fleetfootmike (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fleetfootmike) wrote2004-02-28 10:01 pm
fleetfootmike) wrote2004-02-28 10:01 pm
Thoughts
.."out of nowhere, and apropos of nothing..." to quote Sheryl Crow, a couple of thoughts, one shortish, one getting longer by the minute.
People are different...
I've been scanning the Internet, not to mention every crowd I'm a part of, be it a Counting Crows audience or the Saturday afternoon shoppers at Tescos, for a lookalike for a character I'm writing about: just a visual reference I can carry in my head and describe to an artist.
I know this is a stunningly obvious statement, but... people are different. The sheer diversity of hair style, colour, face shape, etc etc is, in some ways a thing of wonder. And with that comes the thought that every one of them has their own story, that every face's expression has a reason behind it, a tale of its own that interweaves with every other, touching each to a greater or lesser extent.
I've been reading a fair bit of Xena: Warrior Princess fan fiction of late (among other genres) - I'm a fan of the show, and particularly of the complexity of the interaction between the two principal characters.
I've come to realise a few things while doing this: in no particular order:
- It's amazing how widely different various people's interpretations of the same source material can be: there have been a few stories that I've got a few paragraphs into and gone 'nooooooo, this is NOT the character I watched for 6 seasons of the TV show'.
- Subtlety is a dying art.
- Quality seems to be less important in 'minority' writing markets
Phew.
And yes, after all that, you are almost certainly within your rights to say 'But Mike, it's only fan fiction. It's not professional writing.'
Let me tell you a story:
A long while ago, a guest I didn't know at a party back when we lived in Southend made the point, having had filk explained to him, that it was a waste of time, because filkers were basically channelling their creativity into derivative works, rather than creating something original. And with that he also implied that we felt we didn't have to try as hard, as a result.
It make me think, and, for a while, I wondered if he was right. But then, I look along my shelves at albums produced by filkers like Bill Sutton, Bill Roper, Julia Ecklar... And I'm damn sure he was wrong. 'Good enough for filk' is no worse than good enough for anything else.
Now OK, I'm running the risk of being accused of being elitist here, as well as getting embroiled in the age old 'if it's 'professional' it can't be filk' argument that some people seem to espouse. Filk and fan-fiction both are 'fan' activities, done for the love of it: that much I understand, and I no more expect every fan fiction author to be C.J.Cherryh than I expect every filker to be Loreena McKennitt. (Insert your choice of names to taste.)
But I don't believe that should stop any of us from aspiring to do the best we can, and striving to make that best, better. I do firmly believe in the old adage 'if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well'.
People are different...
I've been scanning the Internet, not to mention every crowd I'm a part of, be it a Counting Crows audience or the Saturday afternoon shoppers at Tescos, for a lookalike for a character I'm writing about: just a visual reference I can carry in my head and describe to an artist.
I know this is a stunningly obvious statement, but... people are different. The sheer diversity of hair style, colour, face shape, etc etc is, in some ways a thing of wonder. And with that comes the thought that every one of them has their own story, that every face's expression has a reason behind it, a tale of its own that interweaves with every other, touching each to a greater or lesser extent.
I've been reading a fair bit of Xena: Warrior Princess fan fiction of late (among other genres) - I'm a fan of the show, and particularly of the complexity of the interaction between the two principal characters.
I've come to realise a few things while doing this: in no particular order:
- It's amazing how widely different various people's interpretations of the same source material can be: there have been a few stories that I've got a few paragraphs into and gone 'nooooooo, this is NOT the character I watched for 6 seasons of the TV show'.
- Subtlety is a dying art.
The attraction, from my point of view, in the original X:WP episodes is the whole subtext of Xena and Gabrielle's relationship, and the fact that it is very deliberately not made explicit: the whole are they?/aren't they? thing is part of the magic. Way way too much of the fan fiction degenerates into wish-fulfillment on the part of the writer, and (contrary to what some folks might think) it often turns me off the story - not because I don't approve (I'm in the 'of course they are, stupid!' camp), but precisely because it removes that magic, the suspense, the subtlety, in a way that that particular story/writer can never put back.
I guess my problem is the fact that in the TV series, the relationship wasn't the story. Far too many pieces of fan fiction make the relationship the story. Now, OK, that's fine as long as the relationship is changing: the classic X:WP 'first time' story has been written any number of times (to varying standards, but that's my next point), but once you've done that, you can't do it again. If you want to write more X:WP (or anyone else) fan fic after you've popped that particular cherry (I make no apologies for that choice of phrase!), then you need plot, not a flimsy excuse for another not-quite-the-first-time scene. At least, you do if you want me to read it: I don't read it because it's femslash/lesbian erotica/whatever you want to call it - I read it because it has strong female characters in it, and I like well-written heroines.
- Quality seems to be less important in 'minority' writing markets
I admit this is a sweeping generalisation, and I can produce, just as well as the next person, specific counterexamples. I've seen stuff published (as in, physically bound dead trees-type published) by fan fiction authors that, frankly, wouldn't have got past any decent SF/Fantasy agent. In the specific case I'm thinking of (a novel length piece of X:WP "Über" fiction - characters with parallels to Xena and Gabrielle, set somewhere other than the X:WP universe) the writing was reasonable, but some of the characterization left me scratching my head, and the plotting left a lot to be desired. And it's a piece that has both a) been published (by a publisher specialising in lesbian fiction, IIRC) and b) is raved about as being outstanding.
Sometimes, though, all it needs is a bit of editing: there's a superb piece of Babylon 5 fiction which sets out to clean up the loose end that always pissed me off - the Talia Winters/Susan Ivanova relationship, cut off rather brutally when Andrea Thompson (Talia) left the show during Season 2 - and does so in a way that I found respectful to both the official story and the way the two characters were portrayed. Except that it was crying out for some pure and simple copy editing to fix basic punctuation mistakes (one of those authors who believes the only punctuation mark less than a period is a comma).
Phew.
And yes, after all that, you are almost certainly within your rights to say 'But Mike, it's only fan fiction. It's not professional writing.'
Let me tell you a story:
A long while ago, a guest I didn't know at a party back when we lived in Southend made the point, having had filk explained to him, that it was a waste of time, because filkers were basically channelling their creativity into derivative works, rather than creating something original. And with that he also implied that we felt we didn't have to try as hard, as a result.
It make me think, and, for a while, I wondered if he was right. But then, I look along my shelves at albums produced by filkers like Bill Sutton, Bill Roper, Julia Ecklar... And I'm damn sure he was wrong. 'Good enough for filk' is no worse than good enough for anything else.
Now OK, I'm running the risk of being accused of being elitist here, as well as getting embroiled in the age old 'if it's 'professional' it can't be filk' argument that some people seem to espouse. Filk and fan-fiction both are 'fan' activities, done for the love of it: that much I understand, and I no more expect every fan fiction author to be C.J.Cherryh than I expect every filker to be Loreena McKennitt. (Insert your choice of names to taste.)
But I don't believe that should stop any of us from aspiring to do the best we can, and striving to make that best, better. I do firmly believe in the old adage 'if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well'.