Nicking Other People’s Stories

Look at that, it's somehow Friday! I've no idea how this week passed so quickly, but today I'm happy to have author Phillipa Ashley on the blog, talking about her latest novel and fan fiction. So without further ado, here's Phillipa!


The World of Fanfic

In November 2004, few people had heard of ‘fanfic.’ Hell, I hadn’t heard of fanfic and I certainly wouldn’t have dreamed of ever writing any. In fact, if you’d told me that within six months I was going to a -write fanfic and b- then write a novel, and that it would be a –published; b - win an RNA award and c - get made into a movie, I’d have thought you were stark raving bonkers.

As the name suggests, fanfic is when a writer takes inspiration from a favourite novel, TV series or film and creates their own stories around the incidents and characters in the original. Back in 2004,I think it’s’ fair to say that fanfic was largely a niche area of fiction writing, considered by some to be at the bottom rung of the literary ladder. Back then fanfic authors struggled to break free of their genre and achieve credibility and to a degree, I can understand why.

In its purest form, fanfic is essentially the plunder of other writers’ work – if not of their actual phrases and words, then of concepts and characters. For that reason, much if it is confined to fan forums, and can’t be published for commercial gain. The writers of the originals – if they are alive – would rightly be outraged to have their work ‘stolen’ in this way.

However, the online world has moved on very rapidly and a growing number of fanfic writers have found new ways to reach a mainstream audience, with their own works

The most famous, of course, is EL James, whose Fifty Shades of Grey novels had their roots in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Not having read the Twilight books and only seen the movies, I can’t really judge how strong the relationships between the two series are. But it seems to me that an obsessive relationship between a young ingénue and a sophisticated dominant male is the core of the story - and that’s a theme that’s common to countless romance novels.

My very first story was inspired by a BBC costume drama called North & South, that was aired in late November 2004 and starred Richard Armitage as another ‘Alpha male John Thornton. I also read the book but I have to say the TV series captured my imagination more.

Having never written any fiction before I felt compelled to write a modern version of the story. Back then, I was unaware that authors did this and I think that until then, there wasn’t any North & South fanfic of any kind, certainly not modern versions.

I posted my story on a Yahoo loop and got some encouraging feedback. Most of all, I realised that I had found what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: write romantic fiction. Other writers started posting their own N&S fanfics, both historical and modern and our chapters were devoured by readers desperate for their fix once the series has ended .

But I soon came up against a problem: which I now know was an opportunity.

For me, the desire to create my own characters was too just too powerful to ignore. I hadn’t got very far through my North & South story (imaginatively entitles N&S 2005) when I realised that ‘my’ John Thornton was not the one in the novel or TV series. He and the other characters had taken on lives of their own.

I took my fanfic off the net, feeling constrained by the need to fulfil reader expectations that I could never meet: I also was desperate to try my hand at an original romance. That story was Decent Exposure – which luckily for me, went on to get a book and movie deal.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a little bit of ‘Thornton’ or Mr Richard Armitage in all the heroes I've created. I’ll always thank my lucky stars I saw that programme and met so many inspiring women, both readers and writers, through the fanfic world.

Since then , many of the original N&S fanfic authors have gone on to create and publish their own novels, including Rosy Thornton, Juliet Archer , Hazel Osmond and Elizabeth Hanbury.

So what actually counts as a fanfic these days? The canon is wide and arouses much debate. I know dozens of authors who write Austen spin offs, everything from Mr Darcy Vampire by Amanda Grange to Pride; Prejudice and Zombies. Most recently, we’ve seen new the erotic new retellings of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Does Jean Rhys’s literary classic Wide Sargasso Sea count as a fanfic because it features the young Bertha Mason? Is Anthony Horowitz’s new Sherlock Holmes story, House of Silk a fanfic?

There will always be a vast canon of ‘pure’ fanfic on the web. where writers try to stay as true to their source as possible. But there will also be those break out authors who use that first impetus as inspiration for new material – so I say may fanfic never die, in all its forms.

The debate will rage on but one thing is clear in my mind. Without fanfic, I would never have started writing and kept on writing and my own happy ending is that my sixth novel, Miranda’s Mount was published on October 4th by Piatkus Entice.

I'm curious to know, do any of you write fanfic?

Have a great weekend, everyone. See you Monday!