Fan Fiction – The Bad

So, we’ve already gone through the [good] points of Fan Fiction, and this is where I’m now allowed to briefly discuss a number of bad points about this genre of writing.

I mentioned in my last article that until very recently, I stayed as far away from Fan Fiction as possible, and I think it would be an adequate start to this article to determine why I was so entirely adamant about this.

I suppose the first reason is due to the fact that anyone can write Fan Fiction and post it up on a website for all to see. This generally means that the ‘quality control’ of such work is…well…rather nonexistent. I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world who would prefer to read a well thought out and written story, thankyouverymuch. Spelling mistakes, cliché plots and a general level of writing that may be classed as something a fifteen-year-old wrote on the bus on the way to school. Now, I’m not saying that the quality of writing is entirely poor across the board…but I didn’t feel as though it was worth my time to trawl through hundreds of stories just to get one that I thought was decent.

So now a bad point from a writing point of view instead of a reading one. I mentioned in my previous article that Fan Fiction was a great way to write in a safe, established environment. This is true enough, but like a literary double-edge sword, this could also be easily interpreted as restrictive. There are rules that a writer has to follow, which have been created by a person they’ve probably never even met. There’s little room to extrapolate (yes, I have been known to use long words on occasion) a different side to the world. Essentially, it’s a case of writing yourself into a corner, which is a completely illogical thing for an artist to do.

I was going to save this next point for the ‘ugly’ side of Fan Fiction, but I suppose it can be ‘bad’ instead, since it’s something which isn’t relegated entirely just to this sort of writing. This is the ‘look at me’ syndrome. Or popularity contest, whichever term you’d prefer. In certain Fan Fiction circles, there are groups of people who scribble down their first thoughts and expect everyone to believe it’s a work of art. Like I said, this happens plenty with regular writing too, so I decided to be lenient and put it here rather than in the next article.

I suppose for the most part, the reasons listed above come down to quality control. Whilst it is possible to find that one diamond in a mountain of coal, it requires a lot of patience and a strong stomach. If something goes wrong within a story, writers may be inclined to lay the blame on the initial author. After all, it wasn’t them who created the world! To an extent, Fan Fiction shows a narrow-mindedness or apathy to create something original. Of course, this wouldn’t be ‘bad’ in itself if most of the writers didn’t make the mistakes listed above as well (and more listed in the next and last article of this mini-series).

So feel free to peruse Fan Fiction sites…but make sure you’re not of a weak disposition first.