More About Fan Fiction
In my last post I talked slight crap about fan fiction. And after a few moment’s reflection I thought, “Well, shit, have I really even read much fan fiction?”
So I sought some out.
I did a Google search for Firefly fan fiction and came up with gold. That’s been my reading material for the past two days. And beside the Craiglist personal ad aspects of some of it (erotic pairings of Book & Wash, Mal & River, and Jane & everybody), I think I’m getting a better handle on what it is in fan fiction that grates on me. But before I tell you that, let me say that reading these stories has made me realize that the thing I don’t like about fan fiction is also the thing I need to learn how to do.
Back to what bothers me about it – it’s the immersion level of the work. And this is where I think it overlaps with a genre hang-up I have. I don’t enjoy being so deeply immersed in a story. Sure, I love when I’m immersed in the act of reading, but extreme moment to moment story immersion feels confining. I feel drowned by a writer that describes everything, every moment, every thought of a character’s life. Yeah, that’s hyperbole, but with some books it feels that way. It feels that the writer is holding my hand and directing what I can or can’t pay attention to while they monologue about the movie going on in their head.
But the thing is for fans of shows, fans that would want to write about their favorite show, and a good number of genre fans that level of immersion is what they’re after. They want to be deep in the paracosm on the moment to moment level. It’s not a bug, it’s a design feature. And that’s something I need to learn.
So today’s piece of writer enlightenment:
The thing you dislike in other books is the thing you need to learn for yours.
Sex and Violence
In most genre books I skip the sex scenes and the fight scenes.
All the fight scenes tell me is you the author have watched The Matrix (or MMA matches or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) enough times to describe it.
All the sex scenes tell me is you have an internet connection.
Having just finished a Western (Valdez is Coming* by Elmore Leonard; I recommend it) I saw it wasn’t these two things but the lead up and repercussions from them that made things interesting. It’s only that people are obvious and put pages of dueling MMA wizard anal elf sex in their books for some reason. If you love it, then hey, that’s great. But for me, it feels like I’m reading the fan fiction for the RPG supplement you wrote in novel form.
* hardeeharhar
Know Your History? Some Guidelines For Reading
Every now and then the debate over reading genre classics pops up and rears its ugly head. On the one hand you have folks who feel we’re losing a literary heritage and forgetting too many old great books as new great books get published. Mike Swanwick had a recent blog post to that effect. The genre was once smaller, you could read everything in it, and stay on top of it. It was easier not only to find the firsts in a genre, but also the outliers. Having a hungry curiosity for this stuff is good.
On the other hand you have the opposite position of just knowing what’s current, which in its extreme form might resemble this five year old blog post from Karen Traviss about not needing to read to be a writer. (I don’t know if Traviss still agrees with that blog post, but I’ll keep it until I learn otherwise because it’s useful.) In its milder form, it’s not needing to read every alien invasion story ever, but just those in recent years in order to see how alien invasion stories are being told now in this era.
There’s also a third hand, which shows up in the comments of Swanwick’s post, stating that the “classics” might not be so classic and why navigate through books dripping with the prejudices of their eras. This too is a valuable point, but my reading of Swanwick’s post is one not so much telling writers to know their history and cling to it, but to sift that history and find the gems in it, the outliers as he dubs them, or the books lost in genre’s shadow like the ones I mention here and here.
However there are ways to reconcile these three arguments when you keep these guidelines in mind:
1. Read only what you enjoy, but cultivate a curious and complex palette that enjoys challenges.
2. Make your own genre history. Lots of stuff gets lost in the margins or ignored because it doesn’t tidily fit in with someone’s imposed narrative. Bring these works to light.
3. The early work in a genre has more immediacy than subsequent iterations. It can sometimes be as fresh as more recent works.
4. As far as knowing your genre goes, once you’ve read the initial spark, focus on what’s been done with it in the past decade. But…
5. Always remember there are likely more amazing books that you haven’t heard of than ones you have.
And here’s another post where I carry on in more or less the same way.
Junk From the Notebook 1
Politics won’t harm a writer’s career. It’s talking crap about the genre and “loving” it insufficiently that do you in.
Their enthusiasm for writing doesn’t match their enthusiasm for talking about their enthusiasm for writing.
When someone asks what your tastes are and all you do is hold up your hands and say, “Gah! Who the fuck knows?”
People that talk about “geek cred” should probably see an analyst to resolve their middle school hang-ups.
Fruit on the bottom. Hope on top.
Do Not Deny the Eye
I gotta listen to this guy more often.
A Heap of Random Thoughts
Love books. Love reading. Don’t love a genre.
The fact that the number of SF authors who would have sex with their cats is not zero is disconcerting to say the least.
Ishmael Reed should be as popular Kurt Vonnegut.
You can judge how healthy a relationship is by how well its members can work together in a kitchen.
Heavy metal is good. Louder heavy metal is better.
Mental incontinence might be more destructive than mental incompetence.
Some folks are ignorant chuckleheads more in love with mansplaining and the sounds of their own voices than in actually saying something worth acknowledging.
The best thing about writing by hand is the sense of accomplishment one feels when one’s pen runs out of ink.
“He cried like some high school twerp screaming emo at the world because the mall’s book kiosk didn’t carry Naked Lunch.”
Some folks think of books as entertainment. I prefer to think of them as mind-altering substances.
Today’s Question
Are you really taking a break from the internet if you don’t go online and tell everyone you’re taking a break from the internet?
Matheson’s Game
Richard Matheson died a few weeks back. He’s one of those writers that people know without realizing they know. Anyways, when he died I made this quip on facebook:
Richard Matheson has died. Parents, when your child comes home with a copy of ENDER’S GAME, just go ahead and knock that trash from their hands, and give them I AM LEGEND instead.
That pretty much sums up my feelings on Ender Wiggin.
Some Further Words Anyways
Some thoughts on the SF/F genre sparked by the recent, latest, and ongoing SFWA crack-up.
What remains remarkable to me is the genre’s continuing ability to remain stagnant and gleefully rooted in its past. We’ve had over half a century of revolutionary SF with a clear line of fiction and artwork going back to the 60s and earlier. Whether it’s Chip Delany, Ursula LeGuin, or Joanna Russ, the heritage is there for a genre informed by more than the utopian technocratic dreams it sold itself. But Feminism, the New Wave, cross-pollination from other genres, radical world politics or literary techniques… they all bounce off – or get uprooted and thrown away because those who’ve settled in and claimed “the core audience” status don’t want them there. The genre has a tendency to chew up those it deems to be intruders or unworthy of its “affection”* and spit them out.
I dearly hope to see this cycle end. Diversity, in all its meanings, should be a no-frills default feature and not some extra. Instead it’s gotten to the point where I’ll read a great genre book by a woman/minority/genre-outsider and wonder how long it will be before they get driven out.
A remarkable thing to see in the genre of “ideas”.
Yesterweird 