Too Much Fanfic? - Why the explosion of fan fiction is reducing the number of writers
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Too Much Fanfic? |
| Creator: | Nic |
| Date(s): | late 1990s |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | multimedia |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Too Much Fanfic?, Archived version
|
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Too Much Fanfic? - Why the explosion of fan fiction is reducing the number of writers. is an essay by Nic. The article's argument is that with fanfiction.net and the explosion of writers on the then-fairly-new internet, fan fiction was becoming too common, too well-known, and too similar.
Some Excerpts
Too much fanfic is most definitely a probelm, particularly when you look at The X-Files or another universal, long-running fandom.
...the explosion of fan fiction. It seems like everyone's writing now. Writing equals feedback equals fame equals power on mailing lists equals world domination... in fandom, it seems if you want to be someone, you have to be writing.
Let's take a step back and look at the early years of fanfic. (This includes the early years of the Net as we know it today.) The people who were writing then weren't the people who are writing today. Today = almost anyone and everyone because it's the done thing. Before = people who needed to get a story out and didn't really care about the medium or the response. Look at the last sentence. I've classified early writers as a people with a need. Why do authors write? Because they have a really cool idea, because they feel obligated (to achieve fame), or because the damed muse won't leave them alone? In my opinion, only the final case is a reason to write.
Fan fiction isn't so special any more. It's everywhere, it's acknowledged by television producers, we're no longer the underground.