Concrit Thinkies and Poll
Apr. 15th, 2007 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookSo, as previously mentioned, I've been thinking about concrit lately.
This is partly due to all the discussion lately about Buffy Season 8 (interesting, isn't it, to hear all the variances in what people do or don't want from a story about Buffy?). It was enough to make me wonder how much fanfic authors do or don't have in common with the authors and creators they're borrowing from: some writers are world builders; others just want to tell a rollicking good story; some veer toward romance. Readers, ditto, in their likes and dislikes.
Are fanfic stories that are primarily by-the-numbers romances using familiar faces doing the same thing as stories that use, say, outer space as a scenic backdrop? If you write a fanfic story that expands on topics that your source material is largely uninterested in, what's the real relationship with the original story? And how does concrit fit into all this?
It strikes me that there's two major elements to fanfic: a large part of it is a social event, like a company picnic, and within that circle there are measures of popularity and "worth," and writers vary as to which one they value more. The second major element is the relationship to the original canon material: is it a continuing source of inspiration, or a jumping-off place for something orginal that may end up having little relation to the canon source's themes? If you tried to chart these elements - and I can't imagine it'd be easy, since every variable would have its own sliding scale - what would it tell us about how to give authors constructive criticism that they could really use?
[Poll #967000]
This is partly due to all the discussion lately about Buffy Season 8 (interesting, isn't it, to hear all the variances in what people do or don't want from a story about Buffy?). It was enough to make me wonder how much fanfic authors do or don't have in common with the authors and creators they're borrowing from: some writers are world builders; others just want to tell a rollicking good story; some veer toward romance. Readers, ditto, in their likes and dislikes.
Are fanfic stories that are primarily by-the-numbers romances using familiar faces doing the same thing as stories that use, say, outer space as a scenic backdrop? If you write a fanfic story that expands on topics that your source material is largely uninterested in, what's the real relationship with the original story? And how does concrit fit into all this?
It strikes me that there's two major elements to fanfic: a large part of it is a social event, like a company picnic, and within that circle there are measures of popularity and "worth," and writers vary as to which one they value more. The second major element is the relationship to the original canon material: is it a continuing source of inspiration, or a jumping-off place for something orginal that may end up having little relation to the canon source's themes? If you tried to chart these elements - and I can't imagine it'd be easy, since every variable would have its own sliding scale - what would it tell us about how to give authors constructive criticism that they could really use?
[Poll #967000]
