THANKS TO SEVERAL people who sent me emails on my appearance on CIUT's "Take5" program this morning (er, even the guy who misspelled every third word and seems to think I'm a fascist-socialist-communist* [*U.S. health care debate version -- where these words are interchangeable]).
To expand on my point to the "fair" copyright crowd -- be careful who your allies are. Inasmuch as artists and copyright holders with concerns about business models and monetization aren't you're enemy -- or the record companies...
...know that besides all the self-proclaimed pirates who want it cuz they can get it for free, you've also got all those wonderful Fanfic fabulists to deal with.
Oh, we've had our run-ins with the Fanfic types here before. But they're not as fun and ultimately hilarious as (Tv scribe and (legit) tie-in-novelist) Lee Goldberg's expert tracking of the delusions of a crowd for whom "fair copyright" means...uh...well....go read it for yourselves.
TODAY'S GUEST POST is from up and coming, recently minted CFC alumnus and screenwriter Elize Morgan, and comprises her insights gleaned from the NextMedia conference in Banff. You can follow Elize's blog here.
***
See, there's this thing out there about how fanfiction (or “fic” to those in the know) is an absolute perversion of the artist's original, pure creation.
There's even been some smack talk on the internet about how fic writers just write what people want to see, not what's good to story, but I'm here to say that's all crap. Hooey if one might.
That maybe, even, that fic writers have a place in our industry.
And before the gasps of outrage over what might be seen as the crazed lack of control that will spiral into a crazy world where anarchy is prevalent and the Conservatives decrease funding to the CBC (...wait), allow me to throw out a few of the ideas some of those very smart folk at NextMedia were mentioning: that there's a collective audience out there for shows that sometimes get lost, and that audience wants to play along.
Especially if your show is 20 plus seasons long. Because in that case, you might as well ask your fans to get involved. This is a collaborative medium anyway, not a sandbox of one. Sandboxes of one get really boring, and, legal issues aside (this is fair use in the US staring at you in the face) it's free marketing.
Now we're not talking following what fan forums are asking for in the story lines to a tee, from Martin Wood's interview here:
You learn that the majority of your audience is not responding on those things. So a relatively small number of people are being very loud about what they want. If you respond to it the way you think you should, it's not necessarily the best thing for the show.
No, this is part of the art of marketing. By asking the fans to come on board you extend that extra little bit to your 0.02 per cent audience that want a little bit more anyway. They just want to be involved that extra titch, and that can lend itself to creating a hugely collaborative online space that extends the TV show itself.
After all, if we're collaborating on seasons after creators leave, why not. If they're going to do it anyway – because they can, and let's face it, they will – then let's make it work for that free marketing space it can work out to be.
And that marketing space – the contests and contexts that can be created with a participatory audience are almost expected at this point. Kid shows and animation demand the interactive before the show pitch even begins, and that audience is ageing up quick and unlikely to demand less from their prime time viewing.
Fan fiction doesn't need to be the elephant in the room – fans are willing to take it down a notch to make it “safe”, and the point is, at the end of the day, is that it's already being done.
Gary Carter – CCO of FMX and COO of FremantleMedia - controller of so many properties it's depressing to think of – mentioned a fic contest they did, to drum up some support for their soap. And it's here that they realized that the audiences are not only willing to play along, but they want to do it.
Fans are not your grandma's basement dwellers anymore. They do grand gestures to save TV shows, send sunflower seeds to get noticed, and generally raise a ruckus. Why not include them in the interactive pitch?
And, at the heart of this, it isn't just about TV anymore – Mike Kasprow from Trapeze said it best at NextMedia:
It's not about the control of the story elements, [but] about being part of the dialogue.
And that, is the end game of all things like TV. Although most of the stats from NextMedia showed that actually kids are still watching TV the conventional way, thank you very much (North American stats from Youthography - and that TV isn't dead. But – and it's a big but – those kids spend more time on a lot of the websites than they do on the shows themselves.
And if your audience feel that they're part of the dialogue – like the fan fiction contest FremantleMedia ran for their soap Neighbours, to other long form contests, it means that not only does fan fiction really not suck, it's a part of the culture online anyway.
YOU KNOW HOW it sucks like, when a TV series ends, and you've got to wait all those months til it comes back again and you can go back into that world? Did all those Golden Globes for Mad Men just leave you pining for more?
Sorted.
If you go on Twitter, you may have missed your window to follow Don Draper (poor lamb seems he might be too busy to continue.) But no matter, his lovely wife Betty seems to be picking up the slack. And young Sally, their daughter, might become quite a tweeter herself, if Betty doesn't kill her when she finds out about the smoking. Bobby's getting into it, too.
There are clients of Sterling Cooper on the Twitter, too. Let's see, there's comedian and Utz snacks pitchman Jimmy Barret!
Some are more active than others, you know? Like Duck Philips hasn't said much for awhile. Not going to speculate on why...cough...rubber arm...cough.... And I'm also afraid the pressure might have taken a toll on dear Peggy Olson. Her personality seems to have split into two. Just like The Three Faces of Eve! I hope she has the strength to talk to that nice Father Gill about it.
And of course, like in any firm if you really want to know what's going on, talk to the girls on the switchboard, or better yet, hang out at the photocopier!
Now can someone explain something to me? Who the hell is this Dick Whitman guy?
(I know that I'm terribly late coming to this by digerati terms, but hey, I'm not the only guy who just got on Twitter in the last month.)
Here's the strange thing. Even though I'm pretty out on a limb as not digging fanfiction...this...this I think is ... cool. And groundbreaking and fun, and I don't have a problem with it at all. I'm not even sure I can express why, exactly. And that's why this age is just so ... endlessly surprising.
So check out the Mad Tweets, if you have a chance. And while you're at it, take a look at Betty Draper's blog.
Gosh, something tells me she just isn't very happy there in Upstate NY in 1962.
SO AWHILE back we had the Great Fanfic Contretemps. Poke the tag at the end of the post for the full sordid deal.
And then, lo, the waters receded. A dove appeared with an olive branch in its mouth. Or something. Whatever. I never liked that passage of the Bible. One day I'm going to fix it and then post it on alt.religion.kingjamesbiblesucks or something.
Anyway. Prodigious Radio Enthusiast and Onetime student o' mine Dan Misener got in touch with me about a nifty CBC Radio Show he's working on called SPARK.
From CBC.ca:
Spark is your guide to the Next Big Thing. On-air and online, join Nora Young for a surprising and irreverent look at tech, trends, and fresh ideas.
Sounds like a show I used to work on back in the day at Citytv called mediatelevision. You know, when WIRED was cool. Man, I'm old.
Anyway, apparently Dan wants me to be stoned to death in the virtual public square, because he got in touch with me asking me to comment on this article:
JK ROWLING has given the go-ahead to copycat writers posting "fan fiction" sequels to Harry Potter on the internet.
The author will not take legal action against American George Lippert, 37, who wrote a sequel to the wizard's adventures on his website.
Rowling's decision is expected to cause a surge in the number of unauthorised tales by fans.
Her lawyers confirmed the author would be happy for spin-offs to be published online, provided it was made clear she was not involved and the publications were not sold.
She also requested that the follow-ups do not contain any racism or pornography.
So this morning I did a quick (eight minute) interview with host Nora Young. I gather from the CBC website:
But in that wonderful spirit of the internet kind of way, if you go to the Spark page right now, you can listen to the interview in its entirety. The eagle-eyed among you may even note a slight softening of my previous fairly Calvinist Fanfic stance.
(Though I still think if you're good enough to write a "good" fanfic, you're good enough to sweat a bit and write a story of your own. Lot more rewarding in the long run -- and I aint talking shekels. But that's neither here nor there.)
Oh God, they're not going to see the nuance, are they? Attack hens! Two o'clock!
FANS, COME in closer. Closer. Yes. That's good. Okay, I know sometimes you and I have disagreed on stuff like, oh, fanfic. But you know I love you. Hell, I am you. I remember explaining my X-Wing Fighter to my Ga and God love her if she didn't just sit there and nod when I babbled excitedly explaining who Darth Vader was. I traced and re-traced and collected every bit of Peanuts memorabilia I could. I went to three Star Trek conventions willingly. I built the Battlestar Galactica model. In a dark period in my past, I was even obsessed by Mickey Mouse. (I lived in Orlando. What do you want from me?)
As I cruised into adulthood, before I joined the dark side and started creating entertainment, I flipped for Twin Peaks. I thought long into the night about episodes of thirtysomething and The Wonder Years. I taped every episode of the first three seasons of Murphy Brown. I'm not even counting M*A*S*H, or my current crazy-love-object, the Ron Moore era Battlestar Galactica, Yes, brothers and sisters, testify -- I know what it's like.
And oh, shall we speak of it? Shall we speak of the dark times? Of the poor shows, beloved, that never made it? That sank beneath the waves and caused me depression? Yea, verily, Almost Grown and Eyes, I'm looking your way. My So Called Life and My Life and Times, I mourn you still. Sons & Daughters, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Love Monkey -- no...no...the wounds are still too fresh.
I know how it feels.
But now I'm wearing a different hat. I write for shows. So that fan enthusiasm -- so much easier to foment and direct in this easy internet age -- might just come to bear and help save a project I loved and worked on.
Or it might help kill it.
Let me explain.
I'm going to take off my writer hat right now and put on another, earlier chapeau. This one's worn, and it doesn't fit as well. There's a couple of holes in it. But it should still serve. Ah. There it is. Sharp.
Once upon a time, dear reader -- after I was a fan, but before I was a self-interested writer...I was a network person.
Please. No hissing.
In 1997 I helped start up Canada's Sci-Fi Channel, SPACE: The Imagination Station. In those early days, our offices were kind of all crammed together -- as were our job functions. The publicist spent a whole lot of time answering the mail. And because we were practically on top of each other in a small office, we kind of all got to see it. And it was instructive.
Letters written in meticulous longhand by genteel grandmothers; crazy precise lettering of obsessives; semi-literate screeds that ended in the middle of a sentence -- we got it all.
In my years working inside the TV station I got a chance to see all the different kinds of mail that came through the door: job applications, complaints, contest entries, resumes, requests, and fan letters. Lots and lots of fan letters.
More importantly, I saw where they went. I saw who they went to, who was tasked with dealing with them, and how they reacted. It's not necessarily who or how you think.
Recently, fan campaigns are back in the news. Part of this is cyclical, of course, as the upfronts means not just a flurry of new shows, but the killing of a bunch of once-upon-a-time hopefuls.
Fan campaigns are usually futile -- too little too late, too small a fan base, a hundred other reasons...but they continue to flourish because every once in a while, they work. Or seem to work.
Jericho is the latest example. Yes, CBS reversed its decision to cancel and bring the show back for 8 new episodes. Depending on whom you talk to, fans either had a lot to do with that, or not very much to do with it at all. Me, I think it's in the middle. I think that Jericho fans organized very early and did good work writing letters, and I think that CBS, who wasn't that sure about canceling the show to begin with, found out that advertisers weren't too excited by their new shows and reversed on Jericho to buy themselves time.
But that victory, no matter whose it is, puts fire into the heart of any fan who thinks that maybe the show they love is going out before its time. But all fan campaigns are not created equal. And there are ways you can go seriously wrong and actually wind up hurting the show you love.
So I wanted to talk about Save-our-shows. I'm going to make a lot of reference to Blood Ties here, because that's the show I just finished on, a show I'd love to have the opportunity to write for again, and a show that's right in the midst of a mobilized campaign by its fan base.
So, take this as you will. But as a writer/insider, once and future fan, and former network person (though not a suit; never a suit) I present to you Emily Post's Guide to Save-Our-Show Campaigns*
*not actually affiliated with Emily Post
1) Don't Send Crap.
It seems like a good idea, and kind of hooky -- find something that's associated with the show and send it on in in droves to "show your support." Jericho fans sent nuts, and yup, every news story about the show mentioned the damn nuts. But the nuts are beside the point. It's a bauble.
The problem is that now everybody wants to send some tchochke. And man, that's a big mistake.
So, Blood Ties fans, please, don't send pints of blood or fake fangs or anything. What you say in a letter is way more important and powerful than any hunk of junk you push through the postal system.
I have less of an opinion on other "organizing cries" like raising money for a charity or an ad or something -- though really, my humanist side says that it's always better to give to charity than try to buy an ad in Variety -- but when it comes to the crap through the mail stuff, I'm firm. It's a bad idea.
Because I've seen who it goes to.
The people who have the power to greenlight or un-cancel a show are never the people that have to deal with the cases of nuts or steel rods or Mars bars or fake vomit or whatever else gets sent by the skidload. It never gets anywhere near them. Instead, the likely outcome is that you're going to make some personal assistant or mailroom person's day absolute hell. For weeks. They get paid crap, and now they have to deal with your crap. It's not fair. They can't do anything about the show. And they're the ones who suffer.
But there's also an extra-special reason not to send crap. See, those powerless people? Even though they're powerless, they have something you don't. In whatever, small way -- they have access. The personal assistant to Susanne Daniels, President of Lifetime Networks, talks to her all day, every day. The mail gets delivered in the company each and every day.
Now when I worked at a network, occasionally, very impulsively -- someone very big would ask the "little people" what they thought of something. You know, to be populist.
What do you think they're going to say if they've spent weeks dealing with your crap?
That's right. It's only natural. It's only human. They are going to HATE YOUR SHOW. And they are going to be GLAD IT WAS CANCELED. They will not defend the show, because you have MADE THEIR LIVES HELL.
I have seen this happen with my own eyes. It's even happened to me.
When SPACE went on the air, we bought Doctor Who. We polled the online fans on our website asking where we should start the series. Like, 90% said, "Play it from the beginning." So we did.
And the show's ratings were abysmal. I'm not talking bad. I'm talking, test-pattern bad. It was a colossal mistake. The kind you make when you're new and just starting out.
So because we'd taken such a bath in the ratings, the decision was made not to buy more.
And the letters came by the bushel. Now. Keep in mind that this was for our lowest-rated show by a wide, wide margin. If the people who wrote the letters had all watched the show, and gotten their friends to do the same, maybe it would have been a different story. But they didn't. But the failure, you see, the anger -- well, that was on us. Except...not. Because the person who had the power to buy more or not was insulated from the mail by secretaries and all the little people.
Now, thank God, no one sent TARDIS's or scarves or anything -- but the mail in and of itself was...offputting. Extremely offputting. It was angry, and arrogant, and full of "you stupid this's" and "you screwed up that..." and it was just really hateful, and unpleasant. I'm serious. From that day to this, I've never seen more unpleasant fan mail.
So we decided we hatedDoctor Who.
It took me years -- til the new series, as a matter of fact, to get the bad taste left by the Who fans out of my mouth.
That, ladies and gents, is a backfire.
Which brings me to
2) Learn how to Translate your FanLang.
FanLang is fan language. It can be the in-jokes from the show, jargon, whatever. Or it can be phrases like "squee" or other stuff that comes from the world of the show. A passionate fan letter is great. It's fun. But it's not going to be the most effective way to influence a decision to continue or cancel a show.
There's something you have to accept and account for right off the top: the people you're writing to approach the series in a completely different way than you do. To them, it's product. It's a commodity. It's a delivery device for eyeballs. Your eyeballs. And if the show's in danger of being canceled, the problem is that they feel that your eyeballs aren't enough. They need more.
Don't get upset or shirty about this. After all, TV is still a monumentally good deal for you. The compact is that you get to watch this piece of entertainment that costs upward of a million dollars, and all you have to do is let someone try to sell you soap every ten minutes. That's a sweet deal, even if that model is breaking down.
Because they view the show as a commodity, emotional appeals or ultimatums are not going to work. Not unless they're framed in language that a network person is going to respond to.
Remember the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard was preparing for that diplomatic misson where he had to say the greeting exactly right or there'd be big heap trouble? It's like that. As you sit down to write the letter of support, keep that in mind. Remember -- you're trying to speak to them in language they'll find useful.
But here's the trick: that doesn't mean complaining about ratings or talking about demographics or whatever other empirical measurement you stumble upon. One of the most tiresome aspects of the online debate between the crazy OldBattlestar Galactica fans and the crazy New Battlestar Galactica fans is when the fans of the old show starting using "ratings data" to prove their point that the new show was an utter failure that no one ever watched.
The interpretations and analyses were crazy-making and offputting because they quoted figures out of context, and missed the barn of common sense.
Any network or channel will have reams of empirical data on the show. They do not need you to provide empirical data. And they will not take kindly to you trying to frame empirical data. It's not your strength, so don't go there. You are trying to be the human face behind the empirical data.
3) Attach the Show To The Channel's Core Values
Believe it or not, every channel has a vision of themselves. Who is their "typical viewer?" Who are the viewers they want. The cynical thing is to say, "young," these days. But that's not always the case. Beyond the viewers, there are certain types of people, certain modes, if you will, that the channel finds attractive. Remember -- it's all about positioning themselves to their advertisers. They want to be able to say that their viewers are like this, or like that...so before you write your letter, you may want to do searches or research a little bit on how the network tries to present themselves. What did they promise to advertisers at the last upfronts? Has the network programmer/president ever given an interview in Variety or the Hollywood Reporter?
When you write your letter, you want to attach yourself to these core values. Using the Blood Ties example, rather than say, "I think Henry is hot," or whatever, a positive thing to say would be, "The thing about Blood Ties that I like is that Vicki is the strong, central lead. She's not the sidekick -- she's the one driving the action. She's not in the traditionally female role. It's nice to see that, and to see the men following her lead for a change. I think that's very empowering for female viewers."
See, Lifetime is television for women. If you did a little reading about their planning, you'd quickly find that they're trying to get away from their staple: women done bad/in peril movies.
What's also good? Mentioning that the show moved you enough to recruit other people to watch it. Tell any sort of anecdote that fixes you in the mind of the reader as more than a stat. "I love this show because it's the one thing my daughter and I watch together..." "It sounds silly, but the way I get through my workout is by telling myself that I get to watch show X after."
You are their viewer. They have a picture of you. Do you fit their picture? Show them that you do. Demonstrate that this show affects you, and makes you feel warmly toward the channel. Convince them that though the numbers may not be over the top, you are exactly the kind of viewer they want, and they should think twice about losing the show. Be funny. Be thoughtful. Show how this show enriches your life, and how it enriches their channel.
4) Don't Threaten; Show A Willingness to Work With the Network
It's the easiest threat to make in the world: "If you cancel this show, I'll never watch your channel again." It's also empty. They know it's empty. All they need is one show that you like, and they know they'll get you back. Don't even try to deny it.
Making an empty threat is worse than keeping your letter positive.
Don't point to, or blame, other shows on the channel.
Again, I'm going to go to a Blood Ties example here. A lot of Blood Ties fans are looking at the fact that ArmyWives took BT's spot, and did great ratings, as somehow a slight of the show. So you've got people saying, "I hate that show, I'll never watch it, etc etc."
Well, that's just silly. Because they're trying to get people to become habit viewers. So if they think you're someone who is only there for one show and if that show goes, so do you, well, then they're not losing very much because apparently the show didn't draw huge numbers of people like you and you say you're going to leave anyway.
Far MORE effective would be to demonstrate that Blood Ties made you decide to TRYArmy Wives. Show knowledge of the other shows on the schedule. Sample them. Tell them you've sampled them. Explain to them what you liked and what you didn't, and return to your point: what you feel Blood Ties has that those other shows lack.
And keep their perspective in mind, too: in the case of Army Wives, it's Lifetime's most successful series premiere ever, and it's held its numbers. So yeah, they're going to be over the moon about it. If you come out and say that you hate, hate, hate their big popular successful show -- well, does that sound like you're in touch with their viewership, or out of step with it?
(Substitute CBS and their slate, or F/X and their slate here.)
By showing that you're willing to sample their other fare, and are aware of what they're doing, you're proving that you're an engaged viewer. They want people like you. A lot.
No matter how popular CSI is there are people (like me) who just hate it. Do you think CBS is going to give up on getting people like me to watch their network? Hell no.
So if you write and say, "Congratulations on Army Wives. I watched it, I liked this and this, but it's not really my cup of tea. I prefer shows that have X and Y, and that's why I like Blood Ties, etc, etc," then, my friend, you're making a case.
In the case of Blood Ties, again, this fall they're looking at running 10 episodes back-to-back twice a week in October. They're also going to package it on a night with a show about Psychics. (it actually sounds fun: a "psychic challenge" - why didn't I think of that?) That means they're trying to "build a night."
Sample the shows before and after. Put that in your letter, too. Show appreciation for the show by saying you tuned in the lead in and the lead out. That's speaking their language.
5) Don't Stop With the Network
One of the most effective groups in the United States when it comes to TV is an odious little outfit called the Parents Television Council. The PTC is famous for pouncing on any show that it thinks runs counter to its conservative Christian agenda.
It organizes people to write sponsors every which way to Sunday. And it makes sponsors nervous. It doesn't matter that they're not in the majority. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
If you note the kinds of people who advertise on the show you like, and were to write three letters to their company or their Ad Agency, that could make for a huge impact.
Again, it would help if you could explain why you like the show, what about it appeals to you (in a social standing, not plot -- remember, they may not have seen the show.) The idea "strong female characters," or "enjoyable action," or "witty interplay," or "interesting allegories for world events," or whatever it might be... what you're trying to say is that it's a good thing that they're associated with that show...being associated with that show makes you feel warmer toward the company. If you can describe their commercial, and show that you actually watched it, and absorbed its message, that's better. Heck, if you suggest that you like this project so much that you went out and tried their product for the first time to show your support for the show -- hell, that's even better!
6) Get Beyond The Internet
This is the hardest thing for fan communities to grok. No matter how big your numbers are online, you are still not fully representative of the audience.
A successful TV show pulls in tens of millions of viewers. And 90% of them, even still, are not chatting online about it. They're not going to Television Without Pity, they're not haunting newsgroups or fan sites, and they are not on Aint It Cool News.
Remember the fuss over the "online wave" in politics last year? The Net Roots? Well, they got Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic nomination, but they didn't succeed in defeating him in the general.
Online fans tend to vastly overestimate their impact. When you're organizing an online campaign, especially if it's through a show's website, you're already preaching to the converted. You need to take the message out. That might mean everybody getting three people outside - who they don't know from online, to watch the show and see if they'll write a letter.
In the old days, when organizing was much harder, this stuff was taken for granted. But just as I was amazed when I saw university students in my class not willing to research beyond "googling," so am I surprised by fans who think that as long as they get the people who are chatting about the show online rallied, they're done. They're not. That's your base. You gotta expand your base. And the only way to do that is at the Water Cooler, at the Gym, in the line at Starbucks, at the bookstore, at the movies, at daycare, etc, etc, etc.
7) Remember that Everyone Is Unsure, and Exploit that...BUT... Know When You're Being Unrealistic.
This is a weird, transitional time for the TV industry. Broadcast models are breaking down. They're still figuring out how to factor in Timeshifting and PVR viewing (which I'm convinced helps genre shows more, since people are more likely to record those kinds of shows to watch and rewatch later), there's also the question of DVD sets and paid downloads...in short, that uncertainty means that there's a chance for a lot more second guessing -- provided that there is a baseline level of support.
I mean, nothing was going to save The Black Donnellys. And Studio 60 was toast too, by the end. And Veronica Mars had 3 seasons. At a certain point, they do have to go with the business analysis. And that's when you're going to hate them. They know that.
And sometimes...well...admit it. X-Files went on three seasons too long, right? I'm bummed Firefly never caught on, but not as bummed as I'd be if I'd never gotten to see it at all. The fact that there are only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers and one season of Freaks and Geeks doesn't make me love those shows any less.
If there is the slightest bit of wiggle room for that "on the bubble" show...following the steps I've outlined above will help you make more of an impact in your letter.
Finally, one more: please, please, please appear rational, and make your arguments dispassionately. You don't have to leech all emotion out -- certainly not -- but the argument you're making for saving the show cannot be primarily an emotional one.
I remember somebody getting mad at me once because I said that "Dead Like Me" was gone, gone, gone -- because people had been cast in other shows. Well, this person didn't want to hear that. At all. I was telling her something she didn't want to hear, and as far as she was concerned, I was attacking her. She wanted to grasp at straws.
At a certain point, you gotta stop grasping at straws.
Read this article and read the comments. They're hilarious. Really. Don't be like that, okay?
Good luck saving that show. Whatever it is. I mean it.
To read about how to send a letter of support for Blood Ties to Lifetime, click here.
EDIT: 11/13 - I guess it's because of the WGA strike, but this article has been getting a ton of link-love lately. And, of course, front and centre is every Jericho fan who wants to quibble and argue and thinks I'm running them down for their campaign. And I'm not. You were very lucky to have the right campaign at the right time.
But...
Besides being a writer, and working at a network, I've also been a journalist. And journalism is all about the 'new hook.' Sending crap now -- not a new hook. The Jericho case worked. End of story. The next time something gets sent, not a great hook. The best you can hope for is that you were the SECOND group to orchestrate a campaign around sending stuff...
Come up with something better. Be clever. Don't copycat.
And really, really, really -- don't send crap. Jericho is the exception that proves the rule. I promise you.
FRIEND OF the blog Radio 3 Steve passed along this link to a rather good editorial that Cory Doctorow wrote for Locus in defense of (shudder) fan fiction.
The whole thing's worth reading, and there's much in it I can't disagree with. A couple excerpts:
Two things are sure about all fanfic, though: first, that people who write and read fanfic are already avid readers of writers whose work they're paying homage to; and second, that the people who write and read fanfic derive fantastic satisfaction from their labors. This is great news for writers.
Great because fans who are so bought into your fiction that they'll make it their own are fans forever, fans who'll evangelize your work to their friends, fans who'll seek out your work however you publish it.
Great because fans who use your work therapeutically, to work out their own creative urges, are fans who have a damned good reason to stick with the field, to keep on reading even as our numbers dwindle. Even when the fandom revolves around movies or TV shows, fanfic is itself a literary pursuit, something undertaken in the world of words. The fanfic habit is a literary habit.
In Japan, comic book fanfic writers publish fanfic manga called dojinshi — some of these titles dwarf the circulation of the work they pay tribute to, and many of them are sold commercially. Japanese comic publishers know a good thing when they see it, and these fanficcers get left alone by the commercial giants they attach themselves to.
I love Cory Doctorow. I've followed his career with amusement, occasionally envy, and alwaysrespeck, since we ran in semi-similar circles in Toronto. I really enjoy his writing -- and I think he's done great work in all his various advocacy projects.
And the editorial frames the debate in such reasonable terms, it makes it hard to disagree with it. Until you cogitate on all that he leaves out. First, he deals a bit with fanfic writers' relationship to the original work:
The question of respect is, perhaps, a little thornier. The dominant mode of criticism in fanfic circles is to compare a work to the canon — "Would Spock ever say that, in ‘real' life?" What's more, fanfic writers will sometimes apply this test to works that are of the canon, as in "Spock never would have said that, and Gene Roddenberry has no business telling me otherwise."
This is a curious mix of respect and disrespect. Respect because it's hard to imagine a more respectful stance than the one that says that your work is the yardstick against which all other work is to be measured — what could be more respectful than having your work made into the gold standard? On the other hand, this business of telling writers that they've given their characters the wrong words and deeds can feel obnoxious or insulting...
Writers can't ask readers not to interpret their work. You can't enjoy a novel that you haven't interpreted — unless you model the author's characters in your head, you can't care about what they do and why they do it. And once readers model a character, it's only natural that readers will take pleasure in imagining what that character might do offstage, to noodle around with it. This isn't disrespect: it's active reading.
Okayyyy...First, he starts off by relating how when he saw Star Wars, he went home and immediately became a fanfic writer, retelling the stories in various forms. He was six.
Well, I was a little older, and I did the same thing. We all did. The difference is that eventually Doctorow chafed against that and wanted to tell his own tales. This is the creative impulse and the path of a writer. I won't say something loaded like, "he grew out of it" because I'm not really making that value judgement -- merely charting that just as we all start out female at one point, we also all start out as derivative fanficcers.
The other thing, of course, is that he spends his whole editorial defending the cause of the fanfic writer against the nasty writer, and does nothing to disavow or examine the rather unsavory parts of the practice.
The cause of art, in my opinion, is not helped by trying to "fix" unhappy endings into happy endings. But that's a judgement call. Doctorow talks about writers needing to expect their work to be interpreted -- but there is a significant difference between interpretation and the impulse to "fix" that which is not broken, and claim you've helped somehow by doing so.
And all this became an issue only when the internet could zip all this stuff around and disseminate it widely. So long as it was a DIY thing, what did it matter? Now it can be distributed widely, and is...and the whole argument made: "oh it's for me, and for a few people, it's not meant to be read widely..." is disingenuous at best, and flat-out-fiction (badly written fiction) at worst. Come on. It's meant to be read, kids. You want it read. You want the validation. Why not just admit it?
Even in my original fanfic rant -- which, predictably, was taken deadly, deadly seriously (sense of humor is not the hallmark of the fanfic writer) I powerwashed away all the copyright shmoppyright stuff. I reduce it down to the unfortunate, inescapable truth: if you have a good idea, execution is all, and if you are a good writer, even an amateur good writer, you should put that idea out there in your best, most original form you can.
Where I hold contempt is on the issue of professionalism. Now, understand what I'm saying here -- I don't mean people who get paid versus people who don't. That's not the mark I'm looking for. I'm talking about a set of conducts and understanding about how you deal with other writers' work, ideas, credit, and your own behaviors. I know writers who get paid lots to write prose and screenplay who aren't pros, and I know more than a few amateur writers who I would not hesitate to call professional.
Doctorow left out the really ugly side of fanfic: a certain lack of ethical behavior which manifests in the refusal to take responsibility. It means either being ignorant of, or unwilling to accept, the general rules and definitions of the real world as it relates to writing. It means not understanding original vs. derivative, and making vast and incorrect assertions about how people who get hired are no better than fanficcers. It means misunderstanding law. It means reacting childishly when challenged, and it means retreating to high dudgeon when someone who worked damn hard to create something expresses trepidation with you mucking with it -- which, I'm sorry kiddo, is a perfectly reasonable response.
I think J.K. Rowling is perfectly justified in getting upset if some kid Google searches and finds an erotic Harry Potter story. That's notcool. And I think that "the ugly turn" that inevitably happens in fanfic communities -- where the line gets crossed from "honoring" the work to "fixing" it; or when (especially in TV shows, but I've seen it with novels too) deluded ficcers start accusing the writers of stealing from them...
...Well...that's why we feel the way we feel, and that's why even people like Tanya Huff or John Grisham or Stephen King or other writers who won't speak out about fanfic are never going to be really cool with it, either...because we all know that those people are out there, part of the community, and no one IN the community ever says how crazy they are.
Since I took on fanfic, I got a bunch of emails calling me an asshole. Not the first ones I've ever gotten, by the way. Daddy'll take that freight. I've had friends gleefully send me links to livejournals and blogs burning me in effigy. I've gotten the stale, "you should be so lucky to have fanfic written about your stuff," the "you worked on a show based on a book so you're no better than we are" and all the other predictable arguments. But tellingly, not one fanfic writer has written to say something like, "You're a jerk, but you're right about one thing. When they start accusing writers like Doris Egan (House) of stealing from fanfic, that's crazy."
Not one.
Doctorow can wax poetic on fanfic all he wants. But there's a wolf in that henhouse, and so long as it's there, there can never be peace.
Okay, now I have to disappear down the outline rabbit hole. I'll see you when I'm on the other side.
SOMETIMES THINGS to write about fall into your lap. Out of the rubble of the great fanfic contretempsof '07 (Still no caps, but yes, they're still coming, and yes, they're still pissed) I wrote a week or so ago about ideas, and how they spookily sometimes seem to be snatched out of the ether by different people at different times -- and how it sometimes happens at the same time, too.
But what about when you're working with "provided materials?" An angry commenter on the original fanfic post apparently doesn't like my high horse. Which is funny, because I happen to have bought a piece of artwork called "The High Horse" from NY illustrator Molly Crabapple. I have to go get that framed.)
Alison, in part, wrote:
while you rant about people not writing original work, you are being paid to use someone else's characters in a world that you did not create, using the rules that they setup in regards to that world. How original can that possibly be?
It isn't. It's professional fanfic. Any writer who writes as a freelancer or on staff of a show that he or she did not create is a fan fic writer.
Though she plays a few rhetorical games in her comment [like insulting the show I worked on in an attempt to insult me...heh heh. Yeah, like that stings. -- go read it if you want the full flavor] Alison raises an interesting and provocative question: (the answer to which she wouldn't get, but we're writing for pros and would be pros here, chickens, aren't we? Yes, we are) How can you claim any originality in work that's based upon something else? And how does that work separate out from... fanfic (shudder)
To an extent I think this is a question that all writers wrestle with. It's wrapped up in the whole, "am I a hack?" question. You can be glib, and talk about there only being seven stories, or everything's stolen from Shakespeare and the Bible... but finding the original idea -- even in a world that's not your own -- is one of those things that separates out the pros from the amateurs. (For the purposes of this post, I'm including any of you spec monkeys who haven't made a sale yet. Because that's how you have to think of yourselves: pros who haven't made a sale. Yet.) It's what separates the writers from the fanfic writers.
If you happen to be in Dallas, Texas starting this weekend, you can (and I hope you will) go down to the Dallas Hub Theater, pay your 20 bucks and sit down and watch one of the most fun things I've ever written.
I've written a bit about Top Gun! The Musical before. It came out of a rant about musical theater and how crappy it was that the only properties that rated the musical treatment seemed to be Disney shows and bad movies. (I think it was the Urban Cowboy musical that popped my cork, though I'm sure someone will write in and tell me that the brand new, Legally Blonde musical is "OMG...rilly good!"]
Anyway, in the spring of 2002, I sat down with a great composer and musical director named Scott White, and started banging out songs for TG!TM. We talked about Sondheim, he played me tracks from Company, and we hashed out what we wanted to do, starting from this ridiculous premise: somewhere, a big-budget megamusical based on the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun, is in rehearsals.
Scott and I decided to go in a few directions fairly early:
We decided we didn't want to tell the whole story of the movie.
This was mainly from me. The more I looked at Top Gun, the more I realized that the plot basically (forgive me, father) ran out of jet fuel at the point Goose died. Top Gun was the first MTV movie, and as such, it was slow and choppy because nobody had gotten that newfangled style down yet. The meta-commentary on the gay subtext of the film was way more interesting that anything that was going on on the screen.
We decided that we wanted to show more of the rehearsal than the movie.
The more we talked, the more we realized that Top Gun was really a metaphor here, a placeholder. The story we wanted to tell, like Chorus Line, was the story of the performers in it, and more than that: the entire idea of the creative process, how fragile it is, and how difficult. We focused quickly around the Director of the piece, who is desperately trying to tell himself that he's doing something artistically worthy (even though the audience knows that's bogus.) From there, we sketched in a few other characters: we had our Director, Billy Palmer, sleeping with the actress playing Charlie (the bitch,) while his long-suffering stage manager, Wendy, carried a torch for him (there's your love triangle.) Then we had some stock characters: the actor playing Maverick was dumb as a post (and insisted on being called "Maverick," at all times,) the actor playing Iceman was "gayer than anything in that Will & Grace show," and Goose...well...we made Goose a chick. We always knew that the heart of the piece was killing Goose, and it seemed to flow better that she was a woman. Also, let's face it, the real Top Gun didn't have much room for women and in a seven person cast we wanted more females. When we clocked the script, we realized that between book and songs, the amount of material that was actually from the musical-within-a-musical clocked in at about 30-35% of the show.
We didn't want to steal.
If Top Gun was a metaphor, and if people recognized the tropes, then, I very quickly decided, there was no need to stamp all over it. We wouldn't be using Danger Zone, or You've Lost That Lovin Feelin. We were going for fair comment, cultural criticism and parody, and we didn't want to be accused of plagiarism. It became very clear to me that there was no need, in fact, to use any dialogue from the movie. Even the situations could be turned around a bit. So in the show-within-a-show bits, we didn't take any lines from the movie. And you know what? It was easy. Because it really was about the experience of the movie more than the movie itself. It was about us, the audience. Trippy, eh?
We snuck in every theater in joke we could think of.
Which meant stuff like, though Goose's character was now female, that change wasn't really reflected in the rewrites, and the actress was suffering through having a non-existent characterization. We made our Charlie a little-bit-past-it actress to deal with neurotic issues, and to humanize her a bit. And we decided that we wanted a larger-than-life producer to enter at about the forty minute mark.
Why?
We wanted to change things up and get subversive.
We wanted the show to be about seventy, eighty minutes so it wouldn't outstay its welcome. And after about forty minutes, we wanted to shake it up -- by then all the in jokes about theater and creativity would be familiar, and everybody would know our characters, what their deal was and where their relationships sat.
Enter The General. The General is one of my favorite ever character creations. His dialogue, when I wrote it, poured out in a torrent, and most of what's in the show is first draft. Whole speeches came unbidden from his lips. The General is an ex-military man who's turned to theatrical producing, and just as you think you know what's going on in the show, he torques it another way. Because the General sees this show not as an artistic piece, and not even as a cash cow: he sees it as an example of American Cultural Imperialism, a way to win the hearts and minds of the world, through Musical Theater.
The General...in short...is batshit insane.
But he's a ton of fun. And then, just as you get his deal -- that this guy sees this show as an instrument of war by other means, we "show him" the 11'oclock number -- "That Goose Is Cooked."
Top Gun! The Musical did extraordinarily well for a modest Fringe musical. It was completely sold out. People scalped tickets. Seriously. We remounted the show the following summer and did well, receiving two Toronto Theatre Award nominations (called Doras) for Dmitry Chepovetsky (who played Maverick) and Best Musical. The cast was stellar and top notch. We took the show to the New York Musical Festival in 2004, and there have been other productions in Halifax, and Houston. We still get inquiries about it all the time, which is how it's going up in Dallas this weekend. (If you want to read an interview of me whoring the show, click here.)
When I went down to Houston to see the U.S. premiere in 2002, it was an important moment for me. Because it was the first time I'd seen something I wrote performed by people who I had had zero contact with. They only worked off the script. Also, the deep heart of Texas is a very different place from Toronto. Would the show play, and would the jokes land?
They did. The differences were intriguing. The General, a part that I saw as a savage indictment of the parts of the American psyche that scared me, was cuddlier down south. That's to be expected, I guess. But all in all, it was ... great. And now it's flying again. Yay!
So what to make of this? In searching for stuff on the Dallas production of TG!TM, I came across info on a Chicago production which just closed in April 2007. There it is, folks. It's Top Gun, the Musical.
Am I upset? Not even slightly.
Because you can't copyright an idea. And as Alison would be quick to point out, deciding to do a musical based on Top Gun isn't original. The only way, in fact, to mine any originality is to see what you do with it.
Now, in mine and Scott's Top Gun! musical, our thematic targets were really the artistic process, and how do you know you're a hack, and how your dreams for something never quite live up to the reality. And it was also about hope, and longing to be part of something good and not knowing if you measured up. And it was about propaganda, and how culture can be used to sell wars, and all manner of nasty stuff. And it was about gay subtext becoming text. And it was about eighty minutes.
What's intriguing, of course, is that in the five years between TG!TM and this version of the Top Gun musical, the U.S. is in a very different place. We made dark jokes about Iraq that were yet to come true. The kind of jingoistic, TG swagger sits in a different place in the American cultural mindset now. The other thing that changed, of course, is YouTube came along, which allows me to show you this:
Interesting. See, they chose to go with the Danger Zone, interp dance route. Funny, but more of a sketch than our opening number, "We've Got a Plane to Catch." Looks like they made Goose a girl, too...but a girl in drag. Funny. Different way to go.
Poking around, it doesn't look like this Top Gun musical got very good reviews. Some of the commentary seemed to indicate that there was no there there -- that once you got over the initial joke, it wasn't saying anything. Which is exactly the litmus test we put up to our TG musical: it had to say something different than the movie. It had to stand on its own.
And interestingly, that's basically the legal argument as to what constitutes a derivative versus an original work -- how much is you, and how much is the thing that you're parodying or commenting upon? In our case, the heart of the piece is not TG, it's making art, and how difficult that is. And that's what made the difference, I think, in the affections of audiences and critics both.
Of course, both Top Gun musicals rely and are informed by a very funny sequence in an otherwise forgettable movie called Sleep With Me. (And interestingly enough if you believe the scuttlebutt, old Quentin isn't being too original himself here.)
We never did too much more with TG! It's a seven person cast, which is large for a small cabaret style show. It's got swears, and you kind of have to have an 80's sensibility (ie: Top Gun has to have been formative for you) to get it. So the commercial appeal is limited. But the rights are still available, should you want to do it in a theatre near you.
To the cast and crew in Dallas, I say, "Good Luck." Now, back to my high horse.
TODAY WE start the long process of once again backing slowly out of the room where all the babies are. (That's a Simpsons reference...Homer in a room with thousands of babies gathered just like The Birds...and he slowly pushes Bart and Lisa behind him and out the door without a word. Priceless.)
Reading Will Dixon's measured response to the great fanfic contretemps of '07 (no caps deliberate, let's all be clear about the status of this argument -- on both sides...ie: very small tempest, very small teacup) got me thinking about ideas and their expression, and it's sparked something that I think is interesting; something that writers deal with all the time.
Will touched on it yesterday in his post about a new CW pilot called The Reaper directed up in Vancouver by Kevin Smith. On the surface it would seem to be very similar to both The Collector and Brimstone -- and I bet others could come up with half a dozen other movies, from Constantine on down.
This is why copyright law does not protect ideas, but the specific expression of those ideas. If I do a vampire show, I am not copying anyone. But if I were to suddenly start writing a show about a female private detective who partners with a vampire and who also has a romantic triangle with said vampire and her ex-partner, a cop -- well, then I would expect some very nasty lawyer letters from my former employers, and an aggrieved book author.
Part of the interesting thing about creative works, especially ones that are ongoing, like a TV series, is that once you set the table (write a pilot, introduce characters, establish template and basic premise) the ideas that can spring from that aren't limitless. There are only so many threads you can pull. Sooner or later, you pull all of them.
It might take seven seasons. Or you might be a show like The O.C. One of the reasons why The O.C. burned out so fast was the rate that they chewed through story. Arcs that would take a season in other shows, that show threw away in four eps. They literally ran out of story.
When you set the table, and you have a room full of writers, there really are basic parameters of where you're going to go. You can be cagey about it. The example I remember well is that in the Pilot of The West Wing, you heard about Bartlet's daughter and granddaughter. Then, in the first season, they introduced Bartlet's youngest daughter, Zoe, as a character. It was a couple of seasons later when suddenly, Ellie, the middle daughter, showed up.
Now -- up til that point, Bartlet had only had two daughters. He'd only mentioned two. (You wouldn't meet the first daughter, Elizabeth, until Season 5) But if you tracked it back, they'd been very careful to never mention that he had only two. There was no reason they couldn't have a third.
It's said that Joss Whedon had the idea to give Buffy a sister in season two...but didn't wind up using the idea til a couple seasons later.
The point is, sometimes the turns and the twists can be sleight of hand, but most of the time you need to hide the ideas in plain sight. (You mention that Wilson has three ex-wives on House, you're going to meet one eventually.) In both West Wing and Buffy, they had to do some gymnastics to get their ideas in there. (West Wing, Ellie is estranged -- that's why we haven't seen or heard too much about her before; Buffy, there's hocus pocus and Dawn, Buffy's sister has a magical origin.)
When you hide these plot filaments in plain sight, it opens the possibility that other people are going to pull on them first. Because ideas and the expressions of them are funny that way. The more you build about characters and backstories and such, the more logical it becomes to go in a certain direction. As a writer, you can write toward that, or, if you're perverse, you write away from that.
Spec writers discover all the time the perils of the logical idea. You're trying to write a sample to get a job, and you're halfway through your draft or your outline and suddenly you turn on Smallville or House or Supernatural and there it is: your story. Or something close to your story. Every writer has this happen to them. And when it does, I say, you just gotta take it as encouragingly as you can: see? You do get the show. It's a badge of honor!
Now go back and start over.
I had a West Wing spec for years that got me work. I wrote it at the end of season one. By season five, they had done two or three of the plots in my script. Years and years ago, in my first attempt to become a TV writer (which I chickened out on) I wrote a Wonder Years spec script about Winnie running for student council president. They did that plot by the end of the series.
The thing is that this sort of thing happens to writers all the time, and there's an element of it that's boring and prosaic, and an element of it that's spooky and weird.
The previous examples were the prosaic ones. Here's the spooky: I was out yesterday afternoon with my friend Mark Askwith. He told a story of back in the day when the legendary comic writer was about to retire and give over his first comic series. And Mark was one of the guys they asked to pitch a story for it. There were four people in contention. Mark slipped his story to someone who was mutual friends with one of the other contenders, the guy read it, and freaked, and said, "You guys have to talk." Mark and this other guy had apparently independently written the same story. Then they found out that a third writer had written his story, and it had a few similar elements. The guy that got hired for the gig was the one who went in a completely different direction.
That's what happens, folks. How? I don't know.
Years ago when I was in University I was in a comedy show. We wrote our own sketches. I wrote a lot. A lot. Three days before we opened we went to see Second City, and saw the show. And three of our sketches -- the concepts were up there big as life.
There were a couple of people who were convinced that someone, somehow had copied us. But I never thought that. A couple of the sketches were topical; about stuff that was in the news -- so even though this was my first example of this happening, instinctively I knew that what we had here was just two people riffing off the same event and coming to a similar comic premise. One of the other sketches was a little weirder, though. I mean, it was a really out there kind of character piece based on a quirk that someone had told me about their days working in a restaurant.
And then the Second City show did a sketch with a remarkably similar thing....even some of the same jokes.
How did that happen? Beats me. To this day, I know for sure it wasn't a case of someone stealing from someone else. But there in the room, you would have to at least entertain the notion that somehow they'd gotten ahold of student written scripts and....I mean....
Naahhh.
In any case, I'm pretty glad that I never thought that Second City was copying me, because the talented guy in that show -- the young kid who I'd been seeing in Second City for a couple years, every week when I went to the post show improvs? Mike Myers. Whatever happened to that dude?
Sometimes ideas are just out there. It's the collective unconscious. I don't know. What I do know is through the years, I've seen many, many examples of people completely independently coming up with the very same idea, at around the same time.
It happens in science, too. The untold story of a lot of inventions, from the telephone to TV, is that people working completely separately on opposite sides of the world make discoveries at the same time. They come to the same conclusion. Who gets the credit is sometimes a matter of luck, sometimes a matter of chicanery. Philosophical concepts spring into being out of multiple mouths. Medical researchers at competing labs try the same thing at the same time, and wind up having to share the credit in the AMA Journal. Astronomers discover something on the same day.
So when you notice that Grey's Anatomy consistently does the same medical case two weeks after House, it aint copying, folks. It's kismet.
I gotta make something clear -- because I just got a very sweet email from a woman in the midwest who's obviously very passionate about her fanfic, and insists that there are plenty of great stories that I would enjoy if I would just...
I'm not going to quote her, because it was pretty long and it doesn't need to be quoted to make this point:
Please don't send me fanfic. About any show. Ever.
Because I get paid to write, you see. And I never, ever, ever want to have to actually defend myself against accusations that I've stolen from fanwank. And now that I'm coming off a show with fan buzz, (Blood Ties) -- it's a real fear. I have not read fanfic -- any fanfic -- since I started getting paid to write TV. I can't, you see. And it's your fellow travellers that make that so.
(And I'm going to jump in and put in an edit here -- because I want to make it clear that I understand the enthusiasm. And I understand that most people who will go and write fiction based in a world they see on TV will do so because they love it. I get that. There's not a writer alive who wouldn't totally grok and love that enthusiasm. But that enthusiasm wanes when it starts to cause you problems.)
Doris Egan, who's probably one of the best hourlong writers out there right now, actually has fanfic people coming out and accusing her of taking from them on her blog. Follow the comments here.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the not-funny side of the funny little rant of a few days ago. If for no other reason, this is why fanfic -- all of it -- is a bad thing. Fanfic writers: so long as these deluded people are in your community, you should expect utter hostility from pro writers, everywhere.
Shame on you.
Accusing a writer of plagiarism is the most serious thing you can do. It is not cute. It is not funny. It is not just for fun.
So don't send me -- or any pro writer -- fanfic. Ever. What you're doing actually hurts the shows that you profess to love. I don't care if you're the biggest fan in the world. If you write fanfic, and tolerate the people who entertain fantasies that TV writers actually have the time to steal from you -- you are supporting libel. And that is not a hobby. That's a crime.
WEINMAN'S GONE sideways off my little fanfic (shudder) rant:
I certainly don't think most fanfic -- including my own occasional attempts -- is very good, though I will say that I have seen plenty of fanfic that is no worse than the average spec script for the same show.
But here's a question: can you name any actual good fanfic? That is, fan fiction you think qualifies as good storytelling in and of itself?
I sometimes think that could apply to some of the stories at the Batgirl Bat-Trap Homepage. Though it seems to be part of a fetish site (about Batgirl being tied up and the like), and though the prose in the fanfic is kind of over-ripe sometimes, some of the stories aren't bad. And if you read enough of them it really does, in a weird way, come to feel like the author has enriched and expanded the '60s Batman universe for the better. It helps that the author has, instead of just writing straight-up Batman stories, writes stories focusing on an under-used character (Batgirl) and creates a new universe of characters to back her up, even while the main characters of the original show still have a lot to do.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to check back and see if anybody comes up with anything. And Weinman's example sounds kind of neat. But there, nestled right there -- are the warning bells: overripe prose, and the weird, slightly fetishy sheen. That's exactly the thing that makes one feel skeevy about fanfic.
But there's something else -- something that perhaps got lost in my ranty goodness, and which was picked up by a commenter on the original thread. Something that Weinman twigged me to again when he writes, "Some of the stories aren't bad."
Stories are hard.
They really are. I was on the phone today talking to a friend about the series he's on and the problems of breaking story and what a story is and isn't...(hint, it's notand then this happens, and then this happens -- not unless those things build upon each other and go somewhere.)
After the conversation a sentence popped into my head. I don't know if this is my own brainpan or if I read it somewhere, but here goes:
Comedy is surprise piled on surprise. Drama is inevitability piled upon inevitability.
Coming up with the surprises is hard. That's why most comedy is lame. Coming up with story events that seem like inevitability only in retrospect (ie: the audience doesn't figure it out too soon or see it coming) is hard. That's why most dramas fail to fully engage you.
Someone who can come up with even a "pretty good story" is someone who should be trying to write for real. I can't for the life of me figure out why such a precious resource (everybody thinks they can tell a story, so few actually can) should be wasted writing material that's just derivative of other writers' work.
We all are inspired by what came before. "Good" fanfic -- if such a beast truly exists (I'm still not convinced it does) -- is a short circuit and an evolutionary dead end. If you actually canwrite -- the hard part's past. I want to see what you can come up with on your own. Hell, all first novels are autobiographical and frequently a little derivative. But that's how you grow.
A good writer writing fanfic -- that, to me, is not justweird. It's a tragic waste. Talent is too precious a commodity to blow it off writing stories about Cameron and House fucking.
Oh, and judging by the statcounter, the fanfictotums have found me. Pray for me.
