The Tearoom Debates II: Fanfiction v. Publishing

Your Input

Have you taken an idea (or ideas from disparate sources, which is a favourite exercise of mine) and created something genuinely new from them? That is clearly distinct? If so I've always felt that's okay. Such a piece can run the continuum anywhere from good fanfic (which by its very nature will plagiarise to an extent, but should also bring something new to the table) all the way up to 'new' work that gives a nod to an iconic idea or theme (how many different writers can you name who've riffed on the the idea of dragon riders? For example). Each artist I think needs to look at their work and make a judgement call. It's then a matter of whether their public agrees with them or not, with a consensus in their favour being a sign of true talent. - GladeFaun

Perhaps popular opinion toward copyright might serve as the best barometer for how successfully the life of the artist is being integrated into the culture at large. Right now we have massive structures (Amazon, Netflix, Spotify) that are draining the well dry in an effort to become super monopolies. The great art that is heralded by the respective communities don't come up through these channels, and remain obscure in the popular culture. I wonder if we'll live to see that turn around: the artist respected. - sandzen 

Seeing as Cameron got away with Avatar even though people kept pointing out resemblances to Dancing With Wolves, I think that's where I'm going to draw the line [...] if the merit of your work is dependent on your sources more than it is on your own creativity, you may have a problem. As a nice example, there's the phenomenon of remixes (or, in visual art: collage). Even though the samples are someone else's work, it's how they're used that makes them (at least, that's the idea) supportive to but not a substantial part of the final product. My advice on the matter is teaching yourself how to deconstruct an idea to its bare bones, and then build it up again as something fresh. You CAN use a child gifted with powers by whom turns out to be their nemesis, but you can't make that one an orphan attending wizard school and name him Harry for example. - BATTLEFAIRIES 

Pure inception is a strange and tricky realm to delve in, and I am in no way qualified to determine what constitutes inception- or the difference between inception and what constitutes inspiration or borrowing. At any rate, I feel plagiarism is a willful cognizant act of claiming someone else's (be it an entity or individual) body of work/art as their own; I especially believe this when the original was not given its due credit, recognition, or respect in terms of allowed use (another tricky situation). I've written music, was completely thrilled about it, and then realized I used an exact progression of something I already knew of. I did, at first, sulk a bit. This is why I think it is important to know myself and to truly be aware of the experiences I have. Of course, my experience is different than others, but those visceral environmental situation I attach to my experiences as they happen are sometime a difficult thing to separate when writing. If I draw from experience then I am subconsciously drawing from those environmental elements which I have attached to them - including songs, poetry, - and current affairs. - No-It-Is-Not

I think plagiarism is really not all that difficult to define. It comes down to what you do with the material. Did you take this material, unaltered or superficially altered, and claim it was your own? If the answer is yes, you've plagiarized. Intent, monetary gain, etc are irrelevant. It's a fairly simple act. Inspiration is equally obvious. You can usually tell when an artist or writer is drawing on someone else's technique or style to influence a piece. That's not plagiarism because they're not merely copying the original work. They may be copying a specific idea from it, but as long as that idea is not the only or a major component of the finished piece, then it was not plagiarism. - LiliWrites

Plagiarism being a legal crime, what matters is if you get caught #wentthere - neurotype-on-discord

Every writer has influences, if they didn't get inspiring material and imaginative fodder from someone else, they probably would have never written anything in the first place. Stephen King cites H.P. Lovecraft as one of his biggest influences, and Lovecraft cites Poe as his main influence. I think the best way to avoid plagiarism is to get out in front of it and proudly state what inspired and influenced you. - Rhoder

The assignments for my last poetry course in college were literally nothing but imitating other poems. Making money off of that is one thing, but using it as a learning experience is a fantastic way to discover how and why something does or doesn't work. You learn to build your own computer by taking other computers apart. Or clocks, or furniture, or cars, or whatever your interest is. Writing is no different. - SilverInkblot 

This Week's Discussion

This week, we're going more flame-bait with our question. In your opinion: Does fanfiction have any place in publishing - and if not, in a perfect intellectual-property-lawless society, should it have a place in publishing?

Let's see what our harebrained CRLit admins had to say on the topic!

If we are discussing self-publishing for personal reasons, it might be interesting to bring up authors like Anne Rice who are AGAINST fan fiction and regularly have stuff taken down from sites like FF.net. - PinkyMcCoversong offering you a point to yell about.

In my opinion, and I say so as someone who loves reading well-written fanfiction, it doesn't and shouldn't unless it's on the original author's terms. For example: Stephen King makes a collection of short fanfiction stories related to his Dark Tower series. Profit is split in a way that credits more the author than it does the fanfiction writer because truthfully, my lovely fanfiction writer, they did most of the job for you.

I don't think fanfiction should be published independently from the original author unless it was making zero profit. But I'm not sure it's possible to control that no one is giving that guy distributing his fanfiction at a remote comic con money under the table, so the safer route, to respect the original author of the work, would be to deny it period.

And let's talk about EL James' 50 Shades trilogy since it will come up: okay, it was originally written as Twilight fanfiction. But she took the characters, stripped them of their "magical powers" and put them in a completely different context to fit what she wanted the story to be like. Then, to make it publishable, she changed all the names and stuff; and honestly, having not read Twilight, I couldn't notice the fact that the characters are similar; so despite the hideous writing, she really only took a few character traits and aspects from the Twilight ones... I don't think that after the names conversion it could be called a fanfiction at all, it's just a book with terrible characters; honestly, even with the same names, it doesn't make any sense as a Twilight fanfiction because the family wouldn't exist if they weren't vampires, the whole "we can't have sexy times because I wouldn't be able to control myself and you're just human" thing would have to be taken into consideration in the middle of all the fun, and if Edward and his family aren't vampires then there's no Twilight to begin with; in addition it's set somewhere else so the world is different too... I could go on. - TheMaidenInBlack 

This is hard.  I happen to like well-written fan-fiction and could easily see myself buying a collection of it from my favorite fandoms. (I'm looking at you, ATLA.) BUT, it really should be considered more of a guilty pleasure than anything. The thing about fan-fiction is that most of the hard work is already done. The world is built. The characters are completed. All a fanfic writer needs to do is decide what situation to thrust them into. So, if fan-fiction were to have a place in publishing, it would have to be under the original author's supervision. And the original author would need to get the majority of the profits, to make things fair. - LiliWrites

You should pick gifs from The Walking Dead #yoloswag - Daghrgenzeen 

Over To You

Fanfic. We love it. We hate it. We fear it. We generally don't see it in bookstores unless it's 50 Shades. Should we? Discuss. And, as always, there is a one-month premium membership for whoever gives the best Chewbacca defense!