Hello and welcome back to the Sunday Scribblings!
Base image © Sembazuru (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sembazuru/6974372/). Edited by Penny Gotch (http://www.pennygotch.co.uk | https://pennygotch.wordpress.com).
Let’s talk fanfiction.
I’m an author. And I support fanfiction writers.
Why wouldn’t I? I’m one myself.
I’ve been writing fanfiction since I was twelve years old. That’s over a decade of writing stories about other people’s characters.
But surely that’s plagiarism, isn’t it?
Well yes and no.
You see, fanfiction inhabits a legal grey area.
Image © Emmanuel Huybrechts (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ensh/6204837462/).
Yes, the people who create it are using characters that belong to other people without permission.
But we’re not making money from the things we write. So we’re not technically breaking the law.
So why do we write fanfiction?
Because we love the original stories. It’s all about love.
So that’s why fanfiction isn’t bad. But I’d like to go a step further.
I think fanfiction is good for us.
When we write fanfiction, we can focus on putting together a plot. We can experiment with new formats of storytelling. And we can do things we would never dare do in an original piece.
In other words, it makes us better writers.
Painted by Leonid Pasternak; uploaded by Crisco 1492 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonid_Pasternak_001.jpg).
It’s practice. And not only that, but we get feedback from the community.
From kudos to comments, people tell us what we’re doing right and wrong and it helps us get better.
Fanfiction makes us better writers. And I don’t see how that could be a bad thing.
So support fanfiction writers. We are the novelists of the future.
Oh, and “Under the Tree” is still on sale! E-mail me at pennygotch@gmail.com to order!
~ Penny
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