I was just informed by my brother (who thinks he’s a better writer than anyone else because he has some fancy degree in writing) that fanfiction “doesn’t count” as “real writing” because you aren’t using your own “ideas.”
He doesn’t know that I write fanfiction. He probably wouldn’t have admitted his opinion if her did. But it has pretty much solidified that I will never tell anyone I know in person what I write.
I’ve already been told by several family members that my obsession with a “stupid tv show” is ridiculous and that I’m “too old” to fangirl.
Sigh. /rant
In Defense of
Fanfiction
I am a professional writer and editor in real life. I have a
double degree in English and writing and am currently in school once more to
obtain a master’s degree. If your brother’s fancy writing degree was worth anything
at all, he should be able to admit that the vast majority of all literature is
in fact fanfiction of someone else’s story and its elements. In other words, no
one’s idea is, by definition, original.
Let’s take a look at just
a few examples to support my theory that some of the most important or
well-known pieces of literature ever created qualify as fanfiction:
Ancient/Old Literature
· Around
2000 BCE:The Epic of Gilgamesh
was inspired as a fanfiction of a historical King of Uruk, mixed with
Mesopotamian mythology. The story includes the character Utnapishtim, who lives
through a world-wide flood by building a ship per the instructions of the god
Enki and ultimately landing on a mountain in the Middle East, similar to Noah’s
story from the Bible (dates for the book of Genesis vary anywhere from 1400 BCE
to 800 BCE). Many historians suggest that the story of Noah was directly
inspired by Gilgamesh’s story of
Utnapishtim. Other historians suggest the two were simply inspired by a similar
source. Either way, there’s too many startling overlaps to classify Utnapishtim
and Noah as only a coincidence.
· 20-ish
BCE: The Roman author Virgil wrote The
Aeneid, which is a direct sequel to the previously created epic The Iliad attributed to Greek bard Homer.
Virgil was also known for writing pastoral poems based off and inspired by the
work of the great poet Theocritus (280 BCE). As a fun addition, Theocritus
himself was known for rewriting the cyclops villain (Polyphemus) of Homer’s Odyssey into a love-sick idiot in his
work, Idyll XI.
Medieval Era (500-1500-ish CE)
· 700-1000:
The Alphabet of ben Sirach was an
anonymous Hebrew collection of satires that included a parody of the biblical
Genesis story of Adam and Eve. The story gave Adam a totally different wife by
the name of Lilith, the character of which was inspired by Babylonian
mythology. The whole of the collection is additionally wrapped in a fictional
account of telling the stories to the historical figure of the Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar—another real person fanfiction of a celebrity from that time.
· Around
1000: The world’s first novel, The
Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, inspired the massive outpouring of Japanese
Noh theater plays involving characters from the novel, such as Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), which has been
attributed to a few people (Zeami Motokiyo and Inuo). This play appropriates
the Lady Aoi from Shikibu’s psychological novel to explore her death and is
only one example of the available fanfictions of the novel.
· 1308-1320:
Dante’s Divine Comedy (known most
famously for the Inferno) is a
literal OC self-insertion of the Italian Dante Alighieri himself into the hell,
purgatory and heaven from Catholic / biblical texts. Its format is in an epic,
in an attempt to outdo the Aeneid and Iliad before it. It also includes an insertion
of a ghostly Virgil, who copied the Iliad to write the Aeneid. Furthermore,
Dante’s work includes insertions of real historical people that Dante didn’t
like. It’s possibly the most self-indulgent fanfiction ever created while also
being named one of the greatest poems in literature.
· 1392:
Geoffrey Chaucer (known as the father of English literature) wrote a famous
collection called The Canterbury Tales.
The collection takes its basic format and inspiration from Italian author
Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (written
in 1351). It’s suggested that some of the tales Chaucer uses actually
originated from Boccaccio’s work.
Renaissance Era (1550-1660-ish CE)
· 1590:
English poet Edmund Spenser borrowed the legend of Arthur of the Round Table in
his epic poem, The Faerie Queene. In
it, Arthur is pretty love-sick over the fairy queen.
· 1597:
English playwright Shakespeare borrowed various mythologies and historical
figures and mixed them together. Not even his most popular play, Romeo and Juliet, was original. He took
the idea from a poem written by Arthur Brooke in 1562, called, “The Tragicall
Hystorye of Romeus and Iuliet.” Even more interesting, Brooke had taken his
idea from the 1554 Giulietta e Romeo
by Italian author Matteo Bandello. (Shakespeare repeatedly sourced other
people’s ideas or historical existence for his plays.)
Enlightenment Era (1660-1789)
· 1667:
English poet John Milton wrote Paradise
Lost, a fanfiction epic of the biblical story in the book of Genesis about
the fall of creation and humankind into imperfection.
· 1712:
English poet Alexander Pope wrote a mock-heroic epic called the Rape of the Lock to make fun of all the
serious epic writers before him, borrowing such images as the way epic warriors
put on armor and connecting it to the way rich people put on rich clothing and
jewelry. He used other standard epic elements as repeated throughout The Iliad, Aeneid, and so forth.
· 1759:
French writer and inventor, Voltaire, wrote a satire Candide. It borrowed various elements from Tales from a Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a collection of
Middle Eastern folktales from the Islamic Golden Age.
Romantic Era (1789-1850)
· 1819:
In Don Juan, English poet Lord Byron
took the pre-dated legend of Don Juan, which was about a man who seduced a lot
of women, and reversed the original plot so that Don Juan ended up seduced by a
lot of women.
· 1820:
English poet John Keats wrote a poem as a retelling of the Greek mythological
creature called Lamia, which was a half-woman and half-monster (description
varies depending on the Greek source). A lot of his works borrowed heavily from
Greek mythology and literature, and he idolized the English Renaissance poet
Edmund Spenser, to a point where his first work was called, “Imitation of
Spenser” (1814). In it, he borrowed various images from Spenser’s epic, The Faerie Queene.
· 1843:
English writer Charles Dickens wrote A
Christmas Carol, based off the various stories compiled in the 1841 and
1842 TheLowell Offering, a publication magazine written by a group of
intellectual but mostly anonymous women. He borrowed the certain pieces of plot,
language, and descriptions for Scrooge’s ghostly encounters from the stories “A
Visit from Hope” (anonymous), “Happiness” (anonymous), and “Memory and Hope”
(by someone named Ellen). A Christmas
Carol is additionally littered with biblical allusions all over the place.
· 1844:
French writer Alexander Dumas borrowed The
Three Musketeers, as well as many of the story’s side-characters, from The Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan by
French author Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. He didn’t even change the names or
who the villain, the Cardinal, was.
· 1845:
American author Edgar Allan Poe wrote The
Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade, in which he has the mythical Scheherazade
from the Tales from a Thousand and One
Arabian Nights telling another story about the legendary Sinbad the
Sailor.
· 1861:
Hungarian author Imre Madach wrote The
Tragedy of Man, which reverses the biblical moral principles of God and
Satan: In this story, God is the violent and evil ruler, and Satan is the jaded/trickster
victim just trying to open humanity’s eyes to the truth.
Modern Era (1900ish-1950s)
· 1922:
Irish novelist James Joyce wrote his stream-of-consciousness novel Ulysses, which was based off of Homer’s Odyssey, to a point where he took the
characters and simply renamed them, as well as aligned the structure of his
book to the various episodes in Homer’s work.
· 1930:
The Nancy Drew series was created under
the penname Carolyn Keene, who did not exist. Instead, an American man named
Edward Stratemeyer would write three pages of a story, then send it to one of
several ghostwriters who wanted to write Nancy Drew. The ghostwriter would take
the story and expand it. The anonymous group of ghostwriters all writing about
the same character still exists today. Each individual ghostwriter has made
changes to Nancy’s personality, looks, and age, as well as the type of plots said
character engages in.
· 1937:
English writer JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit
and then Lord of the Rings in the
1950s. He borrowed the names of characters and places after those seen in the
Icelandic sagas Poetic Edda and Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. Tolkien admitted
he based the physical appearance of Gandalf off of the Norse god Odin. He
modeled the character of Aragorn directly after Beowulf, from the old English epic
(700-1000 BCE) Beowulf. Aragorn himself
even paraphrases the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer,” as an example of a verse
created by his people of Rohan. Another fun fact is that Tolkien specifically
borrowed the phrase “my precious,” from a Middle English poem called Pearl. Additionally,
Tolkien was a big fan of romantic prose/poetry writer William Morris and wanted
to write like him, so he borrowed a lot of phrases, aesthetics, and even names
from such works like the 1888 The House
of the Wolfings by Morris, including the place called “Mirkwood.” Of
curious note is that Morris’s work was massively influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid.
· 1938:
African-American author Richard Wright wrote a collection of stories called Uncle Tom’s Children, with an obvious
borrowing of the title from Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852.
· 1930s-present:
DC and Marvel comics mostly just updated the mythological gods and goddesses
for a modern era, appropriating their names, special relics, and abilities for
their heroes, and then mixing them with some modern-day cover identifies. As an
example, Wonder Woman was originally a nod to the Greek goddess Diana, a nod to
the female Amazon warriors, and a redesigned image of Rosie the Riveter. As
another example, the Flash is a reproduction of the Greek god Hermes, his
winged helmet further clarifying the connection. Even the name Superman was not
entirely original. 1938 Illustrator of Superman, Joe Shuster, took the name
“Superman” from the German “Ubermensh,” a term coined by the philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche. As a final example, sometimes the appropriation from
mythology is incredibly obvious, as in the case of Thor.
· 1949:
English author George Orwell reviewed a book called We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. He wrote a rave review on it
and declared that he would try to write something similar, which ultimately
became 1984, sharing many similar
plot points and concepts while bringing the story of We into a more realistic environment. The novel We also inspired Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, for which Vonnegut
admitted he also borrowed concepts from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
· 1950s: The Chronicles of Narnia by British author
C.S. Lewis was based on biblical stories conveyed through various mythological
elements as well.
Postmodern Era (1950s-Present, debatably)
· 1977: African-American
author, Toni Morrison, wrote a critically acclaimed novel called Song of Solomon, which took its title
name, as well as the names of several characters and plot points, from the
Bible.
· 1988:
British-Indian author Salman Rushdie’s The
Satanic Verses was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammed.
Its title is a direct reference to controversial verses once placed in the
Quran but then removed. These highly controversial and sensitive connections to
Islamic and Old Testament personalities of Gabriel and Satan resulted in the
banning of Rushdie’s book from several regions.
· 1997-2007:
The Harry Potter series by British author
JK Rowling borrows heavily from historical alchemy, including the age-old
legend of the philosopher’s stone and the 1652 book Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, which was about the medicinal and
occult properties of plants, which helped her build how magic was used in her
stories. Rowling also admits the 1652 book inspired many of the character’s
names. She appropriates several historical figures as well for her own purposes
(as a sort
of real-person fanfiction), including references to alchemists Nicolas Flammel and
Paracelsus. She even admits to, while writing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,
dreaming about Flammel showing her how to make a philosopher’s stone.
· 2003:
American author Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci
Code and its twisting conspiracies are based almost entirely on the books
of Margaret Starbird, most of which were written between 1993 and 2003.
· 2009:Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by American
author Seth Grahame-Smith, is a rehashing of Jane Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice. But with zombies.
· 2015: American
writer of critically acclaimed The Outsiders,
S.E. Hinton, claims that she has posted anonymous fanfictions of her own novel,
as well as at least four Supernatural fanfics, being a huge fan of the show and
of the paranormal.
As a professionally educated and trained writer and editor
myself, I had to study the intertextualities of several of the pieces I
mentioned above. But this is not an exhaustive world list by any means and is missing some other fantastic and influential writers—I’ve included only
what has come to my mind in a short time. Plots and characters and ideas have
been largely passed around throughout the history of literature. Without
fanfiction, a solid portion of well-known literature would not exist.
In fact, many authors and even inventors will say that there
is no such thing as an original idea. Certain pieces get touted as creative
because they combine previously suggested elements in a different or
thought-provoking way. (Don’t even get me started on how science fiction is a
driving force behind many scientific advancements today!)
If you’re writing fanfiction, then you’re participating in a
tradition that spans millennia. There is no piece of literature created in some
“original” vacuum. That is precisely why literary critics, and those who have professionally
studied fiction in an academic setting, use the word “intertextuality” to
describe how works of fiction are ultimately interrelated in some way or
another.
Therefore, fanfiction is the legacy of literature. If
Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Keats, Poe, Dickens, Tolkien, and Brown can
write fanfiction about and expand other people’s works, you can too. So the
next time someone tells you to stop writing fanfiction, or tells you that it’s
not a valid form of art, tell them that they obviously have never read the most
important historical works of fiction, or even many popular modern stories,
which are all rehashed fanfiction stories, borrowing characters and names and setting and even syntax.
Rant written for @greenappleeyes and everyone else unfairly shamed for writing fanfiction. Content was retrieved from my own class notes, as well as publically available online interviews and articles.
Leveraged an inventory of established fictional character and setting elements to generate a disruptive custom-curated narrative entertainment asset.
I worked in HR, handling applications and interviews, and if someone turned in that string of techno babble nonsense, I would have rejected them out of hand.
A resume doesn’t need to sound fancy or overly technical, it needs to tell us why we should hire you.
“Independent novelist/writer” is more than sufficient here. If you want to express the skills that fan fiction taught you, something like, “creative writing, editing, and publication,” will get you a lot further than… Whatever that just was.
A resume should be tailored to the position, if you can afford the time and energy for that. But if not, then just think about what writing got fandom taught you. How to respond to criticism, how to present a professional pubic face, how to correct punished mistakes, creative thinking, project planning, persuasion via emotional leverage, html formatting, office suite fluency.
There are a lot of actual, marketable skills that go into fan fiction.
How to put “I was in a zine” on your resume
Writer:
Published short fiction stories for anthology collection
Able to write short fiction within a designated word count for layout purposes (900-1500 words, 1500-2000, 3000-5000)
Wrote short articles for independent publication
Assisted with editing short stories for publication
Able to reduce or expand written content based on layout needs
Able to check for basic spelling, grammar and syntax
Familiar with Microsoft Office and Google docs
Artist:
Produced full-colour digital illustration for independent magazine
Able to produce digital illustrations optimized for both online and print display
Produced full-colour 2-page spread for art anthology
Published 4-page short comic in anthology collection for charity
Able to transfer traditional art to digital illustration
Illustrated the cover (always brag if you’re on the cover) of an independent art publication
Familiar with professional illustration tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Clip Studio Paint and stylus tablet
Merch artist / graphic designer:
Designed 2″ clear decorative double-sided keychain charm as bonus sale item
Designed 5″ x 6″ sheet of graphic stickers included in art anthology
Able to design bold graphics that are measured for laser cutting production
Designed layouts for 65-page art and writing magazine, focusing on (art placement, text layout, etc)
Able to keep layout design simple and in accordance with the project director’s chosen theme
Created promotional art, icons and banners tailored for social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc
Familiar with professional layout and design software such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign
Running a zine
Produced an independent art and writing collection for sale / for charity
Managed (10, 20, 30) independent artists and writers out of over 500 applicants to create a short-run independent magazine
Worked in online sales and social media promotion selling an independent comics anthology
If it’s really spectacular you can brag about specific numbers
Our book raised over $4,000 for charity in under six months of production
We sold over 750 copies in two weeks of online sales
Produced a digital PDF and printed version of anthology, mailing to recipients all over the world
Communicated with printers and manufacturers of plastic accessories and paper goods, assembling professional packages of our merchandise for mailing.
Built a custom digital storefront and navigated professional market and payment systems including Paypal and Tictail / Bigcartel / Wix etc
Created promotional events to boost sales, including raffles and giveaways over social media
Organized participants through mass emails and use of social media posts on tumblr and twitter
Familiar with organizational software such as Microsoft Excel, Google spreadsheets and Trello
PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.
Like. Super okay.
I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.
And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.
There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.
Also:
“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”
“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”
“In 1655,Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]
The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]
In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]
In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]
“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”
“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”
“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”
“But it’s a stempunk nov—”
“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”
Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.
If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.
Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.
If your fantasy setting is having trouble with things like “What other cultures exist in this universe and how do they get on?” or “How do diabled people live?” or “How’s gender work here?” without sounding like Your Conservative Aunt Edna That You Really Wish You Didn’t Have To Be Nice To At Thanksgiving, it’s a good sign that you need to go back, not to the drawing board, but to yourself and your real world, and think real hard about how you’re handling those things in real life.
It’ll do you and your writing a literal world of good.
Sandra Soapbox Cosplay 