More and more fanfiction is being picked up for publishing. Samantha Joseph wonders if the origins of a work defines its originality
IN May, Anna Todd was offered a mid-six figure publishing deal from Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books imprint for her work After.
It’s not really a shocking thing in itself; after all, it was rumoured that Tash Aw received a similar advance for The Harmony Silk Factory. What is shocking is that After is fanfiction of boy-band One Direction and is hosted on Wattpad, a self-described writing community where anyone can host their writing. Anyone at all.
And so Anna Todd put up her story about 18-year-old emotional cripple Tessa, who goes to college and meets emotional vampire Harry Styles (no, really) and falls in love with him. Her love will change his violent tendencies and soothe his constant and inexplicable anger. She will save him. So it’s a bit like Fifty Shades Of Grey, except for the college crowd.
COMMERCIAL VALUE
According to Wattpad, After’s three instalments have 800 million views on its site. How many of these are unique views or return readers is up for debate (a Gigaom.com article states that Wattpad’s unique views total 25 million a month. Even if all unique views belong to After, which is highly unlikely, the total time it has been up is 18 months, meaning 450 million unique views at most), but it implies an existing, and probably devoted, fanbase.
This is similar to Fifty Shades Of Grey that started out as Master Of The Universe, fanfiction of Twilight on Fanfiction.net, the largest fanfiction website in the world. It gained an immense following that helped boost word of mouth on the soon-to-be published book and subsequently translated into a ridiculous worldwide publishing phenomenon. Basically, the answer to “Why After?” is as film website deadline.com states, “Agencies usually rep works from traditional publishers but the priority in Hollywood is to find rabid followings that warrant screen adaptations. For Wattpad, After is the closest thing the site has experienced to Fifty Shades Of Grey.”
The commercial value of these works — Fifty Shades of Grey and After — outweigh their quality and that is the most important thing for publishing houses right now, especially as they see traditional publishing losing out to online publishing. Just this year, ebook sales overtook physical books.
But questions of plagiarism and copyright infringement still arise. How do publishing houses that choose to run with fanfiction get it to print?
PLAGIARISM AND FANFICTION
An easy example of outright plagiarism is the case of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life by Kaavya Viswanathan. It received a lot of buzz in publishing circles because it was to be a coming-of-age story from an Indian-American perspective. Once it was published, it was bursting at the seams with uncredited content taken from Salman Rushdie, Meg Cabot and Megan McCafferty. Entire sentences and paragraphs were lifted, changed slightly to include Kaavya’s own characters, and published.
Taking words from someone else and passing it off as yours is unquestionably plagiarism. But is fanfiction plagiarism? Fanfiction uses characters, situations, places or worlds that have been created first by others. It’s a sort of creative grey area and other terms for fanfiction are “transformative” or “derivative” works, implying a less-than-direct association with the original content. Yes, you are using characters that were created by other writers but you are interpreting them in your own way, with your own voice and your own words. Yet it’s difficult not to find it a little dishonest.
According to plagiarism information site plagiarismtoday.com, “if you write a story based upon another book or take a photograph of a painting, even though you created a new work, it could be what is known as a derivative work and infringement”.
Legally, because these fanfictions or derivative works don’t financially benefit the fan writers, there isn’t much that can be done, although authors have and still do voice their distaste for it. Fanfiction.net removes stories that feature the works of authors who approach them about protecting their copyright.
George RR Martin, author of A Song Of Ice And Fire series, has written an insightful article on his not-a-blog blog, grrm.livejournal.com, on his feelings about fanfiction. “I was a fan, an amateur, writing stories out of love just like today’s fan fictioneers but it never dawned on me to write about the JLA or the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, much as I loved them. But it does bother me that people hear I wrote fan fiction, and take that to mean I wrote stories about characters taken from the work of other writers without their consent.”
His stance is clearly one that implies that what fanfiction writers do is a violation.
Earthsea writer Ursula K Le Guin echoes this statement on her blog’s FAQ section. “It is lovely to ‘share worlds’ if your imagination works that way, but mine doesn’t; to me, it’s not sharing but an invasion, literally — strangers coming in and taking over the country I live in, my heartland,” she writes at www.ursulakleguin.com.
Of course there are writers who don’t feel that way. JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer don’t seem to have any strong feelings about fanfiction (The Harry Potter and Twilight series are some of the most written about, numbering in the hundreds of thousands of entries on Fanfiction.net).
Once a former fanfic starts making money though, there doesn’t seem to be any steps taken to stop them from profiting off what is essentially an unoriginal work. Stephenie Meyer did not act to stop EL James when Fifty Shades Of Grey was published by Vintage Books. Likewise, One Direction has made no comment on the use of Harry Styles’ likeness for the main character, not to mention the names and likeness of other band members in After.
Although one does wonder if fanfiction of Fifty Shades Of Grey became an overnight publishing success, would it result in a sort of fanfictionception, trapping everyone in a nightmare world of dangling participles and wooden characters?
BETTER SIDE OF FANFICTION
Fanfiction, its writers, and websites that host them are not an inherently evil bunch. In fact, for many fans, it is a community where they feel comfortable talking about something they are passionate about but would make the general populace give them the side eye were they to admit it out loud.
As commentator cat_mcdougall stated on Martin’s entry, “I met some of my greatest friends (and an ex-fiance) through fanfiction writing. It does offer a sense of community. A community that often introduces people to other places they might not have known, save because someone else said ‘If you like this, why don’t you try that?’.
Also, assuming most fanfiction writers are female, it is seen as an opportunity for women to make a space for themselves in a mainstream media that often does not cater to them.
On the whole, there seems to be an unspoken rule that fanfiction should be done for love and not money, out of respect to the original creators — and most fan writers stick to it. But now with 50 Shades and then After being offered legitimate publishing deals, who would actually say, “Ah yes, I’m turning down a six-figure contract because I actually have moral fibre and do not want to inflict my atrocious writing on the reading public”. The more likely, and sadly understandable, reaction would be, “Where do I sign?”.
It doesn’t mean that fanfiction writers don’t deserve to ever be published. The fertile grounds of fanfiction have yielded published authors but their original content bears no resemblance to their former fannish work. Young adult writers Sarah Rees Brennan and Holly Black are among those who started out writing fanfiction based on the Harry Potter world, before launching The Demon’s Lexicon and A Modern Faerie Tale, respectively.
HAPPY ENDINGS?
Rewritten fanfiction seems to be something that, for now, is associated widely with the romance novel industry.
When you think about it though, is Marie Phillips’ Gods Behaving Badly considered fanfiction because it uses characters from the existing Greek pantheon? How about Glen Duncan’s I, Lucifer, or Neil Gaiman’s stories inspired by Cthulhu, the Wolfman and Arthurian Legend? Or even PD James’ Pride and Prejudice sequel, Death Comes to Pemberly, and John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation?
These may be beyond copyright laws but isn’t there the question of lack of originality, the accusation of an inability in writers to come up with their own stories? Do we forgive them because even though these works are based on pre-existing characters and worlds, these authors can string a decent sentence together? Is this fair?
It is really a distinction that readers themselves must make and we hope that readers make the choice to support creative originality and good grammar.
The story of how Fifty Shades Of Grey came to and After will be published has been called “a Cinderella story” but honestly, it’s a lot like the wolf won, wore Red Riding Hood’s cloak back to her house, and ate her mother.
Pulled to publish fanfiction
Wallbanger by Alice Clayton
Originally a Twilight fanfiction piece called Edward Wallbanger that Clayton wrote under the username feathersmmmm, Wallbanger was picked up by Omnific Publishing for an undisclosed sum.
Beautiful Bastard
by Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings writing as Christina Lauren
Hobbs and Billings wrote an Edward-and-Bella office setup unoriginally called The Office. The film rights for BB have been acquired by Constantin Films.
Boycotts and Barflies by Victoria Michaels
Written as a Twilight fanfic with the same title, B&B was picked up by Omnific Publishing, obviously a competitor for Simon & Schuster in the who-can-print-more-former-fanfiction category.
Gabriel’s Inferno by Anonymous, pen name Sylvain Reynard
Writing Twilight fanfiction under the username Sebastian Robichaud, Sylvain was rumoured to have been offered a seven-figure book deal from Penguin. The fanfiction that GI was based on, The University Of Edward Masen, was removed from the Internet soon after.
Beyond fanfiction
Fangirl Rainbow Rowell448pp/St. Martin’s Griffin
FANGIRL is a sweet coming-of-age story by YA writer Rowell. It isn’t a fanfiction-turned-published-book, but it is about fanfiction.
The protagonist, Cather Avery, writes fanfiction of Simon Snow, a Harry Potter-like fantasy series, with her twin sister Wren. At least until they get to university. Wren throws herself into college life but Cather has trouble adapting to life outside her closely guarded, rather asocial world.
Although Cather does meet a guy, a really sweet one, and make friends, Fangirl is really about the Avery family and how they aren’t really holding things together. With a mother who walked out on them when they were 8, who wants to reconnect, and a well-meaning bipolar father who’s slowly losing it without his daughters at home, plus a twin who is acting out, Cather has a lot on her hands.
She slowly loosens up, allowing people into her life, and on the advice of her creative writing professor, finds originality in writing beyond fanfiction.