The Complicated World of Fanfiction

I realize I haven’t written much about my writing and creative life in this blog, and it’s supposed to be a writer’s blog. What can I say? I’m just a bit ditzy like that, and I am a professional when it comes to going off topic. Just because I haven’t been writing about being creative doesn’t mean I haven’t been creative though. I’ve spent the most of the past three weeks trying to think of how to go about writing my latest fanfiction creation, Chance Encounter: Legacy of the Third Age. I’d been consulting all sorts of Tolkien experts and discussing options with them; I’d even read bits of the Silmarillion. While it has been hailed as one of Tolkien’s greatest works, and I loved his other great work, The Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion was a really dry read, at least for me. I’m the type of person who latches onto a character and then attempts to put myself in the character’s shoes. The Silmarillion is more like a history text.

Anyway, I read the relevant bits, did a lot of discussion, and that was just for the back story. It really goes to show how hard writing is when you want to do it well, and fanfiction, just because it can’t be published, isn’t what douchebags write. You need to do a lot of research or else they’ll flame you to kingdom come.

Speaking of flames, many people can’t tell constructive criticism from a flame, which is sad, because while flames are sometimes just copy-and-pasted messages, constructive criticism is designed to help the writer. Sure, it doesn’t feel great when you first read it, but after you’ve absorbed it, you realize that you were doing something wrong, and you learn from that other person’s experience.

So, if you ever get a flame (generally goes along the line of ‘your writing sucks big time, and you’re so bad that you should jump off a cliff’, or something like that), you should just reflect a bit before replying. Is your writing really bad? Have you checked your spelling and grammar? Have you totally warped the fandom you’re writing in? If you answered yes to the first, no to the second, and yes to the third, then maybe you should change the story, or go to someone else for advice. If you get a flame, you’re probably going to get concrit as well, if your story needs changing. If you only get that one flame, you might also have to check whether the flamer hates you. There is a lot of faction struggle going on in the fanfiction world, and some people flame each other because they hate each other. You might be the friend of someone who has an enemy, and the enemy will see fit to flame you because you are their enemy by association. Also, don’t reply to the flamer. It just makes them happy.

So, yeah. That’s my advice for the day.

And now, I should be writing some concrit for someone, and then go off to eat breakfast/brunch, and write in my journal. I finished my first Moleskine notebook yesterday, and now I’m going back to the cheap stuff for a while before I continue with the rest of my Moleskines.