In Defense of Creativity
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| Title: | In Defense of Creativity |
| Creator: | Merlin Missy |
| Date(s): | June 12, 2008 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | In Defense of Creativity |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In Defense of Creativity is a 2008 essay by Merlin Missy.
Series
This essay is part of a series called Dr. Merlin's Soapbox.
Some Topics Discussed
- a link to "You Mean Everyone Brought Potato Salad?"
- visiting a friend who was very much against the Harry/Hermione pairing
- challenging the assumption that it's not very creative to write about established canon pairings
- there are only a certain amount of plots in fiction
- "When you've read ten "They Woke Up Gay / Genderswapped" stories, you've read the other three thousand, too. Yes, even that one about the chicken."
- "Sometimes we reject that canon entirely, grab the few bits we like, and construct something entirely new in its place." - hence AUs
- when a pairing or premise is popular, you just have to be more creative
- all this applies to profic as well as fanfic
From the Essay
...among her friend's arguments against the pairing one was actually against the 'shippers who supported that pairing. [The 'shippers themselves] were uncreative, claimed Merlin's friend. How much creativity did it take to write about canon? Surely the non-canonical 'shippers were indicating their own much higher levels of creativity.
...since there are often fights between the canon 'shippers and the noncanon 'shippers (with the gen fans off in the corner laughing their asses off at everyone else) perhaps we should examine the nature of this "creativity" in greater detail. It is my own personal belief that stories which line up with canon and those that deviate strongly from canon require equal amounts of creativity. They simply require different skill sets to accomplish successfully. (Successful = a well-received story, with death threats and flames only sent in the spirit of mock punishment for very bad puns.)
Let us start with our basic assumptions. The world at large says there are only seven plots, with "Groundhog Day" being the newly-created eighth. I submit that science fiction and fantasy have expanded those plots to a generous fourteen or fifteen, and strictly speaking, those could probably be broken into components of the Big Eight.
Fanfiction is not constrained by standard needs for plot (which is NOT my nice way of saying fanfics lack plot) so we have more room to spread. We have character pieces. We have vignettes. We have drabbles that are nothing but conversation or sex or both. We do need plots sometimes, but if I see a well-written piece that's nothing but my favorite couple snarking at each other, I'm pretty happy regardless of what my old English teachers might have said.
...there's a reason the "seven plots" idea is so popular [in fanfiction and other storytelling].
[...]
We tell each other the same stories over and over, because we like those stories, and we like the way certain people tell them.
It's not the song, it's how it's sung.
The challenge to writing canonical pairings or popular non-canon pairings is the same: try to tell the three hundred first story and make it different from what's already been done. The difficulty of this depends of course on how popular the pairing is, and it's made more difficult when one is holding tightly to canon (including the pairing or not). Anyone can take two names, stick them in a story, and be done. Again, we already know the plots they’ll undergo. But making it work, and making the audience think this particular go-round is special even when they've seen it before, that takes creativity no matter who the people are on the page.
The truth is in the eye of the reader. If your intended audience enjoys your work, you win. The end. You were sufficiently creative to meet the challenge of making someone else happy, unless your audience was yourself, in which case you won when you started writing. (Go, you!) Don't let anyone tell you that you're not as creative as the fans over there because they have a different 'ship than you do. Don't feel less creative than the writers doing original 'fic... Write the story that only you can tell, research it like mad if you need to, and give it to the readers who want it most. If it's a plot you've seen before, see what you can bring to it that no one else has. If you think it's a brand new story no one has done before, make it memorable enough that any story with the same idea that comes along later will be compared to yours. Have fun with it. And seriously, don't worry about what the other fans in the other 'ships are doing; they're following their own squee...
Fan Comment
[H. Savinien]: Ah, as a trawler through the effluvia of fanfic, this touches my silly heart. *showers with praise* Oh, THANK YOU for mentioning research. Thank you, thank you, thank you... There are so many stories that would not have earned my ire if, for example, the author had not used an internet generated Elvish in place of Sindarin (or simply "He said something, but she could not understand his words," poorly phrased as that is.) Or the person who is apparently under the impression that glue is a reasonable lubricant. *shudders* Et cetera. The world of fanfic can be a very rewarding or a very frightening place and creativity plays into that. For example, I love reading [Sirius gloating over his spork http://penknife.livejournal.com/170160.html], but have no interest in what anybody was doing with the Giant Squid.