three things! just three!

[kaigou]

Well, you have to start somewhere. (Examples somewhat edited/paraphrased to protect the guilty.)

ETA: If you're here from the fandomworks comm... well, I'm not really sure why this post got linked to there, because it's not really about fandom per se. It's about writing, and relates to fanfiction only as one springboard towards writing original fiction. If you're expecting a rant about how to write good fanfiction, let alone for a specific fandom, this post ain't it. If you're interested in a low-key rant about derivative writing and doing it wrong, then, welcome.

1. Grammar.

When I read the excerpt of an author's story, and the very first line of the story is a run-on sentence lacks a coordinating conjunction....

Her dress made swooshing sounds on the floor, it was a sound that echoed up to the
tall windows that were open to catch the early morning light.

MAYDAY.

When I convince myself to move past what might be just a quirk of the voice, and realize that a) this same comma-splice* pattern repeats itself in every line of dialogue (and much of the narration) and that b) the author has, in the space of about a page, added apostrophes to every instance of the possessive "its", and did it not once but seven times...

ABANDON SHIP.

Does it count as a DNF if you can't even finish reading the excerpt without your brain bleeding out your eyes? And the author honestly expects me to pay for this?

*-is bricked-


2. Repetition.

When I find myself going back to check and make absolutely sure that the work in question was, in fact, associated with some kind of editorial process -- and yes, the publishing company claims to have slush readers and editors -- this is a warning sign. Here. The repetition, let me show you it.

“Green,” Blue said. “If anything happens to me, you’re to take Yellow and leave. Red is not to have him. Understood?”

“Yes, Blue,” Green replied.

Blue nodded, grinning at the rage that filled Red’s face. No matter what happened, Red now knew that he would never get his hands on Yellow. The moment that it looked like Blue might lose, Green would leave and take Yellow with him.

Wouldn't this be where any editor worth their salt would say, gee, y'know, this is NOT how we go about padding the word-length? It doesn't matter how good your premise is, or how well-drawn your characters are, if your narration is that clunky and repetitive, I start feeling like someone along the line is a major space-case. How can you not realize you just told me what you already told me only two lines before? For that matter, how can you not see just how freaking irritating it is to read this kind of pattern over and over and over?

Not this makes me despair, oh, no. It just leads me to make a note that I will never, ever purchase from this company again. Not because I'm certain all stories it publishes will be bad; it has a stable of enough authors that I'm sure there'd eventually be gold among the dross. But when the editorial staff thinks this is high-quality, I'm fairly certain that even potential-gold would be skillfully spun right into dross.

3. Serial numbers, or, "Man, has Cassie Clare got a LOT to answer for."

In general, I don't have a problem with a fanfic writer who poaches his/her own work for use in an ofic. You'll see the advice all over the place: you can get away with basing an original work on a derived work, as long as you file off the serial numbers.

All good and well, but how does one know just how much filing is enough? I asked a Tor editor that, once, and the reply I got was this: "If someone who is generally familiar with the fandom reads the story and is reminded strongly of the fandom, then the story is derivative and potentially copyright-infringement. If someone who is generally familiar with the fandom does not immediately think of the original fandom in reading the story, then the serial numbers have been sufficiently filed clean."

Thing is: the agent reading the story? Possibly familiar. But also possibly not. The slush reader? Same. The editor? Same. The problem is, if any of the usual gatekeepers (agent, slush, editor) are not generally familiar with the fandom, their silence does not mean that the story passes the serial-number test. It could just as easily mean they've never bloody well heard of the fandom, and thus are not qualified to gauge if the filing was sufficient.

What, you ask, does it mean to be 'generally familiar'?

Here's an easy one: Harry Potter. Thanks to the juggernaut that is the Rowling!verse, the average person probably qualifies as generally familiar, and is probably able to recite these particulars in describing the story:

1. The main character is named Harry Potter. He's an orphan who wears glasses and has a scar on his forehead.
2. He has two best friends: a girl and a boy, who are fellow wizard-students.
3. He and his friends have an ally who's a giant.
4. Harry has a mentor who's a really old wizard; he has a rival in another student, and a nemesis in a teacher who has it in for him.

If you file off the serial numbers, you get what's a pretty basic pattern and one that exists in a variety of stories: young protagonist has two peer-allies, an older ally, an authority-figure mentor, a peer-nemesis, and an authority-figure nemesis. Together he and his allies fight crime, with the various nemesises (nemesi?) being obstacles almost as much as the actual bad guys. With some tweaking, this paragraph's outline covers everything from Treasure Island to Star Wars.

The issue isn't really whether Clare definitively wrote an obvious derivation; the critiques I've read of her work point out a lot of similarities, but I'd say I'm also generally familiar with a fair bit of urban fantasy. For every point that's "remarkably similar" to the story's known (derivative) origins, I can name two other urban fantasy works that predate her stories that bear the same marks.

In other words, the urban fantasy genre has an awful lot of overlap in the way it uses this basic premise, thus you can end up with two types of derivative works that bear strong resemblance to each other, to the point they're nearly indistinguishable: the work that repeats the same basic archetypes/tropes (aka the general outline I listed) and the work that garners its understanding/use of those archetype/tropes via an existing work as filter. A step removed, two steps removed, but the same foundation underneath. That's one way to cloak the origins, as well: write in a genre where the original story was already derivative in its own right.

When you move into lesser-known fandoms, I'm saying you just can't rely on an editor saying, "this is great! we want to publish this!" as proof that your work is removed enough to be unrecognizable. If I, as someone generally familiar with the fandom, do recognize your work: well, not only does this make your editor look like an idiot for not realizing/catching the fact that you've pulled a fast one by selling, yes, selling a copyright-infringement work, it also alienates me, the reader, who shares a fandom with you.

I'm not thinking: wow, it's like revisiting a favorite story! No, I'm thinking: I paid for this? When I could've read it for free as an honest story that tries to be nothing more than what it was, once: a work of fanfiction?

Reading it as a professionally-published work of original fiction, I don't see the author as witty or ingenious. I see the author as pathetic. Write your own goddamn story, if you want me to pay for it. Don't take someone else's hard work and make money off it, because all you did was change the first letter of the serial number and that just isn't sufficient.

The reason I say Clare's got a lot to answer for is because there was so much hype related to the fact that a published work was previously a fanfic -- and an awful lot of lazier authors (and less-aware or less-informed editors) may've gotten the impression that one can play a bit more fast-and-loose with fanfic-to-ofic than had previously been realized. But in general, even if Clare's story has hallmarks of not being fully converted per readers already 'generally familiar', overall she did put time, somewhere along the way, into filing off the serial numbers. The problem is that then she let it be known that the story had once had serial numbers. That's great as a marketing ploy ("fanfic writer goes pro!"), but not so great in terms of precedent.

Given the amount of recognizable-as-once-fanfic profic I'm finding (especially in the M/M and romance genres), I suspect there's a lot of authors out there who've confused "filing off the serial numbers but being honest about the fact that once there were serial numbers" with "just not bothering to file anything at all".

And if you can't be bothered to get out the file, then don't expect me to feel good inside at supporting a fanfic writer gone pro, because you're not being professional. I'd support you gladly if you had the guts to tell your own story, but you didn't. You retold someone else's story, someone else's characters, someone else's world, and you know what? In a fanfic, it may be cause for a delighted 'I see what you did there'. When I actually paid for the damn story with the expectation I'd get something new and inventive and original, believe me, the 'I see what you did there' takes a very, very different tone. It becomes You're not fooling anyone, y'know. With a dose of absolute disgust: with you for passing this off as original, with the publishing company for falling for it, and with myself for actually giving you money for this tripe.

Can it be done right? Is it possible to file enough? Hell yeah, if you're willing to put in the effort. (That said, all examples are NOT truly fanfic-to-ofic in actuality; rather than out anyone who does have a well-filed fanfic history, I went with made-up examples that might be fanfic-originated... if you squinted really hard.)

For instance, the Gundam Wing fandom may be massive and well-established but it really is a niche, along with the majority of Japanese animanga (excepting the major Cartoon Network phenomenons like Dragon Ball Z). For the most part, it's fairly safe to say you're going to get more people not-aware than aware. For those who are generally familiar, though, the basic details might be as follows:

1. Heero, protagonist: conflicted but determined, Japanese, wears spandex -- the Everyman.
2. Relena, love interest: idealistic, connected to/allied with story nemesis, N.European, aristocratic -- the Princess.
3. Duo, ally: talkative, wears hair in a long braid, American, dresses like a priest -- the Joker.
4. Trowa, ally: laconic, indeterminate ethnicity, works as clown/acrobat in circus -- the Cipher.
5. Quatre, ally: gentle, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Arabian, has personal corps of Turkish soldiers -- the Strategist.
6. Wufei, ally: arrogant, wears hair in pony-tail, Chinese, struggles with demands of war -- the Outsider.

Let's say the author's first version was a fanfic revolving around Trowa. Being a character of no specific (defined) ethnicity, there's a bit more room for play, but his connection to the circus is a significant detail for anyone generally familiar with the story's setup. Hmm, something Trowa-like that also has M/M relationship per the GW fandom's overwhelming tendency for M/M slash... *thinkthink* Ah, I got it.

Denise Rossetti's Strongman is set in a circus; the main character is a former soldier grown tired of fighting, generally keeps to himself, who works as a bruiser and all-around strong man. He meets, and is eventually seduced by, an acrobat.

Hmm. It is entirely possible that Rossetti might've written her original work poaching large chunks from what was originally GW fic, but honestly, the only reason it even occurred to me at all to draw a line between the two was after several minutes of thinking, and the fact that her story is one of the only stories in my collection with a circus setting. Other than that? Never once in reading or rereading did I ever think to say, "gee, this reminds me so much of Gundam Wing!"

The protagonist may have similarities to Heero, but really only to the degree that both Heero and Rossetti's protagonist are drawn from the same war-weary, withdrawn, stoic, privately uncertain hero-cloth. The love/lust interest may have similarities to Trowa, being a risk-taker as well as very damn good at what he does, but beyond that, he diverges, drawing more from the base archetype of the Joker than of the Cipher. The only manifest connection is that of the circus. Anything and everything else is either a complete mix-up in the mix-and-match between GW and Rossetti's story, to the point that it's much easier to draw a solid line from baseline archetypes to Rossetti's work; any attempt to draw lines between baseline archetypes to Gundam Wing and then to Rossetti's story end up with some pretty tenuous and tangled dotted lines.

If there were even the remotest possibility that Rossetti's story draws strongly from a past fanfic, she's filed them numbers damn freaking well. (Alternately, that she's writing based on a fandom of which I'm not even remotely familiar, let alone generally familiar: in which case, I could be as bamboozled as the editors.)

So. How might you be signaling to readers that you've only changed the first two numerals in the serial number, but not actually done the hard work of filing?

For starters, do just that: only change a letter or two.

Poach a fanfic and change the character's name from Harry Potter to Barry Kotter. Less obviously, replacing Quatre with Quint, or Kakashi with Kaname. The first syllable of a name is often a major marker for a character name; it's also what, as authors, you're recommended that you not duplicate lest you end up with readers unable to keep the names separated: Tristam and Trissie, Joey and Joseph, Kerry and Kelly, Shamar and Shamma. So if you tell me the main character is named Quint and his love interest is Tracey, it's not enough on its own to tweak my generally familiar button, but it's a start.

Now, part of what makes a character recognizable isn't just the name; a lot of what makes the character that specific character is a combination of details, quirks, and history. A stoic hero with dark hair, blue eyes, of Japanese descent and Japanese name may vaguely tweak the generally-familiar reader, but if you put that same stoic character in spandex, bells are going to go off. Double that if the stoic hero's love interest is either aristocratic/upper class woman or long-haired guy. Them bells ringing pretty loud right now, and they'll hit klaxon-levels if the long-haired guy has a surname of Maxey, Maxon, Maxfield, Maxham, or the original name, Maxwell -- and no, for someone generally familiar, you are not actually being that witty to use Markwell. If the character wears his hair in a braid, you're probably not even safe with trying an in-joke of Bridewell, Farwell, Rockwell, or Stillwell -- and even O'Machs is probably right out.

Let's try another fandom, say, Naruto. A story about ninjas, where the ninja-students form teams of 3-4 people (1 leader, 2-3 team mates), and the teams are set not by leader-choice but by some overall authority. So far, pretty basic, enough that you can find this in plenty of stories.

More specific, but still at the level of what you might've gathered if you're generally familiar with the storyline: main character, Naruto, blond, brash, boisterous, mediocre at actual ninja arts but enthusiastic nonetheless. Sakura has pink hair, is starry-eyed over her crush, hides vicious temper, doesn't always put up with Naruto so well. Sasuke is withdrawn, focused on vengeance, more likely to insult than compliment, major family conflict/tragedy in backstory. Kakashi is senior-level, constantly reading a book, major scar from forehead through eye to cheek, appears absent-minded, enjoys the random practical joke, and the story has a running gag about the fact that Kakashi always wears a mask, and has never been seen with it off.

So if I'm reading a story set in a world of ninjas, I can forgive the general details, because it's fairly safe to say that Naruto's creator wasn't the first to come up with the general idea. But when I get to the scene where the allegedly senior-skill-level ninja is busy reading a book to the point where he appears to be absently unaware he's being spoken to and then later is questioned by the protagonist for his refusal to remove his mask, even when showering, I say: WOAH RIGHT THERE LITTLE MIZ AUTHOR. You couldn't even bloody well try and find a different consonant for the character -- something other than 'K' to begin the name -- but beyond that, you couldn't even try to make the character yours. You just changed the name and otherwise left the character completely intact, and it's patently obvious to this reader, as one generally familiar with the fandom, what exactly your story is.

I see what you did there, and if it's injury enough that you aren't fooling anyone, it's insult that you aren't even trying. Not okay. Not even close to okay.

It doesn't actually matter at this point whether the rest of the story trods off into new territory. I can tell you right now that the first version, the fanfic, wasn't even AU in a world-setting, because the setting is pretty damn identical. I can tell you that the major quirk (never removing mask) was introduced, I put that together with the use of K as the first consonant, and thus getting to the part where the character has "that book he's always reading", exhibits a lackadaisical devil-may-care absent-mindedness, and then is described as perpetually late... I wasn't in the land of suspicions any more. I was pretty squarely in the "oh, yeah, this is fanfic, so why am I paying for it? why can't I just read the fanfic version for free, and not have to either purposefully mis-read the story so as to make it truly original or mis-read in the opposite direction so it's the characters I already know?" Either way is twisting my brain into knots, and that pisses me off.

Here's another example: it's entirely possible that Miyazaki's Spirited Away is actually inspired by (read: derived from) the mid-80's Tom Hanks/Daryll Hannah vehicle, Splash. I mean, both have nearly identical opening segments: young child falls into water, is saved by another young-child-cum-water-creature, and years later the two meet again, with eventual love/affection involvement. In that light, hmm, one could see Spirited Away as a redux of Splash, but the setting is different, the journey is different (water creature into our world, versus journey into water creature's world), the creature itself is different (mermaid vs dragon), the outcome is different (together vs separating). There really is nothing else that would draw a bead between the two, yet it remains possible that the second is derived from an idea rooted in the first, because there is enough of a similar grounding -- yet if so, them there serial numbers are otherwise completely oblitherated.

In the opposite direction: what if Spirited Away is, in turn, the origins of the storyline for Stephanie Rowe's Must Love Dragons? Well, you've got an Asian dragon with shapeshifting skills, who's effectively disowned/un-landed (un-rivered?) and adrift from his original moorings... and that's about it. It's entirely possible that Rowe said to herself, what if instead of a Japanese dragon who turns into a boy, it's a girl who was turned into a dragon, and what if instead of being stuck in the otherworld, the dragon were unable to leave her New York apartment, and what if, what if, what if... until all those what-ifs piled up together and any resemblance to the original Haku is so thoroughly filed clean that no one would ever look at Theresa-the-dragon and think, "hey, that reminds me an awful lot of that movie by Miyazaki..."

A lot of it has to do with quirks, I think, because the fundamental elements of a character: personality, appearance, name, can be pretty mundane. That's one part of what copyright (for fiction) revolves around, that it's not enough to have a blond-haired cheerleader who fights vampires; one must be able to generally recognize this character as distinct, and the distinction is often based on a variety of quirks or features that together form an entirety above and beyond the simple template of "blond-haired cheerleader". It's that she's petite, it's the way she questions authority, it's the snappy comebacks, it's the stubbornness under the cheer, it's the circle of female and male peers, it's the ambivalence over whether her chosen role is really the 'right' path, and whether it's one she wants at all.

If you have a blond-haired cheerleader who fights vampires and is also a loner, hates witches, is socially maladapted, rarely has a comeback, disdains any attraction to the enemy, and has an assistant (not mentor) who's, hrm, a gregarious engineer instead of an absent-minded librarian... well, you're not writing Buffy any more, and from what I've read, any contest that you plagiarized Buffy would fall flat. Your character is distinct, above and beyond the simple test of someone generally familiar with the fandom seeing a similarity.

But it's not just the entire scope of the fandom-recognition leaking into your story; it can be just one character. If your protagonist is a high school teacher and his story revolves around his fight to save the local parks, well... not really thinking of a specific fandom based on that description. If, however, your high school teacher is also short, blond, wears his hair in a braid, and has a prosthetic arm-and-or-leg, I'm going to chuck your story several feet, because that's not your protagonist, that's Edward Elric, transplanted into suburbia. The instant, the very instant that your protagonist also acts and reacts as I've seen Edward Elric act and react in canon, you've lost me not just for this story but also for any others you write: because I don't trust you anymore.

I don't trust that you'll sell me your own stories, that you're even capable of telling your own story; I don't trust that you won't try to sell me another bill of goods again in the future, even if it's with a fandom with which I'm not generally familiar and therefore not quite as quick to recognize the origins. I want to get lost in a story, not sit here and pick out the landmarks twenty miles early, because then I get no surprise nor delight from the story, and I don't trust that your lousy tour-guide skills this time around will somehow resolve themselves for the next story.

I mean, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't get better: you just got paid for this, thus, in most people's eyes, it's a success, and thus there's no reason to mess with a good style. From where you stand, an editor published it, you got money for it, hey, let's all do that again! Take another fanfic and change a name or two, and there you go: you did the first version with a ready-made fandom audience cheering you on, and then you did the second version with little or no effort to revise, and you got paid for it. Wow, that pretty much is the closest authorial version I can think of, of having your cake and eating it, too.

Too bad the cake tastes like crap.

Especially since it taints everything, once I've twigged that you've got a re-named not-your-own character hoisting the story. Now I'm looking at other characters, wondering who's an analogue for what. Hrm, that secondary character has a name starting with S, and an authoritarian family, and is strongly stoic and slightly bitter, I wonder if that's supposed to be an AU of Sasuke? That love interest is sweet, taller than the hero but younger, a peace-maker with a brilliant mind and a gentle humor... named Alfred. Ding, ding, ding, we have a story that's a badly-cloaked redux of Elricest.

Problem is, even if I can't find a single other character recognizable per any fandom based on being generally familiar, it's too freaking late. As a reader, I am no longer reading your story as-it-is: hell, I'm barely glancing, mostly skimming, because I'm looking to see what else you've got in there that's faked, that's just a rehash of someone else's better-told story. I could care less about your story or your characters, now, because obviously you cared so little for me or my time that you couldn't be arsed to expend the effort and get original. And just as bad, you cared so little for my time and energy that when I make the choice to spend money on your story over someone else's, that you then sold me a story I suspect I could've gotten elsewhere, before this, for free.

I mean, dude, it's like telling me that what I've ordered is a fabulous one-of-a-kind thing, with pretty cover and enticing details, and when it arrives and I open the box, I don't find a handcrafted one-of-a-kind thing. I find something I know I saw on the giveaway shelves at Goodwill last week, and I know all you did was go snag it from Goodwill, take off the giveaway-tag, stencil your own name on the bottom, pack it up and ship it to me. I can't shake the feeling that you must be pretty proud of yourself, fooling we readers/purchasers like that.

The worst part is that it's really just general laziness. I think that's what gets me, more than anything else, because it's not really that hard to mix things up and make the line-drawn from fanfic to ofic that muddy. Take the character of Kakashi, for instance; the running gag about Kakashi refusing to wear his mask is just that: a gag. To the best of my recollection (remember, generally familiar), there's never any real reason given. It's just his thing.

So, remove the mask. Make it something else he never removes, like, say, a necklace. Pay attention to any observer-character's reaction, because there's a difference between "he never takes it off" and "he's never seen without it". The former implies that someone is standing around waiting for him to take it off, while the latter implies that it's not necessarily in the way or the object of anyone's attention per removal, just so much as something the character always wears, and usually not of any real notice.

Maybe you have a scene that hinges on his refusal to remove versus another character's curiosity (a common exchange in many Naruto fanfics featuring Kakashi). So you've made it be a necklace, but make it made of something that one would think would normally be removed in, hrm, the shower. Make the necklace, say, a series of braided ribbons with a knot at the base of his throat. It's reasonable that any showering partner would think, shouldn't that come off? Wouldn't water hurt the silk?

But no, the character won't take it off, and you can retain the notion of "this is something that matters to the character" but without the (if not generally familiar) inexplicable originally-meant-as-comedy feature of Kakashi always wearing a mask. (Which, if you think about it, really only works as comedy, in which one can get away with saying he eats so fast, or is so good at ninja-ness, that no one ever sees him without the mask even when they're going out to dinner together.)

In a fiction story, I'd expect it to make sense, and that means at some point you explain or imply that there's a reason, other than just ornery-ness, for this refusal to remove something that's really pretty damn obtrusive. The same thing goes for Heero always wearing spandex, or Edward and his pocket watch, or any other character with a distinctive visual or personal quirk. In many stories, we do find out why the character is obsessive about that possession or clothing or style. One might theorize that Kakashi is, for some reason, highly protective of his face and/or mask, but so far canon has offered no payoff; in Edward's story, we have gotten the pay-off, and one suitably important/serious enough to warrant his protectiveness. Kakashi's mask, having been played consistently for humor and as a gag, likely will never get a payoff, let alone be removed.

It's a lot like that guy on the old television show, Home Improvement -- the neighbor where you never see the bottom half of his face, because he's reading a paper or talking over the fence or standing behind his grill. Maybe at first it was a lark, but it became a stylistic thing, and the show stuck with it. It grew organically out of the humor. If you were to do an ofic of Mr Wilson and include this no-show-the-mouth part, in fiction you would, eventually have to explain why. The alternate, of course, is to not draw that much attention to it in the first place, and just leave ambiguous whether Mr Wilson's lower face has been seen, or if Kakashi removed his mask to eat, to drink, to shower.

Thing is, in fanfic, these things are noted, and attention is drawn to them, because they define the character. Thus, when you use such an inexplicable and inorganic character element from the get-go, especially with emphasis in narration (ie "no one had ever seen him remove it"), you are signaling from way ahead that this detail defines the character. Either you come up with an explanation that comes out of the story's plotline, or realize that you're saying loud and clear that you're a lazy writer who'd rather lift someone else's character details than have to put out the effort to come up with any of your own.

Which you can do, because obviously there are slush readers and editors out there who aren't generally familiar with our shared fandom and therefore won't realize and will let you get away with it. They're your gatekeepers; I guess you can rationalize it with, if they're fooled, what does it matter who else is fooled? Well, it matters to me, because I don't like paying money for that kind of reheated dross.

You can be miffed that I'd call you on it, or shrug your shoulders at such complaints because hey, you got yours and you're laughing to the bank, so whatever. But really, what you should be doing is thanking your lucky stars that you're still in print -- because you never know who just might be pissed enough to let your editor in on the secret.

sometimes I really wish I got a link-warning, a la linkspam, when I end up on metafandom. at least so I have some warning and can neaten the place up a bit before everyone shows up.

ALSO: the whole 'filing off the serial numbers'? Very old analogy. NOT original with me, not by a long-shot. It's a nice visual in the sense that if you're running a stolen VCR ring rehashed fanfic scam 'inspired by' concept-story, you can lift huge chunks of it from many places, from Shakespeare to soap operas -- but filing off the serial numbers is what makes it yours in that you're removing the definitive marks that would allow someone else to identify a prior owner/creator of your stolen VCR story.