Fanfic vs. Profic

[lunabee34]

When I reviewed The Democratic Genre a couple posts back, some of the comments turned to a discussion of fanfic vs. profic. executrix suggested I take that convo top-level, so here I am. Doing that. *g*

Anyway, I said that I think that fanfic and profic are equally challenging to read and write, and I don't privilege one over the other. I also said that fanfic and profic often have different aims and pull out different tools from the toolbox.

Now, I can't speak very much about the writing of profic, as I've never had anything published. However, I *read* a lot of profic, and some of my RL friends are writers and one of them in particular has been encouraging me to do some writing of original pieces (*nudge nudge* krayat). So, from my position of dubious experience, here's a handful of comments about fanfic and profic.

I think that fanfic provides someone who's not interested in world building a way to write stories without having to worry about or spend time creating from whole cloth a universe for her characters to inhabit.

I think fanfic provides an excellent opportunity for creativity. Because the infrastructure already exists, doing something truly novel and shocking and intriguing takes a heck of a lot of work. Taking those bones and building something unexpected and different from the original model (or even just the original model from a different angle) on top of them makes for damn good reading. And because your readership is familiar with the original model, making it leaner or showing it only from the ass side immediately creates tension. Fanfic is, for me, all about subversion. Taking this thing that already exists and wringing the hell out of it--sometimes as Pugh says to make more of it and sometime to get more from it.

I know with this original fiction story I'm making pages of notes on and creating outlines and Venn diagrams for writing, I couldn't decide what to write about at first. And then I thought, "Wait! I'm an interesting person. All kinds of traumatic interesting things have happened to me. I'll just fanfic my life." And what I meant by that was, okay, I can take the bare bones of an event from my life and then fictionalize around that foundation. And I know it sounds like I'm calling fanfic a crutch here, but I'm really not. I *am* saying that reading/writing fanfic creates a different way of approaching reading/writing profic, at least for me.

Most profic I think also necessarily has to contain more descriptive passages than fanfic. For instance, most fanfic doesn't spend a lot of time describing characters physically because we all know what the characters look like. Same with, oh, the library in Sunndale or the lobby of the Hyperion. (0f course, always exceptions to the rule)

What do you guys think?

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I feel honor-bound to say something!

Let's not forget that profic is more like fanfic than is often claimed. I mean, a gazillion literary novels are set on small college campuses where sensitive young writers are insufficiently appreciated, and a gazillion genre novels are set in windswept manor houses or spaceships or the Mean Streets of L.A. So not much chuffin' world-building there. OTOH maybe one reason that there are so many sci-fi fandoms is that the options for literal world-building are so broad.

(And my theory is that there are so many far-out AUs in popslash because, well, straightforward canon is "they have a concert" or "one of the guys gets interviewed on TV" so it's understandable that the filler between the sex scenes is something like "somebody turns into a sofa".)

Maybe one reason there are so damn many first-time stories is to give the POV character the chance to give an intensive tour d'horizon?

My personal cri de coeur about mediocre or bad fanfic comes from "The Simple Art of Murder": "it was second-rate fiction because it wasn't about the materials of first-rate fiction." There are so many damn fine fanwriters who know so much about how people behave and how language behaves and can convey it all that it makes me angry, or at least disappointed, to see readers and writers condescending to each other. On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget that profic is more like fanfic than is often claimed.

You are so right. Much genre fic certainly builds on established conventions, like the romance novel set on a ranch.

There are so many damn fine fanwriters who know so much about how people behave and how language behaves and can convey it all that it makes me angry, or at least disappointed, to see readers and writers condescending to each other.

This I completely agree with. Some of the fanfic I've read could compete any day against the literature I teach to my students. Some of my favorite writers, period, are fanfic writers and not profic ones. There's brilliant writing and poor writing on both sides of the fence.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

But if fanfic writers think they don't have to try to write anything credible or imaginative because it's just fanfic and anything will do...

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

And fortunately, I haven't encountered any who feel that way.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's like Dolly Parton having to spend a lot of money to look that cheap but hey, all the stories in the Summary Executions got that way *somehow*, and I bet you don't hang out a lot at the Pit of Voles. I can certainly understand fanfic writers having limited acquaintance with some of the more florid aspects of experience, but if they're going to write entirely on the basis of things that were written in the past, without reference to human behavior or physical possibility, they should be sure to pick interesting things to make eighth-generation copies of.

Moi? Brilliant? Yeah. Okay. :)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

In fact, if it's not personal in some way, I can't write about it.

You know, I've found that in my life, the things that are most personal to me, that I care about most, are the hardest for me to write about. I think because they were so deeply traumatic or so freaking formative, when I write about them, they have to be *right*, otherwise it's just crap. Does that make sense? That's why that Anya piece, "Curling Like Pink Teacups" was so important to me. That's something I've been trying to write about unsuccessfully for almost ten years and fanfic helped me do it.

I'm so glad you like your slash goggles. I had them custom made speshully for you. With rhinestones. :)

[tabaqui]

Hrmmmmmmmmm... I think, as a writer who does a lot of world-building, your first statement about fanfic writing isn't necessarily true. I like the world of JossW., but i have my myriad problems with it and must usually build a new branch of his world to support my story.

I love the world-building aspect of post-everything or AU stories, because to me, that's the fun part of it all.

I'm writing something i hope to publish and it wasn't hard to start. I had a character in mind and a situation, i just needed to flesh it out. The process for that story has been the same for me as a fanfic story.

I think profic has some self-imposed rules and regulations that basically suck. I think the simple act of writing - and writing a lot, as i do with fanfic - will make getting past those rules easier.

And make what i write *better*.

An author i really admire once said not to describe 'the hero' too much, since it was easier for the reader to identify if there wasn't this specific description. She said 'never use mirrors'. I dunno about that - i don't become the character - i like to know what they look like. Too many fanfic writers spend too *much* time detailing Xander's 'chocolate orbs' and Spike's 'razor-sharp cheekbones'. Ack! Less is more, or at least - spread it out! Heh.

And you know me and description. :)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think, as a writer who does a lot of world-building, your first statement about fanfic writing isn't necessarily true.

You're right. Plenty of fanfic writers do engage in worldbuilding--like you, or say Lazuli Kat in "Repossession" with all the backstory and the corporate world descriptions. All I meant was that if you're not interested in world-building, with fanfic you don't really have to. Someone mentions below that some profic doesn't require world-building, and this is true too.

I'm so glad you're having success with your profic piece. Was this the piece you began for NaMOOORSLSAJFIO (ha, I forget the acronymn *g*)

And you know me and description

You're one of those exceptions I was talking about. :) But with you, you're not rehashing Willow's auburn tresses or the swimming pool at Sunnydale High. Most of your description is about this new slice of the Jossverse you've made or what's happened to the Jossverse we already know as a result of some apocalypse or what have you. That's *new* information.

[tabaqui]

Boy, i came off kind of whiney! Sheesh.
*ahem*

I guess it's 'cause i feel like it's a cheat to say 'oh, everybody knows everything about this, i don't have to do any description or building...' That's lazy and it also cheats your story to just make assumptions. It's a lot more fun - and interesting to the story - if you build a *little*. *Something*... Stories with almost no descriptive narrative just...leave me flat. It takes a very good writer for me to enjoy something without description, and then it's because they worked at emotion and inner life stuff so hard that i don't miss it.

Heee, yeah, it was what i was working on at NANONANO. Heh. Still working on it, still liking it a lot.

I think even in the most 'cliched' story you can still have new information - the fun part is figuring out where it comes from.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Naw. No whineyness. :)

Stories with almost no descriptive narrative just...leave me flat.

For the most part I agree with you, but I am finding that I sometimes enjoy stories that are almost entirely dialogue driven just as well.

[tabaqui]

Yeah, they just have to be really *well done*. It's a hard thing to pull off.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Stories with almost no descriptive narrative just...leave me flat. It takes a very good writer for me to enjoy something without description, and then it's because they worked at emotion and inner life stuff so hard that i don't miss it.

Interesting.

I have mad love for A Tale of Two Cities from childhood, so I am untroubled by Dickensian adverbage, but I am really not particularly a visual person, so espcecially in fanfic where I already know what everyone looks like, I don't miss physical description at all. I want to be able to watch what's going on in my head, so I've been struggling with how to keep physical description of action in a fic without bogging down the narrative, and I'll mention a few grounding details of physical appearance of people or places, but when I'm reading fic I'm usually filling in based on what I've already seen (in canon or in my own experience). I tend not to remember visuals well unless I'm actually presented with them as visuals (i.e., onscreen, rather than described in words) so even when I do read description it usually doesn't stick much, and I would bet that informs the minimalism of description I do in my own writing.

[tabaqui]

I think that's probably true. When I'm writing, i see what i'm writing as a little movie, playing in my head. Not minute by minute, but usually specific scenes. This is espcially helpful when doing an 'action' scene, as what i'm seeing is a lot like a music video - cutting from 'action' to 'action' and showing the most dramatic or important bits. Which is great 'cause action is difficult to write. A blow-by-blow is slow and not terribly interesting, but you don't want to gloss it too much, either.

I like to mention things about the character despite knowing what they look like. If you're having a conversation with someone, you tend to notice a ring, or how their hair looks in the light, or if their lips are chapped... stuff like that. So a Spander story might have Spike noticing that Xander's knuckles are scarred from work, or might have Xander thinking for a moment - to distract himself or whatever - about the paleness of Spike's shoulder and how he can see a vein just *there*... Nothing like 'the blond vampire!' but the little things you notice in other people, no matter how familiar.

I have to stop myself from going nuts with the descriptive stuff, heh. I'm thinking i've read some of your fic before, because your name is oh so familiar, but i can't remember!!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

When I'm writing, i see what i'm writing as a little movie, playing in my head.

My RL writer bud, krayat also writes that way. I wonder if that's why the two of you are such successful writers. As I say to Hermione below, I don't write visually at all.

You may have read some of her fic before. I know I've recc'd her before. http://www.athenewriter.com/myfic.html Her fic page

[tabaqui]

Well, i'd say it does give you a certain style, just as how you see and write gives *you* a certain style.

Thanks for the link!
:)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, little details are definitely good -- drawing the reader into the scene, making it feel more intimate, making the scene feel unique.

I know I've commented on at least one of your fics (the Connor/Spike one, complete with my asking what the title was since it was in the cut-tag but not in the entry itself) so maybe I'm familiar from that?

[tabaqui]

Oh, could be!
You never know. My brain is like Swiss Cheese most of the time. Heh.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

You know, it's really interesting that you say that because I'm not a visual person myself. I almost never picture anything when I read. Like at all. I can tell you what's happening or describe for you what someone looks like in what I'm reading, but I almost never picture it in my head unless the scene is incredibly complicated and I have to really concentrate just to figure out what's going on. And that's only happened a couple times and then I had to draw out a diagram. LOL

I think that's one of the reasons I have trouble writing description. I don't *see* what's going on. When I write, it comes to me already in phrases or sentences, not images.

I think this is also why reading fanfic has very much changed my perception of canon. Because I don't see images when I read, the characters are not really conflated with the actors for me. I mean, when I really think about Xander, I see Nick Brendan, but when I'm reading fanfic, I don't really picture him. So Xander for me has become this weird hybrid of Nick Brendan and the Xander from countless stories I've read. I never thought DAvid Boreanz was attractive at all until I started reading fanfic. Now when I think about Angel, he's got the bare bones of DB's form, but he's all fleshed out by fanfic. I know this makes me startlingly weird. :)

[executrix.livejournal.com]

When I write fanfic, I completely think of myself as shooting and then editing a movie--I kind of keep re-running scenes until they look right and, even more importantly, until the characters sound right. One thing I learned in B7 was just how little description it takes to set a scene, even if it's not in a canon location. However, even though I really like "sight gags" in stories it's hard to set them up well.

Personally I think that fanfic tends to unflesh DB--there's a lot of him to love as the seasons go on. And fanfic versions are almost always taller than the actors who play their canon characters.

Touche

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Personally I think that fanfic tends to unflesh DB

BWHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHAHHAHAHA

Re: Touche

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew...

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I sort of picture what I'm reading. It depends. When I'm *writing,* though, I have it at least somewhat pictured in my head and I'm trying to make sure the reader sees what I'm seeing, and I want to make absolutely sure that everything follows because I have a tendency to elide transitions (both motivational and also in terms of physical movement) when I'm imagining stuff in my head -- just jumping to the things I want to have happen.

Once I've seen an image, that is how I picture that thing from then on, hence my visceral reaction against books being made into movies, because even if I don't like or agree with how something got pictured, I can't get it out of my head (and since I only sort if picture stuff when I'm reading, it's not like I have a solid alternative image I can pull out and try to mask the movie image with in my head).

[And it's Nick BrendOn.]

[lyr]

I wrote a post about this very topic in my own journal not too long ago, actually. I talked about the different needs we have as writers that bring us to different types of writing, and the way changing views of authorship over the course of history have altered what we consider to be "real" writing.

Thanks for the link!!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

What a great essay! I think you're right about the way fanfic and profic *feel* to a writer. Fanfic is very much a collaborative experience--not only because we're building on someone else's story, but because we're reacting, sometimes very subtly, to all the other writers building on that same story. We're affected by fanon and by the plot du jour, even if the way we're affected is to react against those things. Profic feels like it's an individual effort, a solitary thing. In her book, Pugh makes a case for that feeling as false (the single authored book as myth) that I kind of agree with. Profic is building on the foundation of narratives that have come before it as well, even if that foundation isn't always acknowledged.

[mgsmurf.livejournal.com]

I think fanfic can be as much about not having to character build as world build for some. I know it's always been the character versus the world that draws me in.

And description still doesn't have to be overdone in profic. Especially in a short story where the relation between the reader and character is brief (what I really have experience writing) a few lines is all one needs. The rest of the characterization is simply shown in actions. That may need more beefing up than one could do in fanfic, but then the best fanfic rings so true because the writer's nailed the way of showing the characters' actions.

For me rethinking how one does a plot, that the beginning, middle, and end all need to fit together properly, which it doesn't always have to in fanfic, was the real learning experience in trying to write orig stuff for sale. Still working on it.

And at least in what I write, science fiction, it still takes creativity as you need to present something that seems new. I'm not sure how true that is of other genres.

One thing I really have realized is that as I've written more origfic and taken trying to sell it more seriously I've had a shifting view of fanfic and what it means to me. More and more fanfic is what I can do without critiquing, without caring in many aspects what others think. It's freeing. Although at the same time, there is little greater joy than seeing something you wrote from scratch work as a story and know it's all yours. That and profic takes a lot of belief and stubborn persistance, which some days I like as well.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think fanfic can be as much about not having to character build as world build for some

*nods*

You've got the template of the character already--you can subvert that template or work within it's confines, depending.

The rest of the characterization is simply shown in actions.

Show, don't tell, right? :) I like that type of characterization best anyway, when you figure out what kind of person someone is from what she does, rather than an authorial aside about her laziness or whathaveyou.

For me rethinking how one does a plot, that the beginning, middle, and end all need to fit together properly, which it doesn't always have to in fanfic, was the real learning experience in trying to write orig stuff for sale. Still working on it.

Oh, this is so true, and something I didn't think to put in the post. But fanfic allows us in many ways to experiment more with how we construct narrative. For instance, if I write a little story about Zoe and Wash in the galley right before they lift off from Miranda, and Wash agrees that they should have a baby, it's more poignant because WE ALL KNOW HOW IT ENDS. I don't have to write the ending; we've all seen it. And it makes that little slice of hope hurt to read.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

lunabee34 said:
because WE ALL KNOW HOW IT ENDS. I don't have to write the ending; we've all seen it.
Oddly enough I have a corresponding pro example. Last week's Masterpiece Theater (damn, I've forgotten the girl's name): Carrie's War (I think). It's about a 14-year-old girl who's evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz, meets a VERY TALL slightly older boy who likes public libraries so you can tell he's a good 'un. Then the girl thinks that he died when the local castle burned down. Cut to umpteen years later, when she's divorced and taking her kids to see the place. THen she has tea with her old friends who aren't dead either, and then a car pulls up and a very tall bloke gets out and walks toward the house...THE END.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

It's like you say below about fiction being RPF. When we read stories set in a historical period, our reading is always against the backdrop of what we know happens next.

[mgsmurf.livejournal.com]

Show, don't tell, right? :) I like that type of characterization best anyway, when you figure out what kind of person someone is from what she does, rather than an authorial aside about her laziness or whathaveyou.

The only story I have yet to sell while in critiquing got the comment that the reader felt they knew who the characters were just not exactly what they looked like. So I added a few sentences of description and figured it was the easier part to fix.

For instance, if I write a little story about Zoe and Wash in the galley right before they lift off from Miranda, and Wash agrees that they should have a baby, it's more poignant because WE ALL KNOW HOW IT ENDS.

Fanfic greatly lends itself to vigenettes while without the reference to the characters it's harder to do in profic. Although ultimately it's that in profic versus fanfic you have to give the story a greater driving force for existing so the editor doesn't want to put it down. In fanfic, people will read only decent or even crap stories because they already have the drive to.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I hope you have success selling the story. :)

[gloss]

Fabulous questions here.


The difficulty in comparing and contrasting profic and fanfic is that there are so many competing and divergent definitions of each.

Commercialism: Profic is written and published for a profit while fanfic is inherently non-profit (unless you're Lori Jareo).

Affective/libidinal investment: Fanfic is said to be written out of, and directed toward, the id or what-have-you. Apparently profic *isn't*.

Derivation: Fanfic is derivative work, while profic is supposed to be original.

Interpretive argument: A definition you see *a lot* less often than the others, whereby fanfic is a creative argument stemming from a particular interpretation of canon. Profic claims to have no canon, so the relationship to canon or its absence is the defining factor.

Like all binary oppositions, these depend on each other and undercut themselves and yaddayadda post-structuralism. *g* I can think of any number of profics that are anti-commercial or affectively-driven or derivative/responsive to other texts (isn't that what modernism *is*?), just as I can name a whole set of fanfics that aren't libidinally indulgent or very derivative at all (like bodyfic AUs and the like).

Of course, all this *also* depends on what fics we're talking about -- both original and fan. Small-press restrained suburban angst short stories are very different from mass-market supernatural romances are very different from sprawling multi-generational family sagas, you know? Just as fics can be vignettes, virtual series, novellas, slash, gen, whatever.

*sigh*

For *me*? The only significant difference between fanfic and original fic (and I've done both and published both) is that *my* (not all) fanfic is an interpretive argument from/to/about canon. It makes the most sense when read against canon, because it was written as part of a conversation with canon; my fanfic is, in part, a puzzle made out of canon and other pieces.

This isn't the case with other fanfic writers, so...

[executrix.livejournal.com]

replying to glossing: but even if there were a universally agreed-upon definition of AUs, and even if we were talking only about non-AU fic, the way that people see canon and especially characterization is so very different that there's no single thing called canon that can be nailed down!

It just occurred to me that in a sense profic is like RPF: i.e., the "canon" is something like "living in suburban Michigan in the 1970s." There are also a lot of genres where the tropes are so well-established that they might as well have episode numbers--e.g., fantasy trilogies or chicklit or ladlit or cozy detective stories.

[gloss]

there's no single thing called canon that can be nailed down!
I agree entirely; I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

profic is like RPF
Ahahahahaha, yes.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Replying to gloss' post upthread: true, one of the elements in a fair use defense of fanfic is that it is non-commercial. However, profic is usually written on spec, and if you look at the pitiful advance proffered for the average first novel, and which doesn't even earn out that advance, you can't really call it much of a profit motive.

Another complicating factor is the prevalence of profic series (some of which, in fact, are authorized fanfic, e.g., Trek novelizations)--there's certainly Nancy Drew canon, for example, or Poirot canon or Vorverse or Spenser canon.

And, to an extent, fans are people who would be reading lots of short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction, or EQMM, or the Saturday Evening Post and dozens of pulps if they were still publishing; being able to read 'em online and free is a bonus, but it sure doesn't help beginning writers not to have lots of markets for their work.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

profic is like RPF:

*grins*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Fanfic is derivative work, while profic is supposed to be original.

This is one of those binaries that Pugh talks about at length, and I really agree with her take on it. *Everything* is derivative. Homer already told all the good stories, you know? LOL

I really like what you say here about fanfic as an interpretative argument. One of the reasons I think I find myself participating in fandom with increasing frequency rather than turning my thoughts to my diss and other academic pursuits like I ought, is that fandom really is that conversation that academia purports to be but isn't. When I read and write meta posts and discuss fic in club_joss and read and write fanfic, I really feel like I'm participating in this huge conversation, some parts of which I may not be privy to or even interested in, but I'm still one voice in a chorus. I have no delusions that my academic writing will do anything other than take up space on my hard drive. LOL

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Someone has a "National Write My Goddamn Thesis Month" icon.

I'm only going by hearsay, never having gone to grad school myself, but isn't the whole point of being expected to master the entire literature on your subject, and then of being expected to publish regularly (and probably to present at a lot of conferences) that there's supposed to be a Choir Invisible of collaborating scholars?

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's the whole point. Except that it's a big fat lie. Even if I get something published, there's really no guarantee that it's going to become part of the conversation in any meaningful way. In order for that to happen, it would have to be responded to by some big name. When it's validated by that person, then it's part of the discussion. And there are so many of us grad students, it's just beyond unlikely that we all are gonna get that recognition.