So today (Saturday) the internet is being a bit wonky. So I'm going
to use this time to get this week's entry typed in a head of time.
I'm clever like that.
A friend and I once got into a spirited discussion about fanfiction,
which ended with an armistice rather than a real peace. We had
started discussing Sherlock Holmes, and the story, 'The Seven Percent
Solution' came up. This is a story not written by Doyle, but
considered so good that it gets treated as cannon, meaning all the
little details in it are considered just as true as those from the
books that were written by him. That's when hostilities began.
There are a lot of created universes. Harry Potter, Holmes, Michael
Moorcock's, Discworld, and yes, Twilight. They get a lot of fans
reading them, and most people who read have enough imagination to
take the stories and wonder what else could happen in this strange,
exciting place. If the story really reaches out and grabs us, (and
that's and individual response, so I'm not going to get into whether
or not a universe has to be widely considered 'good' for this to
apply) then it's fun to just daydream about what our life would be
like if we lived there, too. This real world can sometimes suck, and
a fantasy world only sucks in ways we can handle.
Is it wrong to imagine? Hell no. Everyone should do it. Imagine
enough, and you might start to come up with a story of your own,
something where the hero (gender neutral usage) finally takes care of
that one twit in the story that you really hated. Since this is your
version of the world, there's a place for you, too. You can be the
hero's next door neighbor, his confidante, his backup, and you can be
a hero too, when the main one is off doing something else. So far,
so good.
Should you write all this down? Why not? It can be fun, and if you
write other stuff, it can kick-start that part of your head if it
ever gets sluggish. I've done this, and takes me in directions I
might otherwise not go.
Then you decide to go out and make some money with this story.
That's when I ask that you pause for a minute.
As I've said before, writing is work. You start with an idea, an
image, a bit of dialogue, or something else that gets the brain
juices flowing. Then you take that seed and plant it in the
(hopefully) fertile soil of your perception of the world, either the
real one, or the one you're thinking about. It takes root in your
own concepts of how people talk, whether or not we landed on the
moon, whether that shy guy at the back of the classroom is going to
grow up to be the inventor of a faster than light drive or someone
who collects other people's spleens, and whether or not something
creeps out from under your bed while you're asleep. You start that
seed growing, and you prune it when it goes in directions you don't
want. Get your plant big enough, and you've got a story.
When someone writes fanfiction, they're starting with a big chunk of
someone else's plant. Again, not a bad thing, but recognize where
that part comes from. Assume there are no copyright issues. (BIG
assumption. I know very little of that field, and I know enough to
say that it can be really, really messy) This is a moral argument,
not a legal one.
When you make a character, and you either put enough work into him or
her to make a good one, and/or you get lucky and create something
that pushes people's buttons in the way that they like them pressed,
you've made something good. Holmes is the standard by which all
other literary detectives are judged, and with all the movies and
plays that have come out, we've seen multiple interpretations of the
character. Then someone went and wrote, 'Sherlock Holmes versus
Dracula.' I saw that title standing in line at the library when I
was ten years old, and I've never been the same since.
So what do you do if you have an idea that was spawned in someone
else's flowerbed? Grow it, of course. Let it grow as big and as
beautiful as it can. Then step back and look at it, hard.
Is it good? More importantly, is it strong enough to survive on it's
own? If not, keep it and enjoy it. If it is, take a cutting from
the part that you made, transplant it, and see it it will grow. One
of my major complaints about the 'I am Legend' movie, wasn't all the
tweaking that they did with the setting, it the fact that both of the
endings were completely contrary to the ones that Matheson wrote. If
you're going to borrow that heavily from someone, do what George
Romero is supposed to have done with Night Of The Living Dead. He
got the idea, and the scares and suspense, of a lone house surrounded
by undead from I am Legend, and built his own story around it. It's
great to get seeds from other people's plants, just do your own
growing.
I've finally made a profile over at Fearnet. One of the bloggers
that I follow, Drew Daywalt, had some trouble happen to him recently,
and I tried to offer a bit of encouragement.
Still writing, although the fact that this isn't getting posted until
Monday might seem to call that into question.
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