Читать книгу Vampire’s Dilemma - Penny Ash - Страница 4

INTRODUCTION, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

They used to laugh at me for taking fan fiction writing seriously. Today, I get scoffed at on Twitter if I don’t.

I sold my first Sime~Gen story, “Operation High Time,” to Fred Pohl at If Magazine of Science Fiction in 1968 before I began contributing my Kraith Universe stories to Star Trek fanzines. Professional writers told me to stop writing fan fiction entirely or I’d never have a professional writing career.

Today there are fans writing fan fiction based on my Sime~Gen universe which are all once again available, this time not only in paper but ebook and audiobook. Fans of my professional writing have been inspired by it to become professional writers or have had their writing influenced by my style of Intimate Adventure, which is what I call the genre I write in.1

Most prominent among them appears to be Ronald D. Moore, the Star Trek producer who now has created a runaway success with his new Battlestar Galactica. When Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled, Moore mentioned me in his blog. I emailed him and asked if Battlestar Galactica had become Intimate Adventure under his hand. After looking at the definition posted online, he responded thusly:

The intimate adventure genre is an interesting theory and I see no reason not to include Galactica within it.

As you probably picked up from my piece, I was a fan of your work for many years and I’m delighted to finally be able to thank you for it directly. Your work really spoke to me when I was growing up and definitely influenced my own writing ambitions and desires, so thank you, thank you, thank you!

And then he asked where he could get a copy of Kraith. I sent him a set.

So I conclude my persistent fan writing in Star Trek fanzines did not in any way vitiate my professional writing.

However, there is a certain validity to the underlying concept behind that advice I rejected. There is a way to use fan fiction writing as a stepping stone to professional writing as I did, but there is also a way to use it to barricade a tender inner life from the harsh realities of the world.

Both ways and both purposes are valid and admirable. As long as the writer chooses a method that furthers that personally chosen purpose, not a single moment is wasted by reading and writing pastiche derived from TV, radio, comics, novels, or films.

Regardless of the chosen purpose, the fanfic writer has to learn the same craft as the professional writer. The writer must hone that craft even in today’s online marketplace where readers don’t have to pay printing and postage. But readers still expect value for their time even if they don’t pay for the stories.

As a result, writing fan fiction is the ideal way to master the craft of writing for those people who have been struck through the heart or had their soul awakened by some TV show.

Readers of fan fiction respond first and foremost to the payload the author is delivering—to the sharing of the vision, experience and emotions of that personalized fictional universe. Even a badly crafted piece can deliver that payload.

A new writer can use fan fiction to master one writing technique at a time. The world has been built, the characters are fleshed out, many of the visual effects are established, and the readers know it all. Writing for readers who share so much is like learning to ride a bicycle with training wheels. Just as you can fly down the driveway on your new bike, you can please your readers before you’ve mastered all the techniques necessary out on the road.

Once a new author gets a fan letter from a delighted reader—the addiction sets in. The will to write the next story even better ignites, and there’s no stopping until the craft is mastered and the subject plumbed to its very depths.

It is a heady thing, connecting with an audience that shares values and vision and speaks a special language. Family and friends may consider that the fan writer has gone completely nuts and try to stop this wasteful activity. But it’s not wasteful.

Learning to write is hard. It requires the writer to pass from being a recipient of stories and ideas to being a generator of stories and ideas, from being a passive follower, to living the heroic life of leadership.

That transformation requires the mastery of organization, presentation and articulation of ideas, the mastery of concrete things like spelling, punctuation and grammar, the use of a word processor and perhaps even HTML coding. It requires learning not only how the world actually works, but perhaps more important, learning how the readers think the world works so that story events seem plausible.

The energy, determination and maturity required to attain mastery in so many areas of life is more than any one person has inside them. It has to come from outside, from divine inspiration and from the readers who want the stories.

Fanfic readers mold and reshape the writer to provide what they must have, ever correcting characterization, suggesting growing relationships, and refusing to read expository lumps. The readers work hard to teach the writers how to please them.

Readers of fan fiction find in it a refreshing energy, an affirmation that they aren’t alone in how they view the world. Fellowship, community and teamwork in the fan fiction world provides the strength of spirit necessary to tackle the mundane world in everyday life.

Being part of this process is so much fun, how can a fan writer know if it’s time to shed the training wheels and fly right off the end of the driveway into mainstream traffic? What’s the difference between fan and pro writing?

Professional fiction writers must first engage the readers and entice them into the new universe whereas fanfic writers work for an already engaged reader.

The professional writer must do the whole job of creating and presenting a fictional universe with engaging characters and an original theme. Beyond that, there is only one other difference.

Audience size.

Fan fiction is only for those so enamored of a particular universe that they know it by heart. Even the most popular TV shows have a limited few thousand who are that committed.

When a writer has become famous writing pastiche from TV shows for those few thousand readers but is now brim full of ideas for original universes, then it’s time to try to reach an audience that might be as large as the TV show’s whole audience.

There is one tried and true test to decide if an original story is fan fiction. “If you can take the [TV Show Name] out, and still have a story, it wasn’t a [TV Show Name] fan fiction story to begin with.”

When the writer discovers that her new stories don’t belong in that fan fiction universe, then it’s time to go pro.

The writers in this anthology are all known for their fanfic. They all share a love for shows like Forever Knight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, Hill Street Blues, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., White Collar, Burn Notice, Leverage, Psych, Stargate SG-1, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc. all shows belonging to the Intimate Adventure genre.

We’ve asked each author to tell us about the place of fanfic writing in their lives.

1 See www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html