See, here's the thing for me (and this may apply to only me, afaik): I have an MFA in screenwriting. I want to be a screenwriter professionally. I consider myself one even if I haven't sold anything yet. It's incredibly important to me, and I work really hard at it. I wrote three feature-length screenplays last year, as well as revised a TV pilot.
I don't find that mutually exclusive with writing fanfic at all. In fact, I think I've become a better writer since I started writing fanfic last summer. To write good fic, you have to make the characters read as true to the characters everyone knows from the show. So you have to examine those characters and figure out what makes them "them." How they would react to any given situation, how they interact with other characters, how those interactions are different depending on the other character in question, their dialogue - all the little things that differentiate, say, John Sheridan from Michael Garibaldi beyond that they are portrayed by different actors. So you take all of that, and you apply it to your own fic writing, and if you succeed, people tell you that your writing is in-character, which is good. But then I can kind of reverse that process for my own original stuff. If I'm creating a character from scratch, I've got to build all that canon myself. What makes my characters unique from one another? What can I add into a scene that instantly fleshes that character out in the simplest, most expedient way? What is the one line that is going to epitomize that character? Believe it or not, these are skills I've honed writing fanfiction.
And I guess I'm with icepixie on this one, too. I kind of bristle at the idea that one particular form of writing is inherently better than any other; I felt like that well before I started writing fanfiction myself, and even before I went into writing. Literary novels are better than SF; poems are better than prose; dense plot-driven stories are better than character-driven fluff. Whatever. I tell people I write movies, and I hear all the time, "Why don't you write books? Have you tried to write a book?" As though I failed at writing books, obviously a better form, and just ended up writing movies instead.
Also, yeah, sometimes putting the puzzle of your own stuff together is overrated, hee. When I'm struggling with my third act and how to build tension to the climax, sometimes it's nice to just write some fanfiction that's for fun, and I can just lose myself in words and descriptions. Anyway, from the perspective of a fic writer.
I hear you on the fandom thing. Baby fun fandoms, or old dead fandoms; the ones in between tend to get bitter and contentious. I had to withdraw from BSG fandom before it made me hate the show itself, even though I still loved it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-02-25 02:56 am (UTC)I don't find that mutually exclusive with writing fanfic at all. In fact, I think I've become a better writer since I started writing fanfic last summer. To write good fic, you have to make the characters read as true to the characters everyone knows from the show. So you have to examine those characters and figure out what makes them "them." How they would react to any given situation, how they interact with other characters, how those interactions are different depending on the other character in question, their dialogue - all the little things that differentiate, say, John Sheridan from Michael Garibaldi beyond that they are portrayed by different actors. So you take all of that, and you apply it to your own fic writing, and if you succeed, people tell you that your writing is in-character, which is good. But then I can kind of reverse that process for my own original stuff. If I'm creating a character from scratch, I've got to build all that canon myself. What makes my characters unique from one another? What can I add into a scene that instantly fleshes that character out in the simplest, most expedient way? What is the one line that is going to epitomize that character? Believe it or not, these are skills I've honed writing fanfiction.
And I guess I'm with
Also, yeah, sometimes putting the puzzle of your own stuff together is overrated, hee. When I'm struggling with my third act and how to build tension to the climax, sometimes it's nice to just write some fanfiction that's for fun, and I can just lose myself in words and descriptions. Anyway, from the perspective of a fic writer.
I hear you on the fandom thing. Baby fun fandoms, or old dead fandoms; the ones in between tend to get bitter and contentious. I had to withdraw from BSG fandom before it made me hate the show itself, even though I still loved it.