A Question.

[kungfuwaynewho]

What are people's thoughts on Real Person Fiction?  Have you read any of it?  Does the very idea of RPF squick you out?  Do you think less of a writer who tries her hand at RPF?  Is there some RPF pairing you would want to read or even write but don't?  Do you have an unabashed love of RPF (and don't care who frakking knows)?

I'm not saying yet why I'm asking!  But I am curious.

Comments

[kungfuwaynewho.livejournal.com]

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.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Now I feel like you're trying to change my mind. I already said, at least once, that I've written fic. I know how it works. I know the drill. You couldn't pay me to write it now, but that's me. Your MFA experience didn't affect you the way mine did--fabulous! You don't find solving the puzzle exhilarating--fine! That doesn't make my experience any less valid, though, or change my perspective in any way. For me, writing fic was the stepping stone to writing my own things, and I know deep in my gut that I would regress, even if only temporarily, if I went back there. It's not like that for you, which is great, but that's my experience. I "can't go home again," and I'm okay with that.

And I am not saying, nor have I actually said at all during this conversation, that one type of writing is better than another. (One of the things I adored about my grad program is that you could write whatever you wanted, including supernatural gay porn, which a friend did for his thesis. I think it's tragic when programs take, say, SF writers and make them pretend to be literary to get a diploma and give them a complex about SF for the rest of their lives, like one Penn State grad I know).

I've said that I don't like fic, yes. I've also said that I just don't enjoy it and it's my personal preference. I have not said that it's inferior or that people shouldn't write it. I'm not sure exactly how we ended up here, because I said this way upthread and all was well, but just to be clear I will say one last time that I do not care what anyone else writes as long as nobody gets hurt and they leave it up to me to decide to read it or not. Write RPF. Write slash. Write literary fiction. Write video games. I don't care--do what you want (and frankly, why should someone else's opinion stop anyone in the first place?). But I do think that it's a shame not to at least take a field trip from the world of fic to try something else and see if it suits you. If not, no harm no foul. But if it does, what an awesome new world has just opened up to you.

And now that my forehead is even more sufficiently bloodied than it was when I got home from work tonight, I am going to bed.

[kungfuwaynewho.livejournal.com]

Now I feel like you're trying to change my mind.

I already said I wasn't. I thought I was having an interesting conversation about writing and the different forms it can take, and what draws different authors to different aspects of storytelling.

Evidently, we were not having the same conversation, and you are not happy with the way the thread has gone. I think you could have expressed that in a more courteous way, without resorting to sarcasm and what is, frankly, a pretty damned rude tone.

And I am not saying, nor have I actually said at all during this conversation, that one type of writing is better than another.

My apologies, then, for misunderstanding you. You said a couple times that you thought it was a shame that people didn't try original fic. You said: I got back into writing after a long absence thanks to fic, so I get how it gets people's feet wet..., which I took to mean that you saw fic as something beginning writers did, or writers who had become rusty, and they worked in fic until they graduated to "real" writing. You have since corrected me. This is not how you feel. I did not come to my earlier interpretation of your comments maliciously, or to try and provoke an argument, as you've implied in your most recent comment.

I still can't figure out what I said that made you yell at me like this, or speak to me in such a condescending manner.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I already said I wasn't.

I'm aware of that, but what I was also aware of was that your tone had changed into something that no longer felt that way. I said "I feel" because that's how I felt--it's not a statement of fact, or an accusation, just how I felt at that moment in the conversation.

I thought I was having an interesting conversation about writing and the different forms it can take, and what draws different authors to different aspects of storytelling.

So did I, and then I got three comments in quick succession that all seemed to be beating me over the head for something I didn't say, which I find more than a little frustrating. I took as much care as I possibly could to be clear about what I was trying to say the whole way through this discussion because I've been in conversations like this before and I know how they tend to go if you're the odd bird who doesn't like fic. The fact that I had done that and clearly still wasn't being heard was exasperating.

I don't think I yelled at you, but I felt very much like you were yelling at me, especially since it sure looked like your earlier comment about not trying to change my mind had gone by the wayside. Lecturing me in detail about how fic works was more than a little condescending, honestly (and is a big part of what gave me the impression that you were trying to change my mind), particularly since I'd already said I've written fic. I did my best to remain calm in my reply. I used italics for emphasis because it seemed quite clear to me that what I was trying to say was not getting through. If you read that as yelling, I'm sorry, but considering that important parts of what I'd said seemed to have been missed, I didn't see an alternative.

I also didn't imply that you'd tried to provoke an argument--I said that we were arguing, and for no good reason because I didn't disagree with you. That's all. I'm sorry if it came across otherwise, but that's all I was saying.

I've never believed there's any malice here. I still don't, and I don't think I've said otherwise. I do believe there's definitely been a very unfortunate misunderstanding, and I hope we've cleared that up now.