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seriousficRecently on Metafandom I've seen a few articles which are a bit down on novels that started life as fanfic. And that's fair. If you buy a novel expecting "crazy adventures in demon-slaying!" and get "Xander and Spike's Day Off With Ctrl-F," you're gonna be pissed. But I don't think the root of that problem lies in filing off serial numbers. I think it's a failure of perception. Too many people see filing off serial numbers as some sort of precaution against a lawsuit (or worse, being like Eragon) and not as an opportunity for creativity. Changing a fanfic into an original story isn't a handicap; it means you're no longer beholden to the original canon. So let's take this one by the numbers as I tell you... well, look at the title.
1. Wahh, I'm not a real writer if everything I do is influenced by someone else.
Bullshit. Every writer you can name has been inspired by writers who came before them. Just about every trope imaginable has been played straight, subverted, inverted, and fondled in a way that feels so very right. In fact, some people say there are really only seven stories out there. This is false. There's only one story out there, and it's an episode of Gilligan's Island. But I digress.
Okay, so rewriting a fanfic as profic is maybe a bit more than just liking Dracula and wanting to write vampires. But really, many of the fandoms you're probably in started life as someone's fanfic. Check this shit.
House: Sherlock Holmes with a cane.
Watchmen: Charlton comic characters with sexual frustration.
Everything Mark Millar has ever written: The same as it was before, but everyone’s an asshole. (But seriously, Wanted is really just Secret Society of Supervillains with the serial numbers filed off. And everyone is an asshole.)
Even WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE did this. Just ask Wikipedia.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both, but developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot.
Listen to Shakespeare. He's the only guy badass enough to have a gay pirate Robert De Niro named after him.
So, now that we're no longer plagued by self-doubt, let's go about turning this fanfic into a novel.
2. Set dressing
Where's your fanfic set? Okay, probably New York. Now what if we changed that? Say we set a story in Victorian England, or the far future, or an alternate universe where Nazis won WW2 (given how many alternate universes there are where Nazis won WW2, isn't it amazing that we ever beat the bastards?). Now, you've probably heard of this: Treasure Island... in space! Friday the 13th... in space! Wild Things... in space! Okay, that last one I would watch. Neve Campbell + Denise Richards + zero-G = win.
Don't just pick a setting out of a hat. Think about it. How can a change of setting improve the theme and tone of your story? What if that darkfic was set in the seamy underbelly of Dickens' London? Moreover, how will it affect your characters? If you want to do a story where Kirk and Spock are persecuted for their love, I doubt it will happen in the utopian Star Trek future. But in a college campus in the 1960s? Oh yeah! Likewise, if you want Clark and Lex to run around steaming up the town, perhaps the town shouldn't be in Kansas, but in a space station in the year 2228. Seriously, man, space stations. They worked wonders for the Star Trek franchise.
3. Social justice vigilante
It's a fact that in many fandoms, the cast will tend to be made up of cisgendered straight white men of inoffensive religious faith. Well, as long as you're shaking things up, why not be a social justice vigilante? If you think there aren't enough awesome female characters, make some! Or do you want your book to just be an unauthorized tie-in novel? What if, say, Bones was an awesome lady doctor who Kirk loved as a friend but wasn't interested in sexually? Or Pike was in a wheelchair, but that didn't get in the way of him telling the bridge how to get the fuck out of that jam with three Romulan Warbirds? Or if Gaila had more than three lines?
I remember in one of the early proposals for a Star Trek reboot, someone said "hey, it would be politically correct to point out that women can be good at math too, why don't we make Scotty a woman?" That would be kinda weird, depending on how hot the woman was. But if you're making a story like Star Trek where the chief engineer is a woman, well, what are they going to complain about? So throw in some lesbian relationships! Make Chekov wear a dress! Make Rowsdower a big hairy girl!
4. Relationships - Not just for pretty gay boys anymore
In any fandom, there will probably be characters that don't interact much in canon, whose relationships aren't defined. Well, stop that. Think about what new and interesting relationships you could create amongst the cast. When John Byrne rebooted the Superman mythos in the 80s, he said that Lex Luthor and Lois Lane used to date. Then, when Smallville came around, the writers added the wrinkle that Clark and Lex were friends (then promptly stared smoking crack for the next decade).
Think about what adding relationships could do to strengthen your fanfic. What if Jack and John were old friends who drifted apart instead of strangers? What if John thought Mary seemed really cool, but never worked up the nerve to ask her out? If someone turns evil, gets kidnapped, falls in love, how can that have more impact? Think of your story as one of those Youtube videos of dominoes. The more dominoes fall, the more intricate the pattern, the more impressive it will be.
5. OCs - Not just for Mary-Sues anymore
In fandom, there tends to be a bigotry towards original characters. But in your profic, everyone will be an original character. That can be scary. With fanfic, you're going downhill on a roller coaster. You get to make all the loop-de-loops and whatnot. With original fic, you have to pull that roller coaster uphill and make the audience care about your characters first.
But... surely, you've had an idea for a character that would be interesting? Maybe not a main character, but, say... a librarian who's deathly afraid of Kindle, or an out and proud San Francisco politician who secretly has a wife and kids, or Castiel's not-quite-right cousin who uses his power to steal socks. Put them in. Not willy-nilly, you don't want to overstuff your cast, but think about archetypes. What character type is lacking in canon? What character type could clash with canon? Don't dismiss anything out of hand. Spike is the complete antithesis of the traditional vampire (like the Master), which makes him an explosive character to unleash on Buffy. Ummm... that was pervy.
You still have to make sure you don't turn your Star Trek fanfic into "Space Trek And The Wondrous Lieutenant Mary Sue," but don't be afraid to turn your cast upside-down and inside-out.
6. Tropes - Not just for Wikipedia anymore
You've probably also had some story ideas, plot points, or trope subversions that don't really fit into canon. Not the kind that's like "what if Kirk was a girl?", but the kind that's like "what if vampire bites really frickin' hurt instead of gave people orgasms?" And that's the kind of thing that should go into your story, presuming your story has vampires into it.
There are a lot of stories that just never go past the premise.
But there are also a lot of stories that put in a twist, that go a little extra ways, that turn it up to eleven. In Ghostbusters, they don't spend the entire movie going from ghost to ghost, there's a love story and the thing with Gozer and Walter Peck. ("It's true, your honor, this man has no dick.") In Watchmen, there's all sorts of things Alan Moore added to the Charlton characters, like Dr. Manhattan's perception of time, Rorschach's murderous backstory, Tales of the Black goddamn Freighter!
Imagine you were making a trailer of your story. Would the entire plot be in those two minutes, or would there be all this cool other stuff that you can't even explain, you have to show 'em! Is there an underclass of Frankensteins 'addicted' to replacing their rotting body parts with new ones? Is someone pregnant with a bomb-baby? Did someone's son just die?
Now, keep in mind, the trick is making sure all this stuff is organic to the story, even though it isn't. It has to fit in, or you'll just have Star Trek with some big-lipped alligator moments. And that's the kind of judgment that only you, your betas, and hopefully your editor can make. Frankenstein underclass can fit in one story, but maybe not another.
What I do is write down every idea I have. Sometimes it's an action sequence, sometimes it's just a name, sometimes it's a few lines of dialogue. But if my story has a piece missing, I've got things to fill it in with, even if most of them probably won't fit. I realize "have lots of ideas" isn't tremendously helpful advice, but you'd be surprised the things you'd come up with if you kept a memo pad and a pen in your pocket (or a computer in the next room) while you were watching Leverage.
Now, as for making a million dollars, taxfree, first you get a million dollars...
1. Wahh, I'm not a real writer if everything I do is influenced by someone else.
Bullshit. Every writer you can name has been inspired by writers who came before them. Just about every trope imaginable has been played straight, subverted, inverted, and fondled in a way that feels so very right. In fact, some people say there are really only seven stories out there. This is false. There's only one story out there, and it's an episode of Gilligan's Island. But I digress.
Okay, so rewriting a fanfic as profic is maybe a bit more than just liking Dracula and wanting to write vampires. But really, many of the fandoms you're probably in started life as someone's fanfic. Check this shit.
House: Sherlock Holmes with a cane.
Watchmen: Charlton comic characters with sexual frustration.
Everything Mark Millar has ever written: The same as it was before, but everyone’s an asshole. (But seriously, Wanted is really just Secret Society of Supervillains with the serial numbers filed off. And everyone is an asshole.)
Even WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE did this. Just ask Wikipedia.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both, but developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot.
Listen to Shakespeare. He's the only guy badass enough to have a gay pirate Robert De Niro named after him.
So, now that we're no longer plagued by self-doubt, let's go about turning this fanfic into a novel.
2. Set dressing
Where's your fanfic set? Okay, probably New York. Now what if we changed that? Say we set a story in Victorian England, or the far future, or an alternate universe where Nazis won WW2 (given how many alternate universes there are where Nazis won WW2, isn't it amazing that we ever beat the bastards?). Now, you've probably heard of this: Treasure Island... in space! Friday the 13th... in space! Wild Things... in space! Okay, that last one I would watch. Neve Campbell + Denise Richards + zero-G = win.
Don't just pick a setting out of a hat. Think about it. How can a change of setting improve the theme and tone of your story? What if that darkfic was set in the seamy underbelly of Dickens' London? Moreover, how will it affect your characters? If you want to do a story where Kirk and Spock are persecuted for their love, I doubt it will happen in the utopian Star Trek future. But in a college campus in the 1960s? Oh yeah! Likewise, if you want Clark and Lex to run around steaming up the town, perhaps the town shouldn't be in Kansas, but in a space station in the year 2228. Seriously, man, space stations. They worked wonders for the Star Trek franchise.
3. Social justice vigilante
It's a fact that in many fandoms, the cast will tend to be made up of cisgendered straight white men of inoffensive religious faith. Well, as long as you're shaking things up, why not be a social justice vigilante? If you think there aren't enough awesome female characters, make some! Or do you want your book to just be an unauthorized tie-in novel? What if, say, Bones was an awesome lady doctor who Kirk loved as a friend but wasn't interested in sexually? Or Pike was in a wheelchair, but that didn't get in the way of him telling the bridge how to get the fuck out of that jam with three Romulan Warbirds? Or if Gaila had more than three lines?
I remember in one of the early proposals for a Star Trek reboot, someone said "hey, it would be politically correct to point out that women can be good at math too, why don't we make Scotty a woman?" That would be kinda weird, depending on how hot the woman was. But if you're making a story like Star Trek where the chief engineer is a woman, well, what are they going to complain about? So throw in some lesbian relationships! Make Chekov wear a dress! Make Rowsdower a big hairy girl!
4. Relationships - Not just for pretty gay boys anymore
In any fandom, there will probably be characters that don't interact much in canon, whose relationships aren't defined. Well, stop that. Think about what new and interesting relationships you could create amongst the cast. When John Byrne rebooted the Superman mythos in the 80s, he said that Lex Luthor and Lois Lane used to date. Then, when Smallville came around, the writers added the wrinkle that Clark and Lex were friends (then promptly stared smoking crack for the next decade).
Think about what adding relationships could do to strengthen your fanfic. What if Jack and John were old friends who drifted apart instead of strangers? What if John thought Mary seemed really cool, but never worked up the nerve to ask her out? If someone turns evil, gets kidnapped, falls in love, how can that have more impact? Think of your story as one of those Youtube videos of dominoes. The more dominoes fall, the more intricate the pattern, the more impressive it will be.
5. OCs - Not just for Mary-Sues anymore
In fandom, there tends to be a bigotry towards original characters. But in your profic, everyone will be an original character. That can be scary. With fanfic, you're going downhill on a roller coaster. You get to make all the loop-de-loops and whatnot. With original fic, you have to pull that roller coaster uphill and make the audience care about your characters first.
But... surely, you've had an idea for a character that would be interesting? Maybe not a main character, but, say... a librarian who's deathly afraid of Kindle, or an out and proud San Francisco politician who secretly has a wife and kids, or Castiel's not-quite-right cousin who uses his power to steal socks. Put them in. Not willy-nilly, you don't want to overstuff your cast, but think about archetypes. What character type is lacking in canon? What character type could clash with canon? Don't dismiss anything out of hand. Spike is the complete antithesis of the traditional vampire (like the Master), which makes him an explosive character to unleash on Buffy. Ummm... that was pervy.
You still have to make sure you don't turn your Star Trek fanfic into "Space Trek And The Wondrous Lieutenant Mary Sue," but don't be afraid to turn your cast upside-down and inside-out.
6. Tropes - Not just for Wikipedia anymore
You've probably also had some story ideas, plot points, or trope subversions that don't really fit into canon. Not the kind that's like "what if Kirk was a girl?", but the kind that's like "what if vampire bites really frickin' hurt instead of gave people orgasms?" And that's the kind of thing that should go into your story, presuming your story has vampires into it.
There are a lot of stories that just never go past the premise.
But there are also a lot of stories that put in a twist, that go a little extra ways, that turn it up to eleven. In Ghostbusters, they don't spend the entire movie going from ghost to ghost, there's a love story and the thing with Gozer and Walter Peck. ("It's true, your honor, this man has no dick.") In Watchmen, there's all sorts of things Alan Moore added to the Charlton characters, like Dr. Manhattan's perception of time, Rorschach's murderous backstory, Tales of the Black goddamn Freighter!
Imagine you were making a trailer of your story. Would the entire plot be in those two minutes, or would there be all this cool other stuff that you can't even explain, you have to show 'em! Is there an underclass of Frankensteins 'addicted' to replacing their rotting body parts with new ones? Is someone pregnant with a bomb-baby? Did someone's son just die?
Now, keep in mind, the trick is making sure all this stuff is organic to the story, even though it isn't. It has to fit in, or you'll just have Star Trek with some big-lipped alligator moments. And that's the kind of judgment that only you, your betas, and hopefully your editor can make. Frankenstein underclass can fit in one story, but maybe not another.
What I do is write down every idea I have. Sometimes it's an action sequence, sometimes it's just a name, sometimes it's a few lines of dialogue. But if my story has a piece missing, I've got things to fill it in with, even if most of them probably won't fit. I realize "have lots of ideas" isn't tremendously helpful advice, but you'd be surprised the things you'd come up with if you kept a memo pad and a pen in your pocket (or a computer in the next room) while you were watching Leverage.
Now, as for making a million dollars, taxfree, first you get a million dollars...
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 09:27 pm (UTC)A buddy pair of investigators where one's by the book and one's following his own trail was old hat when the X-Files came out, but making them opposite genders was genius. The story seems totally different when the by the book partner's a woman. Now that that's been done, though, what if you change the sexual orientation of the original buddies so the homosocial relationship is made into explicitly homoerotic UST (or RST as the case may be?) What if the buddy who does her own thing is the woman? What if they were both women? What if the main character buddy was a black guy and the white guy was a sidekick? What if they were both black guys? What if they were both black women? And that's just some of the options for playing with *one* two-character trope, just by altering gender, race, sexual orientation (altering species, sadly, has been done, a lot. Although I am not sure the human has ever been a sidekick to the alien cop.)
I have heard that Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga started out as a Star Trek fanfic about a romance between a male Klingon starship captain and a female Federation starship captain. Reading any of the novels about Miles Vorkosigan, you can't tell this at *all*. But if you read the prequels about how his parents got together... yeah, I can see where she filed off the serial numbers, but at the same time if I hadn't been told I never would have guessed (I didn't guess it, the first time I read it), and there's a lot in there that wouldn't have worked in Star Trek. Among other things, in actual Star Trek we do not see uterine replicators or casual homosexuality, so there's a lot about the Betans that Bujold added in to make her universe wider and deeper *after* changing it to be an original fic. (And the Barrayarans stop resembling the Klingons as soon as we get to their homeworld and start seeing them from their own perspective.)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 09:55 pm (UTC)Then you have practically every show with two male leads made in the last five years or so.
Okay, maybe "explicitly" is a bit much, but it's hard to deny that a ton of "buddy" shows are blatantly courting the yaoibunny crowd. Unfortunately, much like in much of the slash fiction the writers must be drawing inspiration from in an attempt to make it appealing to the same demographic, there's not a lot of effort to make this attraction make sense or make it flow well with the story. It's just there, shoved in and often stealing the spotlight from the, y'know, actual story.
>>What if the buddy who does her own thing is the woman? What if they were both women?
I think the problem with this would come in where a lot of writers would feel the urge to then let the whole "girls against the world" thing dominate the story, and every episode has to have a subplot about sexism. And if it doesn't work that in near-constantly, people start complaining it's unrealistic.
>>What if they were both black guys?
You get UPN in the late nineties?
>>Among other things, in actual Star Trek we do not see uterine replicators or casual homosexuality
This has changed a bit in the expanded universe. Trek novels will occasionally feature offhand mentions of homosexuality like it's not a big deal. (One I read featured the male spouse of Lt. Hawk, the bridge officer that got Borged in First Contact.) Unfortunately one of the places you can find a lot of it is the USS Titan series, which could also have been named the USS Token or the USS White Guilt.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 01:00 am (UTC)Then you have practically every show with two male leads made in the last five years or so.
Okay, maybe "explicitly" is a bit much, but it's hard to deny that a ton of "buddy" shows are blatantly courting the yaoibunny crowd. Unfortunately, much like in much of the slash fiction the writers must be drawing inspiration from in an attempt to make it appealing to the same demographic, there's not a lot of effort to make this attraction make sense or make it flow well with the story. It's just there, shoved in and often stealing the spotlight from the, y'know, actual story.
I would LOVE to see all these shows about homoerotic UST. Slash is different. It's like saying Wilson/House = Sculder/Mully. Sculder/Mully were going to hook up in the end, House/Wilson never are.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 10:14 pm (UTC)I think it would have to be RST, as the homoerotic UST has been done. The writers on both House and Sherlock Holmes are publicly stating that their characters are So Married, so that's on its way to joining Black Cop, White Cop in the hallowed halls of clichedom (although admittedly it's usually being done comically, not dramatically). Me, I like to do things like take the bromance between the high-testosterone man of action and his wacky comic sidekick and then make it explicitly homosexual.
And, though it's not really relevant to the serial numbers, I really like how Legend of the Seeker is taking Cara's redemption and trust issues and playing them off Kahlan instead of Richard. By making the "I don't trust you"/"I don't trust you more" buddy rivalry between two women, it becomes so intriguing that it's actually a little jarring when Richard gets involved.
Although I am not sure the human has ever been a sidekick to the alien cop.)
The Star Trek reboot? Spock killed the bad guy, saved the world, and got the girl. Kirk hanged off a bunch of ledges.
(And the Barrayarans stop resembling the Klingons as soon as we get to their homeworld and start seeing them from their own perspective.)
I haven't read those books yet, but that's another thing, how by changing a story from fanfic to (let's say) homage, you can also critique and analyze the original story, merely by what you decide to change and how. If the captain on Space Trek hits on every boy in sight and his engineer is a happily married lesbian, then when you look back at Star Trek you're going to wonder at the difference.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 11:41 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, he took two steps back with lady characterization.
Also, now that you said the original premise of Vorkosigan is Trek fic with that idea? I can totally see it, even though it's no longer Trekfic in any way. And I don't think that's bad given the mini-trend of "here, let me explain Biblical stories in a way that actually uses some of the Biblical history and anthropology and such we've discovered in the last 50 years!" or the 8 billion Pride and Prejudice fanfics that are now pop culture phenomenons -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I'm looking at you! (Hell, Wicked is also fanfic.)
I think the only real difference is that big media corporations through the magic of lawyers turn stories into "intellectual property" and hold on to copyright beyond reason, and thus there's this artificial idea of weirdness in borrowing from other stories. This is manifestly untrue if you have any concept of literary history. There are other things going on (people writing this much for essentially free, the distribution method) but yeah. yeah.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 04:29 am (UTC)Mostly by Warren Ellis.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 04:38 am (UTC)PS
Date: 2010-02-26 04:51 am (UTC)Obi-WanBen uses his training to hide out in the last place anyone would ever look for him; his best friend's home planet.Wait, I think I just blended Star Wars with Burn Notice.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 07:40 pm (UTC)Star Trek TNG
Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey+Matteurin books - see Kirk+Spock. Later brought back to Sci-Fi by David Drake and his Leary+Mundy series
Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honour + Barrayar (brilliant books); in the first draft Aral Vorkosigan was an actual Klingon.
Doctor Who.
Note: None of the above are acutally bad...
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 10:26 am (UTC)Butting in from metafandom
Date: 2010-03-01 11:12 pm (UTC)Try all the Fourth Doctor stories inspired by classic horror novels, or the historicals that feed off BBC costume drama, or the obvious Nazi parallels in Genesis of the Daleks.
no subject
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 01:43 am (UTC)"It's a fact that in many fandoms, the cast will tend to be made up of cisgendered straight white men of inoffensive religious faith."
I'm glad you mentioned this--I get so excited when I read stories where the protagonist is a member of a minority. It's so rare, particularly inside certain genres. Go you aspiring writers! Shakes things up!
no subject
Date: 2010-03-02 05:09 am (UTC)It's such an easy way to jumble up archetypes and separate your fiction from the fiction that inspired it, I'm surprised there aren't more stories like "Harry Potter from a black perspective" or "Twilight with gay people" out there. Or to use an actual example, Percy Jackson & The Olympians gives its hero ADHD and dyslexia, which sets him apart from Harry Potter in a super-interesting way.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 01:49 am (UTC)adding to the list - Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series -> Pokemon + Lost Roman Legion... on a dare, even. =)
I enjoyed this post a lot. Lots of good info. =)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 12:42 pm (UTC)I actually think that most of your suggestions also work for writing better fanfic.
And I see that it's implicit in your point about Mary-Sues, but I think it's worth being mentioned explicitly: turning your fic into original fiction gives you the chance to really work with an ensemble.
This might vary in different fandoms, but in the stories I've read, most fic focuses on the pairing (even in gen, there are usually one or two heavily pushed main characters), and there's hardly ever a scene with neither in them. Original fiction gives you the chance to write more intricate subplots or even have two or three equally important story lines with different sets of characters. I'm not saying that's always a good idea, but I do think it's good to have the option.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-02 05:14 am (UTC)Something to think about, especially in fandoms with a Freak of the Week structure.