I just read a story so good I want to write fan fiction for it!
Lucky Starflowers, by Kate Pavelle.
Review to follow. Story, well, maybe Kate will write it. You want that. cause she's a lots better writer than me and it would have to live on my hard drive forever. We'll see what she says.
So, what do you guys think? Would you be happy if someone wanted more stories from your characters so bad they couldn't wait and started telling stories for themselves? Would you be grumpy that someone played with your characters? I know there's Cut and Run fanfic, maybe others in MM.
Catching up on blogs so this is late, but hey, no one else has chimed in yet. :)
ReplyDeleteI'd be absolutely delighted if someone wrote fanfic based on my published fiction. I might not like it, mind you, because there's all kinds of fanfic and all kinds of ways of seeing or wanting to see a story or a world or a set of characters. But just the idea that someone loved my characters/world/story So Freaking Much that they just HAD to come play in one of my sandboxes? Yeah, that's awesome. :D
And since this is under a "rant" tag [cough] I'll go so far as to say that anyone who's written fanfic, (which many commercially published m/m writers, and quite a few writers in other genres have) and who objects to other people ficcing their fiction? Is a big ugly hypocrite. I have the same opinion of writers who pitch fits at the thought of another writer ficcing their fanfic, mind you, which is a huge taboo in fanfic circles; said taboo makes me eyeroll and think bad words about the people who support it.
Even writers who've never written fic, though, don't get a pass with me when it comes to publicly ranting against fanfic. Okay, I get that it bugs some people. But seriously, someone who writes fic based on your work is a HUGE fan. Coming out in public and spitting on your biggest fans is really stupid. Think what you want, but keep it to yourself, or at least be civil about it. :/ I have a short list of commercial writers who've made these sorts of rants public; I won't buy/read their stuff. [shrug] Too many great writers, too many great stories/books out there, more than I can read in my lifetime and more coming out all the time. Any writer who makes it easy for me to cross a few things off that humongous list? Well, I'm gonna do the crossing and move on. Being a douchebag (in any of several ways, but this is one of 'em) makes it easy to cross their work off my list.
Angie
Oh dear, I can see that even if someone isn't happy they might not want to say so. Thanks for the reasoned response. I come out of a fandom where the canon author's official position was no don't, but fanfic sold an awful lot of books for her, so she never enforced the no. (She knew, people would talk about the fanfic on her forums, which was a douchecanoe move, for her and for the fanficcers. The people on that forum probably put her on the best seller lists with our sales alone. )
ReplyDeleteFollowup, I talked to Kate about a plot bunny, the one that made me want to write a fanfic for Sam and Theo, and she's probably going to write it herself, which means I can jump up and down and yell myself hoarse.
Also, Angie, I'm glad to see you, and when might we hope for more Sentinels?