Fan fiction. The mere mention of it can send people into paroxysms of rage or ecstasy. People either Love it or Hate it, with capital letters. Usually fanfic is the bailiwick of the dedicated fanatic who believes that a story MUST be told, whether it fits into the canon of the world someone else created or not. According to Wikipedia, the first fanfic might have involved Don Quixote.
The ultimate fan fiction is probably doing work for hire on a company-owned character. Ask anyone who’s written a Star Wars novel or one of the major superheroes for DC or Marvel and you’ll likely find they were a fan of the characters before they started typing things up. For us, here in the Cafe, every week we get asked a question that may further enlighten or illuminate the week’s topic here. Below you’ll find our confessions as to whether or not we’ve written it and even what we think about it. Pull up a chair and see what you think.
If I had to name the single most influential… influence on my preferred writing style, it would have to be the denizens of the Usenet newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery [0].
I was in IT for about ten years, herding Linux boxen and generally trying to make myself useful to people who had no fsking clue what I did, but had a vague idea that it was All Terribly Important. On the one hand, it was a great job being as that you got paid to websurf seven-and-a-half hours a day [1] and about half an hour of actual, productive typing [2]. Eventually, as the remains of the burst tech bubble finally stopped deflating and I was unable to find a permanent paying job that would support me in the lifestyle to which I would like to have become accustomed [3], I made a sideways career move into library science and somehow ended up as a quasi-historian.
Alt.sysadmin.recovery was the online watering hole where bunches of professionally very clever, professionally very geeky people [5] went to bitch about their jobs. All subcultures develop their own ways of doing things— jargons, inside jokes, and unique communications styles— as a way to separate the sheeple from the sacrificial goats [6], and the Scary Devil Monastery formed theirs out of a self-deprecating blend of gallows humor, unbridled cynicism, science fiction and Monty Python references, a love of all things Pratchett, snarky and illustrative footnotes [7], a withering contempt for anyone with an IQ demonstrably below body temperature [8], and a philosophy that there are days when the most productive thing to do is to kick back with a fermented beverage of choice and just watch the lunatic parade pass by [9].
The style is esoteric and harsh for non-initiates. Needless to say, it gets toned down in my professional writing to avoid frightening Those Who Sign The Paychecks. But it does make writing that difficult first draft ever so much more fun.
[1] Justified as Googling error messages. Whatever your obscure error message was, somebody else on the Internet was already out there bitching about it. And misery does love company.
[2] Because before you fix the syntax error in sendmail.cf, you first have to understand sendmail.cf.
[3] One with such luxuries [4] as rent paid and actual food on the table that didn’t come out of a dumpster.
[4] Needless to say, in those days broadband internet was not a luxury, but life’s blood itself.
[5] Much like myself.
[6] In asr lore, the only way to properly diagnose a misbehaving SCSI chain.
[7] Ahem.
[8] That is to say, just about everybody.
[9] From a high location. While holding a high-powered rifle with an extended magazine and laser sights.
I would have to say that my writing style is mostly unique, although I’ve snagged techniques from practically everyone I’ve read. Nevertheless, I try to provide a happy ending, or at least a satisfactory outcome, to my novels (I mean, how awful to kill off a YA character?!?), and so did one of my favorite authors, Nevil Shute, whose novels almost always beat up the main character all the way only to find him in the arms of his true love at the end. I may not go that far, but I do try to keep my MC alive through the story and reunited with a loved one at the end, too.
After reading a really good book, or watching a TV show or movie, I find myself adopting the speech patterns of a character that I identify with. Sometimes it sticks around for a few days, other times it sticks around for months or even years. If you’ve ever watched Deadwood you can probably guess what my favorite curse word was for a very long time.
There are a conglomeration of authors I need to thank for who I am today as a writer. Embarrassing as it is, I must begin with the myriad of authors who wrote for Dragonlance, but in particular Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Thank you. I discovered a love of fantasy literature through your guiding hands. Without Dragonlance I may never have graduated past reading about girls and their horses. Without them, I may never have discovered the authors who would later directly influence my writing. (more…)
I would like to say that I am a complete original. My ego would prefer that I depict myself in this essay as a creative genius who oozes unique ideas all the time.
Honestly? Well if I’m being honest, then I have to admit that whatever I am currently reading heavily influences my writing style. My NaNoWriMo novel for 2011, which I am still working on, is more than a little colored by the fact that when I started it I was reading REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. A suspicion haunts me that if I were to suddenly ditch the Stephenson book and pick up Emily Brontë, the tone of my own novel would change in turn. In order to keep the tone the same throughout the novel, I’ve made a pact with myself to only read that one novel while writing this book.
I’m not proud that my creative work is so easily influenced by what enters my mind from the outside. It seems like a distinct weakness in my writing abilities. I may be embracing this weakness for NaNoWriMo, but on other projects I have deliberately sequestered myself from media in order to keep other people’s ideas out of my work. I was writing a voice over script for a World War II documentary a few years back. Everyone I told about my project recommended watching a television series called Band of Brothers. I was curious but I waited until my project was finished to prevent any subconscious lifting of ideas.
I read somewhere that one must must write one million words before finding their true voice as a writer. That is what I’m shooting for, 1 million words. If I participate in National Novel Writing Month every year it will take me 20 years to achieve that goal. I really can’t wait that long. If I take the magic number from NaNoWriMo 1,667 and write that many words every day it will only take 20 months to reach 1 million words. This seems like a much more exciting proposition. If I keep writing as much as I did during November, I should be on schedule discover my true voice in around two years. I’m not sure if my editor will allow me to make up tags here on Confabulator Cafe, but if I can I will create the tag “1 million words” or something like that and keep everyone updated on the progress towards my 1 million words goal.
Optimistically, perhaps after crossing the 1 million word mark I will not need to isolate myself from media in order to keep my writing voice strong and original. Neither will I be a slave to imitation. Eventually I will be able to write authentically and from my heart all the time. In the meantime I am moving purposefully toward that destination of 1 million words and hoping that I can finish my 2011 NaNoWriMo Novel before I finish reading this Stephenson book.
I seem to keep coming back – again and again – to this laundry list of authors: Robert A. Heinlein, Alan Moore, Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman, Alan Lightman. These are the writers that have inspired my attempts at writing stories and influenced how I put one word after another as well as how I organize one idea against another.
Back in the ancient days of the early to mid-90s, I first tried to write comics exactly like Gaiman and Moore and boy did I fail miserably. Once I got over trying to create the next Miracle Man or Sandman and settled in to telling stories that were occurring to me I did a lot better. I toyed with the idea of writing fiction, too, and that’s when I tried aping Heinlein.
When I was a songwriter for the bands I played in, I would tap Heinlein again for song titles and themes. A couple songs were pretty successful though anyone listening to them and looking for a hidden meaning or if I was trying to adapt a book into a song would be disappointed. (And don’t bother trying to find any of my songs anywhere. I have copies and so do the guys I played with but this was way before the internet and music software were so ubiquitous.)
As I started trying to write fiction on a dedicated word processor (anyone remember those?), I used thinly-disguised characters and settings from Heinlein and Gaiman, especially. I was trying to write fantasy and science fiction so it was natural to turn to masters of those genres. Later, after I discovered Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman taught me how to write emotions and so it was natural to pull from him, too. That led to me really dissecting Moore and Gaiman’s comic stories for emotional content. Goldmine. I was attending Fiction University.
In my reading habits, I imagine I am eclectic. My favorite fiction writers range from Richard Powers to Thomas Hardy to Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood. But really, those aren’t all that different. All use a lot of big words, have complex and twisting plots (usually two or three entwined together like a big cinnamon twist of melodrama), and write a lot about religion and science and myths.
Believe me, I would love to say that my work is a mere imitation of those storied artists’ creations. That the influence of Hardy’s sweeping landscapes is obvious. That, clearly, my ability to merge worlds of academia and science with deep emotional observations comes from a careful replication of Powers’ work. That my feminist aesthetic is on loan from Atwood. That my ability to write tenderly and brilliantly for the masses and specialists alike is merely derivative of Gaiman.
If those statements were true, I might be derivative, but at least I’d be brilliant! Alas, none of those things are true. Most of the things that I admire in my favorite writers are not qualities I can replicate. The people whom I aspire to write like have little in common with those whose books I enjoy. My favorite writers influence my philosophies, my taste, ideas, fact bases, yes; but most of my writing style is a lot closer to that of people I merely enjoy, not idolize. Perhaps there is an intimidation factor here. I don’t try to write a la Thomas Hardy because I know the result will be subpar. But I can try to write like Robert Krouse (a self-published author who became a surprise Amazon hit with pleasant, satirical novels) or like Katherine Norris because my work will not disappoint quite as dramatically in that case.
One way, though, in which my most admired writers do influence my work is in sentence structure. I try to analyze the structures of wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and build my work around those most admirable. But the day that anyone can genuinely trace the influence of any of my favorite writers in my work is the day I am happy to share it with the world!
What’s that they say about imitation? Well, apparently I’m incompetent when it comes to flattery, because as far as I can tell my writing looks absolutely nothing like my favorite authors’ efforts.
If I was the snooty type, I’d claim that the lack of similarities was intentional due to my artistic integrity, unique voice, particular point-of-view, blah blah blah. And…I guess I am snooty, because that’s true. Trying to project another author’s voice and tone into my own work feels phony to me. This goes to my answer to our future ephemera post related to fan fiction. I understand why people like to write fanfic—it gives the author an instant jump-start to their writing, and lets them create new tales about characters and worlds that they’ve grown to love through the original stories. But in order for me to stay inspired and motivated during the writing process, I need to create my own characters and worlds. Similarly, I very much want to craft my own writing style and voice.
Another component to my lack of emulation in my writing is that I don’t have the proper training to pull it off. My favorite SF stories are always centered around cosmology, physics, rockets, and math, but I am not a trained cosmologist, physicist, rocket scientist, or mathematician. I’m no high-falutin’ scientist at all. Can I (and do I) write about the same topics I like to read about? Sure. Will I ever manage to write about them with the depth and expertise of my favorite authors? Probably not.
All that said, I do try to borrow certain key traits from my favorite books and authors and let them guide my own creative process. Most importantly, I appreciate how my favorite writers don’t let their writing get in the way of the story. This approach really lends itself to my own natural style, so I’m constantly striving to write stories where the words disappear for the reader, and only the story is left. If I can manage that, I’d be a happy camper.
When I first started writing, I mean really writing, I was in love with a book called The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip. It was high fantasy, poetic, and beautiful. I still have my original dog-eared copy, bent and torn with pages falling out.
In youthful admiration of that story, I began to create a character, then a cast of characters, problems for them to overcome, a world for them to inhabit, and yes, even a ragged, poorly drawn map of the land.
And I wrote. I wrote in poetic, archaic language tinged with magic and pomposity. It was self-important, overly wordy, and bogged down in descriptions of every tiny weed and pebble.
It was catastrophically bad. But I persevered. Over the course of some fifteen or more years, that story continued to haunt me. It changed, it grew, and I scrapped it and started over countless times.
Somewhere in my mid-twenties, something shifted. My main character started speaking differently, a little less archaic, a little more sarcastic, a lot more interesting. I realized I was on to something.
I never finished that book past perhaps four chapters or so. But the day my character started bitching that her ass hurt from riding a horse so many days on the road, that was the day I realized I had to let Patricia McKillip go so I could find my own voice.
That was also the day I let go of the idea that I could write epic fantasy. I believe writing that sort of story requires at least a pinch of the poet inside the writer. I am not a poet. I write mostly urban fantasy because, while I love magic and monsters and enchanted creatures, I write in a straightforward, less descriptive style. I can get away with that style placing my story on the streets of Sausalito or a nondescript winter forest. A magical world, far removed from ours, requires more finesse – finesse I don’t possess.
I write the way I talk, mostly. My descriptions aren’t very wordy, and they tend to focus on the things I would notice, not the things that describe a room or other setting. My main character is not going to note the colors of the lone maple leaf quivering on a branch in late fall. My characters are far more likely to focus on a single nose hair growing out of the antagonist’s left nostril, all the while wondering if it’s an anomaly or if he recently trimmed up there and missed one.
And yeah, she’ll probably miss his evil monologue while she’s meditating on this.
Honest answer, then. Since the day Princess Amberlyn decided to inform her audience of her saddle sores and described the road grit wedged inside her laced-up bodice, I started writing in my own voice. For better or worse, I’m stuck with it.
Someone told me once that my writing is very Terry Brooks-ish. I suppose that makes sense, since one of my very first epic fantasy novels (after J.R.R Tolkien, of course) was The Sword of Shannara. When I try to write high fantasy, that’s what it comes out sounding like.
I used to unapologetically write like my favorite authors. Whatever I was reading leaked into what I was writing. I’ve stolen style from brilliant TV writers like Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson. I’ve imitated the dialog in the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich. I’ve tried to mimic fantasy worlds of some of the great epic fantasy writers like Brooks and Tolkien and mood from some of the more recent urban fantasy writers like Cassandra Clare and Laurel K. Hamilton. I’ve also borrowed attitude from my unpublished writer friends.
It’s taken me years to develop my own voice as a writer. I had to try on a few other authors’ styles before finding my own. I’ve been compiling and tweaking what I’ve borrowed, keeping what worked for me and ditching what didn’t. Even now my writing continues to evolve, shaped by what I read and what feedback I get from my fellow writers. My writing style is like a patchwork quilt that I keep adding squares to. Sometimes patches go over the top of other worn out pieces. When I get tired of a certain pattern, I rip it off the quilt or patch over it.
But even though the quilt changes over time, it’s always the same quilt. My quilt. Even in my attempts to mimic other writers, my voice is still my own, decidedly distinct from those I’ve borrowed from. For better or worse, my writing is in my voice. I might write different genres or story lengths, but you can still find more of me in there than you can of other authors. Even my Doctor Who fanfic is written in my voice, although the characters and the world are stolen.
So as you read something I’ve written, you may feel that the mood could have been from a Clive Barker novel, or that a quip could have come from Buffy herself, a sex scene might be reminiscent of Karen Marie Moning, or a plot twist worthy of Steven Moffat, but you would still know it was a Sara story. My voice always sounds like me.
