One subject I keep returning to is the difference between fanfiction and original fiction. Recently, a friend was filing the serial numbers off a fanfic in order to publish it as an original work. The below is based on some thoughts I shared with him about the difference in purpose of the two kinds of stories.
This article is not discussing the morality of fanfic, only the dramatic purpose.
The purpose of fanfic:
Often, the purpose is to revisit something we love—or hate—and mentally explore the question: what if it was different?
Imagine we were writing fanfic set in the background of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. In the original, a girl, Utena, comes to a new school and finds herself in a mysterious situation. The Student Council, which basically runs the school, keeps challenging her to duels. If she doesn’t agree, they abuse her friend. She is not necessarily better than her challengers, but somehow, she manages.
The quality and interest of the story comes from watching this young woman, alone and overmatched, somehow pull out a win.
Now imagine a fanfic where Rambo or Rocky or Roronoa Zoro comes to the same school.
The pleasure of the fanfic comes from seeing the bishounen pretty boys of the Student Council get put in their place by someone who has no trouble doing it.
In fanfic, we often have an overpowered character, who’s already good at the thing, who comes in, and the entertainment to the reader is that they get to see this qualified character best the villains that they found haughty or annoying or whatever the situation is in the original.
Maybe it is a character from another story, like Rambo or Zoro. Maybe it is Mary Sue, the insert character for the author, who gets to do everything the author wishes they could have done in the story: beat up the baddies, sleep with the cuties, etc.
That makes a fine entertainment for fans of the original. Isn’t it fun to see Zoro cut down the obnoxious and supercilious Student Council?
But the key difference between the purpose of fanfic and the purpose of an original story can be summed up as: But it’s not entertaining for anyone who has not seen the original.
Big buff swordsman comes in and roughs up and defeats some skinny high school boys.
Um…
To make fanfic into a stand-alone book, the stakes for the main character need to be increased.
Use of the term “Fanfic” here:
At this point, I will pause to deflect incoming complaints. 110% of the time when someone brings up fanfic, someone else gives an example of a “fanfic” so good that it stands on its own and makes a great novel once the serial numbers have been filed off. For the purposes of this article, that is not fanfic. That is an original story written in someone else’s background and using their characters.
It isn’t “Let’s see Zoro defeat Touga” and it isn’t “Let’s see Hermione date Malfoy or Snape.” It is its own story with its own buildup and carry-through. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is delightful.
BUT…
A word is needed for a story that relies upon the original and provides emotional experiences only valuable to those who know the original.
The word traditionally used for this was fanfic.
In another essay, I talk about the difference between writers who listen to the muse and writers who are muse deaf, but that is not what we are discussing here.
Because this is not a matter of good vs bad writing. This is a matter of the purpose of the type of writing.
An original story can be well-written or poorly written. The same thing for fanfic.
In many cases, the very thing that would make an original story good would not fulfill the desires of a fanfic reader. They want to see Zoro take down the Student Council before they can slap Anthy again. (For those of you who have not seen Revolutionary Girl Utena. They slap Anthy a lot.)
The Purpose of Original Fiction Heroes:
An original story hero needs to be the exact opposite of a fanfic character, not someone who’s overpowered, squashing the opposition, but someone who—like Utena in the original—is not entirely certain of his or her success.
Being overpowered and over-skilled is exciting and fun the first encounter or two. We can enjoy one incident of Monkey D. Luffy ignoring punches from Bellamy, a young man who is, to use City of Heroes parlance, gray to him.*
But no one wants to see a whole series just about that.
*--in the video game City of Heroes, my husband's favorite video game, or practically the only game he ever really enjoyed, characters names appeared over their head in colors. The colors told you how strong or weak they were to you. The stronger the character, the more experience points you get for defeating them. But as you went up in rank, you eventually became so powerful compared to the basic characters that their names were printed in gray—this meant they were so weak compared to you that you got ZERO experience points for defeating them.
No challenge, no drama.
A hero who fights characters who are gray to him might be fun a few times, but it’s not fun the third time or the fourth time or when it’s clear that the opponent is not up to the challenge.
Something has to be at stake.
In fact, in a good story, the villain is often more powerful or more clever than the hero, and the hero is forced to excel despite the greater odds against him.
Because the fun of seeing Rambo or Zoro beat up the Student Council is based on what we know about seeing the Student Council. If we don’t know what overbearing pretty boys they are, how badly they treated Utena—and especially Anthy—there’s no pleasure to seeing a tough guy come in and beat them up.
In Conclusion:
A good fanfic qua fanfic is different in nature from a good original story.
They are, in fact, opposites.
What makes one good takes away from the other.
Understanding this makes us more able to identify which category a story falls into and whether the tools are being used correctly for their purpose. Or, to put it another way, we are better able to write good fanfic and good original stories if we understand how they differ.
Hmmm -- there's a borderline.
Particularly with parody. But there are good stories that stand on their own that probably are better if you know the originals. *Northanger Abbey*, fun though it was, was probably more fun for those who knew the Gothics as they were in her day. Or the way Moe Lane deploys the hard-boiled detective in *Frozen Dreams*. Or Kipling's *The Three-Decker* -- I can mentally substitute the attitude toward the tropes of my day, but I've heard from readers to whom it's unintelligible.
Or my own *Even After*. I try to slither in as much of the fairy tales as possible, particularly because I keep veering away from the Pop Top 20 and can't expect people to recognize *The Juniper Tree* or *East of the Sun, West of the Moon* -- but I don't think it would hit the same for people who don't know the Pop Top 20 fairy tales.
One might wonder what would happen if on drawing the sword of selection Arthur finds himself on an Island nation, like his own but unlike his own, haunted by spirits like his own, but unlike his own, and across the waves, mongol barbarians come, but this strange history shadowed by night parade... Not storm stands against them.
Only a briton with a sword to unite a land of strangers.
What if?
What if? That is an essence in the heart of fanfic fair and foul, of works that are complete in of themselves and those who cannot live without their parent.
This teller's favourite was ever one where people would take the setting, just the setting and write story anew, but...
Rare was that, for most wanted to know...
What if this character met that fate they never did meet?