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]

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*