FallingToFly
Political Stance: Porn
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2006
- Posts
- 7,677
Wall Street Journal article
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Rewriting the Rules of Fiction
Amateur authors writing tales about favorite characters are drawing big audiences and landing book deals. Meet Harry Potter's grandparents.
By JOHN JURGENSEN
September 16, 2006; Page P1; Wall Street Journal
She writes about a group of young wizards attending the Hogwarts School. She has legions of readers throughout the world.
Her name is Hannah Jones, and she's 19 years old.
Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe pursuit. Now, it's changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading to book deals. They are also feeding the appetites of readers and viewers who can't get enough of shows like "Lost" or "House."
There's a librarian in Rathdrum, Idaho, who spent 10 years posting her writings about a character from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" online; Simon & Schuster paid her a $150,000 advance to publish the works as a three-novel trilogy. In Brooklyn, N.Y., a free-lance copy editor has become one of the Web's best-known "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" fan-fiction writers, and has landed a three-book publishing deal for a young-adult fantasy series. When a comic-book store manager in New Jersey decided to take his first stab at fan fiction this year, entering a contest sponsored by Showtime's "The L Word," he got the attention of a literary agent, who signed him last month. And Ms. Jones will soon have her first book published.
One sign of the growing influence of these authors and stories is that media companies, usually quick to go after people who use their copyrighted material, are increasingly leaving fan fiction writers alone. Mindful of the large, loyal audience the writers represent, many companies are adopting an attitude one media professor describes as "benign neglect." While most professional writers say their lawyers advise them not to read fan fiction to protect themselves against charges of plagiarism, some say they check the numbers of fan fiction stories posted about their work regularly as a measure of their success.
The rise of fan fiction is part of the spread of amateur-created content online, from viral videos to music playlists and blogs. Increasingly, audiences have become used to watching videos posted by other users on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Reading fiction online is another extention of this trend.
Ms. Jones, who has been writing fan fiction since she was about 11 years old, got her start writing about TV shows and movies like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but took off in the fan-fiction world when she moved into "Harry Potter." The J.K. Rowling series is by far the biggest source for fan-fiction stories on the Web now, dwarfing franchises such as "Star Wars."
Ms. Jones is best known for a series called "The Shoebox Project," which she writes under the name "Jaida" with a writer named "Rave." The story is a prequel of sorts, focusing on Harry Potter's now deceased parents, along with two other wizards, Remus and Sirius, imagining them as teenage wizards finding themselves in high school during the 1970s. Interspersed in the text of the stories are scrawled notes that look like they were written by the characters themselves.
In one critical turning point in the series, Harry's grandparents are killed by Death Eaters, minions of the dark lord Voldemort -- a plot point that mirrors the killing of Harry's parents, described in Ms. Rowling's series. But Ms. Jones says she was chagrined to learn later about an interview with Ms. Rowling where the author told readers that Harry's grandparents had died of natural causes.
The series, which Ms. Jones began the summer before her freshman year at Barnard College in 2004, is up to 25 sections and the equivalent of 600 pages. While Ms. Jones says it's impossible to track how many individual readers her entries have, nearly 5,000 people have signed up to be automatically notified whenever she posts a new part on LiveJournal.com, the Web community favored by many fan fiction writers. Each installment generates hundreds of reader comments and reviews.
Ms. Jones was contacted by Frank Fradella, an author running his own small independent book-publishing company, New Babel Books, who had read her work on LiveJournal. Next month, he's publishing her first print book, a collection of poetry called "Cinquefoil."
Like virtually all fan fiction, "The Shoebox Project" was created without the permission of the author or publisher. Many authors don't object to the fan-fiction surrounding their work, seeing it as a sign of a devoted audience rather than an act of copyright infringement.
Meg Cabot, author of "The Princess Diaries," says she herself was once a fan-fiction writer, writing stories inspired by Anne McCaffrey's fantasy novels about dragons when she was in high school and college. "I never told anyone. I've started admitting it now," she says. She says she was delighted to discover that her books had inspired hundreds of stories by fans.
Although Ms. Cabot says she occasionally goes online to see the tally of "Princess Diaries" and "Mediator" fan-fiction stories, she says she never reads them. Legal advisers warned that if she did read fan fiction, she'd be opening herself to potential lawsuits from fans who could claim she'd stolen their ideas.
Some authors take a less friendly view of the genre, however. "No matter how flattering, it's still robbery," says fantasy novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, whose vampire works have inspired a number of fan-fiction writers. She estimates that her attorney has sent out about 20 "cease and desist" letters to writers and owners of fan sites. Ms. Yarbro says this has caused some of the writers and sites to take their stories down.
For much of its history, fan fiction centered on the science-fiction and comic-book worlds. While the subject matter of fan fiction has expanded greatly, to include everything from "Desperate Housewives" to the Bible, the genre has several entrenched tropes. Many stories take the form of prequels, imagining the back stories of central characters. Crossover fantasies also have long been a key element of fan fiction, pairing characters from different books or shows.
"Shippers" (the term is believed to be derived from "relationship") are writers that explore -- and often invent -- relationships between characters. A subgenre of this is "slash," which creates gay relationships between characters such as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from "Star Trek." Slash fiction is often sexually graphic, and fan fiction's association with slash has made some mainstream authors and TV networks wary of it.
Increasingly, however, media companies, undeterred by the stigma of slash, are looking for ways to capitalize on fan fiction and its large audience. A company called FanLib is working with networks and publishers to create fan-fiction promotions and contests for books and TV shows.
FanLib recently launched a romance-writing contest with HarperCollins's Avon imprint. "We're looking for ways to reach the real core readers," says Liate Stehlik, Avon's senior vice president and publisher. To avoid copyright problems, they had writers create chapters of a novel from scratch, instead of basing them on one particular book.
FanLib's first high-profile project was a fan writing contest earlier this year devoted to "The L Word," a Showtime drama about a group of lesbian characters. FanLib Chief Executive Chris Williams says that 20,000 people registered on the contest site, where one of the show's writers assigned scenes.
The possibility of being discovered was a motivation for aspiring novelist Ervin Anderson, who was one of the seven contest winners and the only male to win. The manager of a comic shop outside Philadelphia called Fat Jake's Comicrypt, Mr. Anderson, 35, works on his own fiction at night. He was a casual watcher of "The L Word," but when the contest was announced in the spring, he saw it as chance to get an audience with industry professionals. In the second week of the contest, voters picked one of his scenes, which touched on eating disorders and mental illness. "Being a straight male, I wasn't sure I could compete. But everyone was very welcoming," he says.
With press clippings about the "L Word" contest in hand, he met with a literary agent and signed a contract in July. He's also entered the HarperCollins contest, and has read four romance novels by popular author Julia Quinn to prepare. "As a struggling writer, you've got to take advantage of every opportunity afforded to you. You really never know where your break is going to come from," he says.
At the same time, however, many fan-fiction writers shield their identities online and keep their pursuit secret from friends and colleagues. Meredith Elliott, who works at a theater company in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a following for her writings based on the TV show "House," but has only told her mother about her hobby.
"There's a sense of guilt. I always feel that I should not be using somebody else's characters and should be doing my own writing," she says. "But then I remember I am doing my own writing."
---------
So, a question to all the authors hereabouts: what do you think of this?
---------
Rewriting the Rules of Fiction
Amateur authors writing tales about favorite characters are drawing big audiences and landing book deals. Meet Harry Potter's grandparents.
By JOHN JURGENSEN
September 16, 2006; Page P1; Wall Street Journal
She writes about a group of young wizards attending the Hogwarts School. She has legions of readers throughout the world.
Her name is Hannah Jones, and she's 19 years old.
Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe pursuit. Now, it's changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading to book deals. They are also feeding the appetites of readers and viewers who can't get enough of shows like "Lost" or "House."
There's a librarian in Rathdrum, Idaho, who spent 10 years posting her writings about a character from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" online; Simon & Schuster paid her a $150,000 advance to publish the works as a three-novel trilogy. In Brooklyn, N.Y., a free-lance copy editor has become one of the Web's best-known "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" fan-fiction writers, and has landed a three-book publishing deal for a young-adult fantasy series. When a comic-book store manager in New Jersey decided to take his first stab at fan fiction this year, entering a contest sponsored by Showtime's "The L Word," he got the attention of a literary agent, who signed him last month. And Ms. Jones will soon have her first book published.
One sign of the growing influence of these authors and stories is that media companies, usually quick to go after people who use their copyrighted material, are increasingly leaving fan fiction writers alone. Mindful of the large, loyal audience the writers represent, many companies are adopting an attitude one media professor describes as "benign neglect." While most professional writers say their lawyers advise them not to read fan fiction to protect themselves against charges of plagiarism, some say they check the numbers of fan fiction stories posted about their work regularly as a measure of their success.
The rise of fan fiction is part of the spread of amateur-created content online, from viral videos to music playlists and blogs. Increasingly, audiences have become used to watching videos posted by other users on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Reading fiction online is another extention of this trend.
Ms. Jones, who has been writing fan fiction since she was about 11 years old, got her start writing about TV shows and movies like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but took off in the fan-fiction world when she moved into "Harry Potter." The J.K. Rowling series is by far the biggest source for fan-fiction stories on the Web now, dwarfing franchises such as "Star Wars."
Ms. Jones is best known for a series called "The Shoebox Project," which she writes under the name "Jaida" with a writer named "Rave." The story is a prequel of sorts, focusing on Harry Potter's now deceased parents, along with two other wizards, Remus and Sirius, imagining them as teenage wizards finding themselves in high school during the 1970s. Interspersed in the text of the stories are scrawled notes that look like they were written by the characters themselves.
In one critical turning point in the series, Harry's grandparents are killed by Death Eaters, minions of the dark lord Voldemort -- a plot point that mirrors the killing of Harry's parents, described in Ms. Rowling's series. But Ms. Jones says she was chagrined to learn later about an interview with Ms. Rowling where the author told readers that Harry's grandparents had died of natural causes.
The series, which Ms. Jones began the summer before her freshman year at Barnard College in 2004, is up to 25 sections and the equivalent of 600 pages. While Ms. Jones says it's impossible to track how many individual readers her entries have, nearly 5,000 people have signed up to be automatically notified whenever she posts a new part on LiveJournal.com, the Web community favored by many fan fiction writers. Each installment generates hundreds of reader comments and reviews.
Ms. Jones was contacted by Frank Fradella, an author running his own small independent book-publishing company, New Babel Books, who had read her work on LiveJournal. Next month, he's publishing her first print book, a collection of poetry called "Cinquefoil."
Like virtually all fan fiction, "The Shoebox Project" was created without the permission of the author or publisher. Many authors don't object to the fan-fiction surrounding their work, seeing it as a sign of a devoted audience rather than an act of copyright infringement.
Meg Cabot, author of "The Princess Diaries," says she herself was once a fan-fiction writer, writing stories inspired by Anne McCaffrey's fantasy novels about dragons when she was in high school and college. "I never told anyone. I've started admitting it now," she says. She says she was delighted to discover that her books had inspired hundreds of stories by fans.
Although Ms. Cabot says she occasionally goes online to see the tally of "Princess Diaries" and "Mediator" fan-fiction stories, she says she never reads them. Legal advisers warned that if she did read fan fiction, she'd be opening herself to potential lawsuits from fans who could claim she'd stolen their ideas.
Some authors take a less friendly view of the genre, however. "No matter how flattering, it's still robbery," says fantasy novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, whose vampire works have inspired a number of fan-fiction writers. She estimates that her attorney has sent out about 20 "cease and desist" letters to writers and owners of fan sites. Ms. Yarbro says this has caused some of the writers and sites to take their stories down.
For much of its history, fan fiction centered on the science-fiction and comic-book worlds. While the subject matter of fan fiction has expanded greatly, to include everything from "Desperate Housewives" to the Bible, the genre has several entrenched tropes. Many stories take the form of prequels, imagining the back stories of central characters. Crossover fantasies also have long been a key element of fan fiction, pairing characters from different books or shows.
"Shippers" (the term is believed to be derived from "relationship") are writers that explore -- and often invent -- relationships between characters. A subgenre of this is "slash," which creates gay relationships between characters such as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from "Star Trek." Slash fiction is often sexually graphic, and fan fiction's association with slash has made some mainstream authors and TV networks wary of it.
Increasingly, however, media companies, undeterred by the stigma of slash, are looking for ways to capitalize on fan fiction and its large audience. A company called FanLib is working with networks and publishers to create fan-fiction promotions and contests for books and TV shows.
FanLib recently launched a romance-writing contest with HarperCollins's Avon imprint. "We're looking for ways to reach the real core readers," says Liate Stehlik, Avon's senior vice president and publisher. To avoid copyright problems, they had writers create chapters of a novel from scratch, instead of basing them on one particular book.
FanLib's first high-profile project was a fan writing contest earlier this year devoted to "The L Word," a Showtime drama about a group of lesbian characters. FanLib Chief Executive Chris Williams says that 20,000 people registered on the contest site, where one of the show's writers assigned scenes.
The possibility of being discovered was a motivation for aspiring novelist Ervin Anderson, who was one of the seven contest winners and the only male to win. The manager of a comic shop outside Philadelphia called Fat Jake's Comicrypt, Mr. Anderson, 35, works on his own fiction at night. He was a casual watcher of "The L Word," but when the contest was announced in the spring, he saw it as chance to get an audience with industry professionals. In the second week of the contest, voters picked one of his scenes, which touched on eating disorders and mental illness. "Being a straight male, I wasn't sure I could compete. But everyone was very welcoming," he says.
With press clippings about the "L Word" contest in hand, he met with a literary agent and signed a contract in July. He's also entered the HarperCollins contest, and has read four romance novels by popular author Julia Quinn to prepare. "As a struggling writer, you've got to take advantage of every opportunity afforded to you. You really never know where your break is going to come from," he says.
At the same time, however, many fan-fiction writers shield their identities online and keep their pursuit secret from friends and colleagues. Meredith Elliott, who works at a theater company in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a following for her writings based on the TV show "House," but has only told her mother about her hobby.
"There's a sense of guilt. I always feel that I should not be using somebody else's characters and should be doing my own writing," she says. "But then I remember I am doing my own writing."
---------
So, a question to all the authors hereabouts: what do you think of this?
So, hooray for more attention to this group of writers.
