ForeWord This Week

September 12, 2013 For those who are tuned in, worlds you once thought were dead still live. In the realms of fanfiction, Kirk and Spock continue to explore strange new worlds, Agent Mulder wants to believe, Prisoner Number 6 desperately searches for a way out of The Village, and Invader Zim hatches a new daily plot to conquer the Earth. These worlds within worlds, written by fans who refuse to let their favorite fictional universe implode just because some TV executive killed it, are peeking out from behind their pseudonyms, emerging from their mothers’ basements, and showing the world that some of their stuff is just as good, or even better, than the original. Tweet Advertisements



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Anne Jamison Here’s where we meet Anne Jamison, an associate professor of English at the University of Utah, whose book, Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World, will be released in December by BenBella Books. Jamison is a teacher, author, and an admitted card-carrying fanfiction writer. She and a group of co-authors put the book together to show how fanfiction can no longer be considered literature’s crazy uncle nobody wants to talk about. ForeWord This Week talked to Jamison about fanfiction—where it’s been and where it’s going. Let’s first define our terms. Briefly tell us what fanfiction is and give us a few examples. Fanfiction is stories written about characters and worlds other people have already written about. It’s usually written by fans for other fans, shared in a community on a nonprofit basis. These days, people are writing fic about everything—the public personae of celebrities, sports stars, sometimes even politicians. There's even fic for apps. Sometimes the impulse is critical—a fan doesn't like a plot turn or a characterization and wants to "fix" it—but often the writer simply wants more of a good thing and sets out to create it. Every story opens up all kinds of possibilities it can't fully pursue, and fic pursues them. For example, if I want to write a story about what Mr. Darcy did after he delivered a famously unsuccessful proposal, I can pick up right where Jane Austen left him. Or I can tell the story of his childhood in further detail. Or I can send him to Hogwarts—as a woman. It's really up to me. Of course, writing from sources is as old as writing—and it used to be the norm. Homer didn't make up his own stories. He retold legends. So did medieval romance writers. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet from a source, and then Tom Stoppard wrote Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead based on Shakespeare's play. There's a lot of fic-like writing that we don't call fic. Tweet Advertisements



Advertisements Fifty Shades of Grey is a piece of fanfiction in itself, of the Twilight series, that has also spawned its own fanfiction. At what level of separation from the original does this work simply ditch its inspiration and become standalone fiction? Whether we perceive a work as fanfiction has a great deal to do with how it presents itself. Fifty Shades of Grey was posted as "Master of the Universe" in almost identical form (89% the same words) but in a very different format (serially on fan websites), and Christian was named Edward. So readers read it in relation to Twilight. Obviously, many more millions have now read it as a work of standalone fiction—so that's what it is. That's one answer. On the other hand, Fifty Shades of Grey will always have grown out of a global writing community that fed it, reviewed it, encouraged the author, and provided inspiration and advice—as well as models, character traits, and plot points—so in terms of its origins and the way it came into being, it will always be fanfiction. There are plenty of works that started as fanfiction and were edited to become standalone novels—that's not so uncommon. An author might start out writing a story in which Kirk and Spock are partners in a ranching venture in Wyoming, and at the beginning it might read very much like the Enterprise stopped at the ranching planet. At some point along the way, though, that author may get caught up in the story in its own right, develop distinct Wyoming cowboy voices, and think much more about the cattle politics of the small town he's invented than about any other kind of “Enterprise.” It's just a story. There are also works that started as standalone fiction that were altered to become fanfiction—because the author wanted readers and feedback and community. And, there's plenty of fic written about fic. Communities even host remix challenges and contests dedicated to that very thing. "I'd fic that" is a compliment. Tweet Advertisements



Advertisements ForeWord Reviews writes about indie books, authors, and publishers that are considered out of the mainstream but now are gaining more traction and credibility. Is fanfiction undergoing the same transition into respectability? It is certainly going more mainstream—although not all fic writers believe that's a good thing. I do think that the stigma associated with fanfiction is lifting, more so as professional writers "come out" as former or current fic writers and readers. It's a funny thing. People don't want writers to be writing for money. They want a story behind a story that's different from "I wrote it to make a buck." But if writers aren't making money—if they're writing for love and only love, like fic writers largely do—people look down on that, too. In your book, you write that Arthur Conan Doyle encouraged others to do whatever they’d like with his Sherlock Holmes characters. And they have, the latest being the BBC’s Sherlock series, which itself has spawned its own fanfiction. Are all writers as charitable with their work as Conan Doyle? No! Famously, Anne Rice, George R. R. Martin, and Ursula LeGuin are all vehemently opposed to fic—and there are many others. Tweet Advertisements



Advertisements You teach at the University of Utah, but in your spare time you also write fanfiction. What’s your favorite subject you enjoy riffing on? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I like writing fic that gets as close as possible to the tone of the original. For me that's the fun and challenge of it, because I already know I can write like me. Buffy had a very distinctive verbal style overall, and each character has a very marked voice, so that was fun to write. I could happily write dialogue all day long, so that tends to be what my fic is like. Then occasionally a reader will write in and ask if I was planning on having anything happen besides conversation, and I'll think, "oh, right, plot, I know I had one lying around somewhere..." I started writing as a way to say thank you to a fic community that had let me do research on them, and to see what fic was like from a writer's point of view—but soon enough I just had fun with it. Later I wrote a story based on something so old it doesn't really have a community around it, and that was a different experience. It actually ended up being the most popular thing I've written—my fic readership dwarfs my scholarship readership by many orders of magnitude. Somewhere along the way I realized I was having so much fun writing about young adults that I'd see if I also had fun writing my own. So now I do that, too. But I'm forever having to go in and cut dialogue to foreground the plot. Tweet Advertisements



Advertisements You teach and write about literature and culture. Are you taking on any new projects after Fic? I'm finishing up a book on Kafka and Czech literature and culture and collaborating on a book about modernist architecture in Moravia. I enjoy writing about nineteenth century metrical cultures, and I've recently finished a novel. Tweet Advertisements



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