Fanfics: Kill Them All

Derivative storytelling — now there’s a concept that needs to be sent back into the Age of Never Existed. In our “originality crisis,” we find the weak-minded yearning for creation but ignoring the need to make something new.

Is there merit in a new take on a classic story? Mayhaps. But is there room in this world for amateur tales expanding the Twilight universe? Or banal background narratives that explain the unexplored trainer-monster relationships in Pokémon? Or adding another layer of awkward teen romance to the Harry Potter series with fan-created awkward teen romances?

I shouldn’t have to answer this question.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

What’s your take on fanfiction? Do you think its [sic] a good idea for writing practice and coming into your own as a writer?

—Kymberlee Lane, Chandler, Ariz.

My take on fanfiction? I usually take it to the garbage, the shredder, or the fireplace. On rare occasions, I take it to the Black & Decker® FireShedder™ Deluxe. It’s a beauty. With just the push of a button, it vivisects sub-subpar writing, reduces the excrement to confetti-like crinkles, and sets the whole thing ablaze. If I had a nickel for every fanfic it handled, then I’d have a lot of nickels.

Outside of feeding a B&D®FS™D, there are only three ways to utilize fanfiction.

1) Don’t.

2) Write meta-fanfiction or fictional fanfiction.

A salvageable option, better suited for theory, in my opinion. If you’re not familiar with meta-narratives, you’ll be forgiven this once, spared from taking a chainsaw to your mouth.

With meta-fictional fanfiction, we add a layer of fictive narrative that makes an uncreative process twice as creative. Take the aforementioned awkward teen romances within the Harry Potter series. We already know they suck, and by extension, we already know that their half-breed, ill-formed fanfiction offspring will continue in the lineage of suck.

But what if you fanfic leech off of a fictitious fiction, like The Sordid Portent of Cornbread Field, Galaxtar Ballactica, or Moonlight: The Werewolf-Zombie Diaries? That fictitious fiction doesn’t exist and doesn’t have to suck. When you write about the bovine romances in Cornbread Field or the secret Pylon invasions in Galaxtar Ballactica, then you’ve removed the hereditary curse that plagues your typical fanfic.

Then again, if it’s not well-written, nothing can save you there.

3) Write literal fanfiction:

“Hunter oscillated gently in the summer heat, his lazy blades doing little to beat back the stifling air. He observed the lovers from his bird’s-eye-view of the spacious bed, teasing them with whatever breeze he could muster. A jealous gesture, to be sure, as he longed for a lover of his own.

He wanted to whirr in annoyance, as that garnered attention every now and then. A yank of his cord, a switch in his speed, sometimes a delicate caress. Perhaps he could hum continually, demanding immediate attention. Maybe his owner, after venting his frustration at the aberration, would understand Hunter’s cry for company, balancing on a step stool to embrace him tenderly, wrapping his arms around his forlorn blades and dated light fixtures.”

(You get the idea. And it’s not even that good an idea.)

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and chronicled in Brannon Chadman’s new fanfic “Writing All Wrong’s Adventure in Hogwarts.”  

Technical Fiction for Dummies

I’m not sure if there’s a such thing as “Driving Improvement School.” If there were, I’d be recommending it to every driver I know, since I’m the only one who knows how to drive on the roads here, there, and everywhere. But with driving improvement, there’s a presupposition in place: you have to know how to drive.

Same thing with writing improvement school—oh, wait, people opt for this when they don’t know how to write at all. If you’re looking to improve writing, you’d better know how to write first, whichever way you go about it.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I recently retired from a career in technical writing, but I’d like to try writing fiction for a change, just for the sake of doing it. How would you recommend making the transition from the technical background to fiction writing (or something similar)? I feel as if my writing experience would be helpful, and I’d like to make it work for me.

—Arthur Reeves, Roswell, Ga.

Throughout my infanthood and childhood, I often wondered how I would come to the craft of creative writing from a technical writing background. Ok, that never happened. I’ll admit though, there’s a fair bit of cognitive downshifting and upshifting needed for such a change. But just as flooring the gas pedal and shifting from first gear straight to seventh gear would wreck your transmission (I think), I wouldn’t recommend too drastic a change right away.

Here’s your solution: Write some technical documents and manuals through the lens of magical realism. Use a familiar form to bridge to the unfamiliar.

How about The Human Cookbook: Creative Recipes for a Cannibalist Kitchen? Set in an era of postmodern post-tolerance, you’d have an influential guide to making comfort food classics like “Oven-Roasted Tibilalus Anterior” (served with a piquant au jus) and “Chianti Braised Latissiumus Dorsi.”

Or you could go for something with broader appeal: 100 Great Theoretical Science Fair Projects for Kids (and their Parents!). In the bizarro future, I will have bizzaro wanted my kids to try out live-action cross-species genetic mutation (transmogrifying a pet hamster into a pet flying Nile monitor), and homemade hydrogen bombs (involving a microwave, a trashcan, non-dairy powdered creamer, Wonder® Enriched Uranium, and [REDACTED]).

Then again, if you’ve spent your career writing documentation, you could draw up a manual for the RainbowTronics™ Unicorn Sentinel 5000 20xV6. There will come a time when the unicorn will no longer be the hunter, but the hunted. When we deploy Sentinels to mow down these unicorns, we’ll need a practical guide on hand for Sentinel operators. It’d range from basic use (changing the viewscreen from the visible spectrum to the unicornvisible spectrum for hidden forest tracking) to advanced operations (alternating the frequency of the anti-ROYGBIV phasers, preventing the target unicorn[s] from adapting to the phaser fire). Since the impact of a unicorn’s horn registers over 9,000 pounds of force per square inch (at ramming speed), a primer on defensive protocol would be paramount. You could round it out with sections on maintenance and modular additions, especially for those bicorn encounters. Dangerous creatures, those bicorns.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and reassembled using the steps on pages 56-57 in Hodge Kvorak’s “Miss Assembly’s Guide to Blog Assembly.” 

Observitude

Poor writers observe nothing. Good writers observe something. Better writers observe many things. The best writers observe the right things. The worst writers observe everything.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

So my English teacher said that I need to learn to observe all my surroundings in order to become a better writer. She said that “good observations make great writing.” Is that true in your experience? And if so, how can I be a better writer through observation?

—Glenn Hamilton, St. Paul, Minn.

If I were you, I’d find a new English teacher. If I were this teacher’s boss, I’d fire her. If I were this English teacher, I’d hang myself.

That advice is travesty, unless you believe that more cup holders make a nicer car or that more milk makes your cereal better. And if you do, see the solution for “If I were this English teacher” above.

Keen observation, while a critical component of writing, does not better writing make. If I notice that a character’s home features “paisley wallpaper, adorned with elements of aqueous blue and alizerin crimsons, with a little smudge of blotchy yellow bulging at most a quarter inch in the top right corner of the wall, eight-and-three-quarters of an inch from the sepulcher-white crown molding, crisping lightly around the edges, with its little cracks creeping like random spiderwebs and crap,” then I’m going to 1) wonder what’s up with the wallpaper fetish, and 2) use this book’s pages as new wallpaper for the author’s house, right before I burn it to the ground.

Observation. All about light brushstrokes. Dishes “in disarray.” “Waxed” torso. “Insufficient” lightbulb. Holding a “stubby” cigarette “in his talons.” Hedgehogs, like “little forests of needles.” A glass of water “sweating profuse.” “Tangled” beard. “Grimy” sunglasses. An “old” book, “pages yellowed, spine creased.” “Stank” breath. Let the reader’s mind do some work. It’s lazy anyway, and it could use the exercise.

I’m fine with noticing the “splintered chocolate chip cookie” on the table. But when an author goes 3-D X-Ray vision in his observation, demanding me to notice the “forlorn cookie, dotted with six-and-a-half semi-sweet chocolate chips, split into three parts, wholly distinct: one shaped like the island of Corsica, a chocolate chip standing where you’d normally find Mount Pinatubo; the others identical, separate only by occupation of chocolate chips, one fiercely outnumbering the other, all equally lonely, keeping company with scarce crumbs,” then I protest. So should you. Mount Pinatubo is nowhere near Corsica.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and referenced in your English teacher’s pink slip.