction about your characters one day.