Tag Archives: reading

On writing Fan Fiction and Original Fiction

Writing, , , , , , ,

Is it better to write fan fiction or original fiction? What does better even mean in this context?

After having written both, I don’t have an answer. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. One thing’s for sure—you won’t get rich either way.

Let’s start with fan fiction. To some extent writing fan fiction is easier. The world building has been done for you. The major characters are there for you to use. The cost of this is that you have to remain within the original continuity, and this can make plotting more complicated than it would otherwise be. You can’t change existing characters in any major way. Mind you, there’s a way around this. You can label your story AU, indicating that it takes place in an alternative universe. For example, I wrote a fic called Western Castle which takes the characters from the TV show Castle and plops them into the wild west. That was fun.

Writing fan fiction can be a very sociable activity. You end up making online friends with other writers. Your stories reach lots of eyeballs. In my case, many more eyeballs than peruse my original fiction.

When writing original fiction, there are no rules. Well, except for the norms of whichever genre you’re writing in. You can use any setting, any characters, at any point in time—past, present, or future. In my experience, writing your own stories isn’t as social an activity as writing fan fiction. You can always join a writing group, of course, but I haven’t gone that route because for me, writing is and will remain a hobby, not a putative profession. I write sporadically, sometimes with only a paragraph to show for myself after a week. Hmmm. That could be why my last novel took three years to write ….

The reality is, there are many thousands of self-published authors and it’s almost impossible to get noticed. Whether or not that’s okay depends on your motivation for writing in the first place. For me, getting my book up on Amazon is the culmination of that writing project. One hopes for many readers, but, at least in my experience, many readers are people who know you in real life and are kindly supporting you.

To close, I have to say that I enjoy writing both kinds of fiction. Most of my writing these days is original. My last fanfic was a Doctor Who story that I’d been saving up in case Big Finish asked me back. They haven’t—at least, not yet—so I wrote it anyway and the good folks at The Doctor Who Project posted it for me.

Much to my surprise, I currently find myself taking a break from my next novel and writing one more Castle fanfic, just when I was sure I’d written my last one. I’m enjoying it immensely. I’ll post about it when it’s done. Until then, happy reading and writing!

Two Unputdownable Books

Culture, , , ,

I don’t know about you, but as time goes by it’s increasingly seldom that I find books that are genuinely hard to put down. In fact, it seems more and more common for me to discard a book if it hasn’t grabbed me by at least page one hundred. So imagine my glee when I find myself reading two books that are unputdownable. Don’t judge me. The fact is, I usually “read” two books at a time. The reason read is in quotes is that one of the books will be either a physical book or an eBook, and the other an audio book. When I sit down to read, I’ll generally pick up the print book. When I’m walking, cleaning, or whatever, I’ll often listen to the audio book. The psychologist in me finds it fascinating that I never get confused about what happened or who appears in which book. Perhaps it’s the fact that the input modalities are different. But I digress.

The first of the two books that I’m particularly enjoying at the moment is Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafron, the fourth and final book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. It has been a long, long time since I’ve encountered an author whose prose has this level of beauty, whose characters are so well developed, and whose stories so relentlessly draw you in. The books are part literary novel and part mystery with, possibly, a touch of fantasy. It depends on how you interpret them. For me, the first and fourth books are the strongest, both equally compelling. I’ve recently finished my third reading of the first, The Shadow of the Wind, and I’m on my second reading of the fourth. This time around, I’ve read the books in order. The second and third books, The Angels Game and The Prisoner of Heaven, are weaker in my opinion, especially Prisoner, though that book, at the very least, sets things up for the fourth. Angels is very good, but confusing, as I wasn’t sure at times whether the story was unfolding as written or whether the protagonist was simply caught up in a story of his own creation.

The second book I’m loving right now is The Evolutionary Void, the third in the Void trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Here’s the thing: when you read a trilogy by Hamilton, you need to realize that the story is going to be big. Really big. And there are many, many characters and locales, and many subplots that will, miraculously it seems, come together at the end. The Void books represent the second trilogy of Hamilton’s that I’ve read. In both cases, I wondered as I read the first book whether the author wasn’t just pot boiling for the sake of producing a thick book. In both cases, I was dead wrong. The first book, as it should, introduces characters and situations and conflicts and get things going. Things start looking pretty bleak in the second book, and in the third, well, I’m not finished Evolutionary yet but I have hopes for a satisfying conclusion.

I hope that’s enough to entice you to check out these books. I’d make this a longer post, but I really need to get back to my reading …