Fan fiction
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- Fancruft links to this article. For the Wikipedia usage see Wikipedia:Fancruft.
Fan fiction (also commonly spelled as fanfiction and frequently abbreviated to fanfic) is a broadly defined term for fiction about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Fan fiction usually describes works which are uncommissioned by the owner of the work, and usually (but not always) works which are not professionally published. Fan fiction is defined against original fiction, which exists with its own discrete universe, and against canon works within the universe. Most fan fiction writers assume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe their works are based in.
There is some debate over whether or not published novels based on an original work, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Wars, can be considered fan fiction. Some view them as a form of fan fiction because they were not written by the original creator, most especially when they are 'unofficial' or not considered part of canon by the work's fandom; however, debate rages on due to the fact that unlike most other modern works accepted as 'fan fiction', they are written for profit and published professionally. Also borderline on the issue are fan contributions to shared universes created by authors or a group of authors for anyone to add to, developing a whole fictional universe. A famous example of this is H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which has seen both professional and fan contributions over more than fifty years.
One of the broadest definitions of fan fiction is simply unauthorized written work based on a published one. In this interpretation, works such as the books of the Biblical Apocrypha are sometimes used as an early example of fan fiction, and unauthorized print sequels to popular novels such as Robinson Crusoe are also considered a form of fan fiction, albeit an often illegal one.
Fan fiction is also seen by many as a modern equivalent of the oral literature tradition of shared stories. In this view, retellings of fairy tales or mythology can be considered fan fiction, especially if they significantly alter the original version of the story; in this view, the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys could be considered a form of fan fiction based on the original Greek myths about Hercules.
Before about 1965, the term fan fiction was used in science fiction fandom to designate original amateur works of science fiction published in science fiction fanzines, as opposed to fiction which was professionally published. This usage is now obsolete. For the purpose of this article, 'fan fiction' will be used in its current modern context, to refer works deliberately based on a particular original work, usually without the original creator's expressed permission and usually not (legally) published professionally for profit.
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[edit] History
Fan fiction as it is understood now began at least as early as the 17th century, with unauthorized published sequels to such works as Don Quixote[1]; the turn of the 19th century also produced parodies and revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland by authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett and E. Nesbit. There were, additionally, several fan-authored versions of Sherlock Holmes stories at that time. In the 1920s and 1930s fans of Jane Austen wrote stories based on her characters and published them in fanzines. In 1945, C. S. Lewis brought in elements (mostly Numenor) of J. R. R. Tolkien's then largely unpublished lengardarium and incorporated it into the last novel, That Hideous Strength, of his Space Trilogy
The phenomenon of fan fiction as part of fandom and fan interaction was most popularized, however, through the Star Trek fandom and fanzines published in the 1960s. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, was published in 1967 and contained some fan fiction. Most of these fanzines were reproduced via mimeograph, and a few (such as Babel) by offset printing. Although the first commercial photocopying machine had been invented in 1959, the cost was relatively high until the mid-1970s, when reduced prices and bulk rates at local shops allowed fans to improve the quality of their publications.
The 1970s saw an expansion of fan fiction distribution and further laid the foundations of the modern subculture surrounding the genre. Grup, the first Trek fanzine oriented toward adult fan fiction, was first published in 1972. File Transfer Protocol was also created during this time, allowing for a hosting of early electronic fan fiction archives. In 1973 Paula Smith identified and named the original character trope Mary Sue in Star Trek fan fiction, giving rise to a term that became so ubiquitous in the modern fan fiction community that it has now begun to earn a foothold in the wider English lexicon. Additionally, in 1974 Grup #3 published "A Fragment Out of Time," the first known "slash" story to be published in a fanzine, although there is speculation that the Kirk/Spock story "Ring of Soshern" was distributed privately in Britain earlier than that.
In 1975 "slash" fan fiction, and fan fiction in general, were recognized academically in a Grup article by D. Marchant. The book Star Trek Lives!, edited by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, was published by Ballantine and distributed to bookstores and newsstands.
The late 1970s also saw the creation of more Trek fanzines as well as fan fiction for other fandoms, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Space 1999 and Star Wars. This time also saw the first fanzine convention in Japan and the creation of Star Trek fan clubs in Australia. In 1977, the publishers of the Star Trek fanzine Dreadnought Explorations received a Cease and Desist order from Paramount Pictures, however, the case was dropped when Paramount realized that the fanzine was not a professional publication.
Both Listproc and Usenet were invented in 1980, allowing public Internet-based gatherings of fans, and wider distribution of fan fiction; the internet as a whole would later become the most widely-used method of publication of fan fiction.
In 1981 Lucasfilms Ltd. sent out a letter to several fanzine publishers asserting Lucasfilm's copyright to all Star Wars characters and insisting that no fanzine publish pornography. The letter also alluded to possible legal action that could be taken against fanzines that did not comply. Later that year, the director and legal counsel of the Official Star Wars Fan Club sent fanzine publishers a set of official guidelines. Lucasfilms supported fan publications contingent on them upholding these guidelines.
Gopher protocol was invented in 1991, and hosted some early fan fiction archives. But it has since been replaced by the World Wide Web, which was created a year later.
1992 also saw the publication of Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. The text explores the nature of fan interaction with canon sources and the advent of fan fiction, slash fan fiction and the culture of fandom. Henry Jenkins has said, "Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by folk." His work has had a strong influence on the academic study of fan fiction, and also has lent to the view of fandom and fan fiction as analogous to the oral folk tradition.
Fan fiction has become increasingly more popular and widespread since the advent of the World Wide Web. Many archives were created hosting specific sorts of stories, or stories for specific fandoms, and in 1998 FanFiction.Net came online. At the time of its initial creation, it accepted any sort of writing, original or fan fiction, though it has since separated its original fiction section to FictionPress and banned several subgenres, included explicitly sexual stories (referred to as "NC-17" before the Motion Picture Association of America chose to enforce its ownership of the MPAA ratings system), Real person fiction and stories featuring song lyrics (the latter two in order to avoid legal problems, including copyright infringement for unauthorized use of copyright lyrics). This ability to self-publish fan fiction at a common archive, and the ability to review the stories directly on the site, became very popular quite quickly. FanFiction.net now hosts literally millions of stories in dozens of languages, and its status as the single largest, most wide-ranging, and most popular fan fiction archive online is indisputable.
LiveJournal was founded in 1999. This played a large part in the move away from mailing lists to blogs as a means for fan communication and the sharing of fan fiction; although much fan fiction today is published to FanFiction.net and similar archives, it would be impossible to tell if more or less fan fiction today is posted directly to LiveJournal and other blogging services than to fan fiction-specific archives.
For a more detailed timeline of fan fiction see Fanfic Symposium.
[edit] Formats of fan fiction
There are three usual distinctions of fan fiction based on length, which are common to most fan fiction archives. Chaptered "fic" is written in a similar manner to traditional serial stories, with each chapter released separately as it is finished. Chapters may take anything from a day to several months to be updated and often remind readers of their place in the story with each new installment. Most archives allow to authors to upload individual chapters sequentially under a single title with a main link to the first chapter, and each chapter easily linked to via a drop down menu.
These stories are a form of webserial, although that term is not common in fan fiction circles. They are often described as ‘epics’ or ‘series.’ Until they are finished, they are referred to as Works in Progress (WsiP or WIPs). On message boards and mailing lists, where the chapters are not easily consolidated, the chapter is usually marked as a number of the total chapters expected: 2/4, or 13/?. Authors will also often leave a link in each part to previous parts for readers who may not have seen the previous chapters updated.
Single-chapter stories of any length are usually referred to as one-shots. Stories with two chapters are sometimes called two-shots, although this can also refer to a one-shot and its sequel. There are various terms for different lengths and they are sometimes used interchangeably. These include "flashfic" for stories under 500 words, and short-short for stories between 500 and 1000 words. The term "ficlet" is also commonly used for stories under approximately 1000 words. A piece of fan fiction is usually considered ‘long’ if it over 1000 words, although it can still be considered a short story up to about 20,000 words in terms of professional publishing, and a novella or novelette can describe a story between 20,000 and 40,000 words.[1]
A drabble is traditionally a story exactly 100 words in length. In fan fiction writing circles, many fandoms have a drabble community which sets a weekly prompt for authors to use in a drabble. A prompt can be a motif such as ‘faith’ or ‘mothers,’ a specific situation such as ‘someone is bleeding,’ an object, a line of poetry, an instruction such as ‘only dialogue,’ or ‘from the point of view of a minor character,’ etc. Some authors also regularly ask their friends to give them a prompt, or a specific pairing for them to write a story from. The resulting stories are more and more often referred to as drabbles, and the meaning has extended in some places to include anything that is less than 500 words.
In manga-based fandoms, textual fanfiction and fan produced manga can also come under the term dôjinshi (also sometimes romanized as doujinshi). This is a Japanese term for self-published works, usually manga, novels, fan guides, art collections, or games, often sold in small runs for a minor profit. While most dôjinshi featuring fan fiction is not technically legal under Japanese copyright law, the general practice of most copyright owners is to allow it, on the grounds that it keeps fans interested in the original work and fosters the talent of amateur artists and writers who may choose to go professional, such as CLAMP.
Fan fiction is also occasionally written in script format, although Fanfiction.net has banned all these stories. There are several sub-genres of "scriptfic." Some are written in the style of screenplays. While most are not written in the format of professional scripts, most do have the basic structure and are written in the present tense. Others are "chatfics", stories which are written like an instant messaging or chatroom conversation between characters, usually as a comedic exercise; "chatfics" are somewhat similar in this sense to an epistolary novel, though usually much shorter.
[edit] Reviewing
Unlike traditional print publication, the internet offers the option of giving and receiving instantaneous feedback. As such, most fan fiction archives feature a "Review" system where readers can post comments about the story via form, to what's sometimes referred to as the "review board" (reviews page) of a story. These systems often are programmed to notify the author of new reviews, making them a common way for readers and authors online to communicate directly. Some original fiction archives, such as FanFiction.net's sister site FictionPress, also feature similar communication systems.
Since many such sites do not automatically moderate these systems, frequently the systems are abused and used to send flames, spam or trolling messages. For this reason, many such unmoderated systems allow the author the option of receiving only "signed" (non-anonymous) reviews, and many sites that sport such systems feature the suggestion to reviewers that they take the opportunity to give the author some constructive criticism.
[edit] Terminology and subgenres
[edit] Legal issues with fan fiction
[edit] References
- ^ Rana Eros, When Size Matters, www.trickster.org/symposium/symp162.html
[edit] See also
- Fan fiction terminology
- Legal issues with fan fiction
- Canon
- Fanon
- Collaborative fiction
- Shared universe
- Fandom
- Fan characters
- FanFiction.Net
- Webserial
[edit] External links
- myFandoms.com Fan Fiction, Fan Sites, Fan Art, Videos, Photos
- Fanfic Symposium: History of Fan Fiction
- The Fan Fiction Glossary
- Fan Fiction FAQ at chillingeffect
- Rights to Fan fiction Writing - essay on fan fiction
- Fan fiction: The Global Playground - Dissertation written for an MA Course in Children's Literature
- In Defense of Fanfiction - A rebuttal to fantasy writer Robin Hobb's anti-fanfiction piece
