Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "fanfiction"

The first story idea I ever had came after having seen Superman IV and Batman: The 1966 Series. I thought wouldn't it be great if these two characters got together. So I excitedly wrote my story in a yellow spiral notebook when I was just turning.

Of course, I couldn't know that someone had beaten me to the idea of a Superman-Batman team up by a little bit. In fact, Bill Finger wrote the first team up for the Comics in Superman #76 in 1952-37 years previously and the over-the-radio version was done in 1943-before my mother was even born.

However, unoriginal it was, the point is my first story would be considered fan fiction which was a point brought to mine by my publisher Grace Bridge writing about writing Dr. Who Fanfiction.

Fanfiction has some issues. Technically, publishers and TV creators can create problems if you use their copyrighted characters in fanfiction. However, if no profit's made on it, usually they won't raise a stink. It doesn't make sense to raise a stink because no one is not watching your show to read the fanfiction. The fanfiction is feeding fans obsession with your show and guaranteeing they'll watch it.

Perhaps the bigger issues with fanfiction are that it's got a bad reputation in terms of quality. There are many reasons for it. The chief one is that it can make writing easier. It's writing without having to do serious world building or creating characters. They're all created for you. That leads to people who can't write well writing fanfiction for reasons such as creating implausible crossovers OR having a couple of their favorite characters get together.

However, just because there is a lot of bad fanfiction, it doesn't mean all of ifs bad, and if you get a good writer writing fanfiction, there's some very interesting potential.

The big upside for fan fiction is that it can be relaxing and it can be fun to apply your writing talents to a franchise that it may be hard or impossible for you to actually write in real life.

There's an added benefit as well. If you develop a good enough story, you can develop into one you can use your own universe. You just want to be sure you still don't have a strong resemblance to lead to a copyright suit, but it can be done. Fifty Shades of Grey was originally Twilight Fanfiction. Though perhaps, that's not the best example of quality fiction.

My preferred approach when getting fan fictiony ideas is to write the stories in my own world in the first place. I had an idea recently for a Batman-Superman story. By the time I write it, it will feature neither Batman or Superman and will be in my own story world, but it'll be the same story.

And who knows maybe you'll be able to get good enough writing the characters to write something for them. Stranger things were happened and if these companies were smart they'd be watching Fanfiction websites for authors who write popular and well-written fanfiction to see if they might be able to recruit them for their team.

Stranger things have happened.

The strangest writing story I've ever heard is of a 13 year old boy who said that DC Comics needed better quality stories and he was the one to provide them and DC comics hired him to write the Legion of Superheroes.

So have fun fanfiction writers. Who knows what the future holds.

A huge development from Amazon:

Get ready for Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group's Alloy Entertainment for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries, with licenses for more Worlds on the way.

The Kindle Worlds Self-Service Submission Platform will launch soon and enable you to submit your original works for publication. Can't wait to start writing? Learn more on our Kindle Worlds for Authors page.

This is very big particularly as more franchises will be added. Can't say I care much about the early adopters myself. But this is a very good sign.

Of course, there are bigger names out there that are going to be difficult to arrange...Dr. Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, DC, Marvel. (Am I drooling?)

It's intelligent for the industry and for Amazon. If folks are writing and reading stories about your characters, shouldn't you want to get A piece of the action.. Plus, if someone actually can write about your characters in a way that people like, it'll be darn easy to hire them.

And for Amazon, it's another cash cow as if they needed another.

In some ways, this is also a compromise with the ridiculous lengths of copyright laws. Truth be told, under any reasonable standard, characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-man, and at least the original Star Trek series should be in the public domain. The reason they're not has less to do with protecting creators than providing an eternal source of revenue to corporate bigwigs. If we see these guys get their Kindle Worlds, we can at least see that mitigated.

The one thing that worries me is that it poses a risk to the necessary creativity needed for vibrant culture. When I was eight years old, I started writing a Superman-Batman story in a yellow spiral notebook. However, I couldn't write that story and publish it. I had to create my own characters, my own worlds.

Imagine a situation where young writers start out loving a franchise and end up writing fanfiction for that franchise rather than writing their own stuff? It could really snare some writers who go for low hanging fruit.

I may write in a Kindle World if they can offer me something interesting to write in. (After all, I still have that Batman-Superman story to finish.) But, I never intend to give up on writing in my own.