The Weekly: Fanfiction

Every week, around Wednesday or Thursday, I will be blogging on a topic with the wonderful Tatra.  You can find her blog here and we'll be talking about a variety of subjects.  It'll be in a format that you're used to seeing with the WriYe Blogging Circle (WBC) posts, in that there will be a topic and questions to answer.  This is to help us get used to using our blogs more as well as just getting us thinking as writers.  Not that we're not doing that nearly every second or every day, but this is just a bonus.  Plus, it's something more for you, wonderful reader, to read.  :)  So, it's a win win.

This week, our subject is fanfiction.  Fanfiction is known as a work of fiction or art that is based on a work of fiction, non-fiction, or real people created by a fan of that work.  We'll be focusing on the writing aspect of fanfiction, although some people create art that is amazing and I really hope they're artists of original work that they can sell.  Like on the level of drawing a work that looks like a photograph / still from the movie or TV series but is actually done in pencil or ink.  You can find those easily through the handy dandy Google machine.  Now, you noticed I said non-fiction and real people.  Yes, people create fanfiction off of blogs like Badass Women in HIstory, CollegeHumor, Cracked, and so on.  There are also people who take a real person and put them in situations that come out of their head.  It's not really my cup of tea, but I feel that you should know about all types of fanfiction, considering that I've been writing it since 2001.

Yes, you read that right.  Fanfiction is how I got into writing.  I'm not the first writer to start off this way either.  Mercedes Lackey, the author of the Valdemar series, got her start writing for fanzines.  Cassandra Clare, the author of the Mortal Instrument series, was a Harry Potter fanfiction author before she got her big break.  Fifty Shades of Grey was a fanfiction before E.L. James cleaned it up and published it.  So, yes, it is not unheard of as people think it might be.  These are just a handful of examples off the top of my head and there probably are more.  I put these out here to show you, dear reader, that it isn't as far fetched as you've been led to believe.  Fanfiction is becoming less and less of a black mark against a published author, which is pretty nice considering I have a lot out there.

So, now that you have background into the subject, let's get onto the questions.

• Do I write fanfiction?  What do I write in?  What don't I write in?

And you're all, Liz!  You already answered this!  And yes, I have.  But I haven't said what I write in.  I write mostly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (BBC), Constantine (the 2005 movie, not the TV series coming out this fall), White Collar, and Leverage.  Those are my top five when I look at my Archive of Our Own profile, even though I haven't written anything new in the last two in a while.  Oops.  What I don't write in is less of the deal with the original work itself and more about situations.  While I dabble in the idea of kinks, I won't write an out and out rape scene.  Other than that, I follow where the muse goes when it comes to fanfiction.  If I can write it and I want to publish it, I do so.

• How do I compare original fiction to fanfiction?

I view original fiction as a harder and more satisfying than fanfiction.  While I love fanfiction and am not putting it down, I love creating my own worlds.  I love creating my own characters and putting them into situations of my own making.  Fanfiction, on the other hand, is easy to write because, when I love a fandom, I study it.  I know it nearly inside and out.  Like in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can remember that, in Captain America: the First Avenger, Red Skull took hold of the cube and went "poof" somewhere.  He didn't die, he went "poof" in a way of transportation energy.  We know it's transportation energy because, in the Avengers movie, Thor uses the cube to transport himself and Loki back home at the end.  I remember details of Person of Interest that comes from watching complete seasons two or three times.

And, when all else fails, there are these wonderful things called wikias and the Google.  :D

• What if someone wrote fanfiction about my stories?

I'm going to be considered odd for this, but I would view it as praise.  Someone likes my work enough to write an idea that I wouldn't have thought of.  Or to put two characters together that I didn't have time to write together because I was focusing on the main plot line.  Now, will I read fanfiction based on my original works?  Nope.  It's just that thin line because, once you've known as reading it, people can and will sue you about stealing ideas.  I just hope that people don't try to make money off of it, as that would suck, and then I'd have to sue a fan.

Also, I really hope that nobody writes incest about some of the characters.  Like, in Mystery of the Dark, there's a lot of family stuff that I would groan about people putting characters together before they know about the family connection.  And then get angry fans who love the pairing but now it's labeled incest because I went all "yeah, they're half siblings".  But, otherwise, I feel that people should be free to write fanfiction about whatever they want to.

Bonus!: Where do I post my fanfiction?

You can find me as crescent_gaia on the Archive of Our Own here.  Read at your own risk and realize the tags are warnings of what you might not want to read.  Also, check the rating on the left hand side before you decide you want to read something too.  I go as low a general audience and as high as explicit.  So, yep, read at your own risk, but check things too.  If you complain about something I write on there because you didn't double check things, I will only laugh at you (in a polite way, but still, laughing).

Blogging Circle: Vroom Vroom! (September)

If you couldn't tell by the title, this is going to be about speed writing.  Now, I can speed write when I want to, past NaNos being done by the 15th being my evidence, but there are times when I don't want to.  I like savouring how to write a novel and going over what I'm doing.  Sometimes I drag my feet, because procrastination is nummy, but that's a subject for another time.

So, questions!

• How fast do you first drafts go?

Eh... it depends on how motivated I am in the end.  Sometimes I want to get something done and therefore, it'll go fast.  Other times, I'll get bored with a novel or distracted, like with a project called Prelude to a Kiss that I started in February for a challenge, and they just sit.  Not that they sit finished, they sit unfinished.  I really need to fix that.  At least with that project, because I love the story behind it, but I do need to work on the getting first drafts done faster.  If only so I can move onto a second and third draft and get something published.

• Do they take you a year?  A month?  Is your speed more of a NaNoWriMo style writing or trying to nail down each word perfectly the first time?

The first time I ever won NaNoWriMo, it was with a novel called Power.  I did the 50,000 words in November and then it sat like a lump until next April/May.  The reason behind that was because I was just feeling done, even though I had to write the ending.  The only reason that it got finished was because I wanted a printed copy of it and that was one of the winner goodies.  It's still back there at the NaNoWriMo draft, which I call a draft zero, and stuff needs to be done with it.  However, it is done and I know I can do it within six to seven months.  Which I feel is fast.  Not James Patterson fast, but still fast.

• What suffers because of your speed?

The ability to use the correct tense dies a certain death.  :D  So does other proper grammar stuffs.  But that's why there are second drafts and then third and so on.

Bonus: What was your shortest novel?  Your longest?  And what was the main problem in each?

Power was only 80,000 (on the nose, wow) and Mystery of the Dark is about 100K.  The main problem in Power is the annoying grammar / tense issues.  The issue of MoD is... well, it's MoD and annoying.  :)  Annoying to write.  It's going to be awesome to read.  

So, that's about it for now.  Stay tuned for tomorrow and a post about fanfiction!  :)

Blogging Circle: Who Likes Short-Shorts? (August)

Yes, I'm a bit behind.  Apologies for that and... I dunno.  I thought I had done this but I guess I hadn't.  So we're doing it now, quick and dirty style, because there's another post about it.  That post is over here and you can feel free to read it.  It talks more about tightening prose than what I'm going into here.  This is more focused on the stories themselves rather than the effort that goes into them.  Let's get to the questions.

• Do you write them?

From time to time, I do.  When it's fanfiction, I write a lot of them.  But, as I said last year, I'm a novel writer.  50K+?  I'm in.  It's kind of hard to do below that, even though I can, because I want to dig into everything and take everyone on a big journey.  So, yes, I write them.

Sidenote: I've been writing more of them this year because we did two competitions on WriYe.  I say competitions, but it's more like friendly stuff with good amount of feedback.  We did Last WriYe Standing (it's like Survivor, but with prose!) and Contrasts.  Of the two, I'm liking Contrasts more but I think that's because the feedback is better.  Or it's less competition and more writing for fun.  Maybe, after I clean up some of them, I'll post a few here and there.  We'll see.  :)

• Do you hate them?

Hate is such a strong word.  Strong dislike, but I'll write them.

• Do you think they're lovely but there's no market for them?

There's such a big market for them.  My library has a section that's devoted to just short stories.  Also, I keep on seeing new ones and people are buying them, so there is.  For people who say there's no market, I just think they're not digging hard enough.  You can find a market for anything if you Google enough.

• For those who wish to be published, many people tell you that short story publications get your foot in the door.  And while that is true, I'm not sure how many people really focus on the short stories.  So tell me your own views on them.  Have any been published?  Are you looking to publish some?

I've been published in Milestone (that's Volume 1; I'm also in Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, and Volume 6).  I'm not sure if I'm looking to publish more but that's now.  In the future?  Yeah, I'll probably look more into it if I can't get the novels published.

Bonus: What is your favorite magazine / anthology of short stories?

I really don't have one.  I'd love some comments on magazines / books to look into.  Neil Gaiman wrote Smoke and Mirrors but it's all his own work and not an anthology.  He also wrote Fragile Things.  Both are good to read, if you're looking into a different take on short stories, and he's one of my favorite authors.

Alright, that's it for August's blogging circle.  Tune in tomorrow, when I'll post September's.  Going to try to get on a schedule for posting, joining the amazing Ana with her weekly posts.  

New thoughts, new month - Welcome to September

So, it's the start of a new month, along with the start of a new school year for some, and this seems to be the time of year that I get flooded with plot bunnies.  It's like something turns on in my brain with the fall season more than any other season of the year.  Sure, I get some with spring and summer, but nothing like with fall.  It seems like anything I look at might be a good story.

Case in point, at the library, there's a book about ghost haunting places in Chicago.  Wouldn't it be a cool idea to research a story like that and tell it from the ghost's point of view?  Or even doing some research and doing a historical fiction novel about the Salem witch trials.  Although, I think that one has been done to death but it's an idea.  There's also the fact that I keep on reminding myself I want to research more into steampunk, which is not the easiest thing to do.  Well, it is if you read the genre, which I do, but otherwise?  It's kind of like fantasy; you make it up as you go along and hope that it all meshes in the end, I guess.

In speaking about story ideas, I'm realizing all I have left to do for the year.  I have stories that I want to finish up before jumping headfirst into NaNoWriMo with two story ideas - the steampunk one called Sky Pirates and a fantasy one called the Scribe's Daughter - and I'm trying to think on how it's going to get done.  Well, no, I know how it's going to get done because you sit your butt in the chair and write.  That's the simple answer.  I think it's more that I'm feeling overwhelmed and it's best to just take one project at a time.  So, here's the projects left and the order they're going to be written in:

~Mages and Sorcerers - Unofficial 3 Day Novel Project
~Hidden Scions - Novel I started writing in August
~Prelude to a Heart - fantasy/romance novel that I started in February.  Yikes.
~Mystery of the Dark 3.0 - my dhampir novel that really needs to get going or something.  This seems to get written whenever I want to write something that's not the other projects.  Lovely.

I could have sworn that I started more this year.  Maybe it just feels like more?  Or they were short stories here and there instead of novels.  Oh well.  So, that's the plan - finish what's already started.  Also, I'm not allowed to start anything else until November.  *laughs*  Yeah, we'll see how that goes.