Quality of fanfic?

[theresa_ramseyer]

Morning :).

My friend who writes mainly Dr. Who fanfic now and I were chatting last night. She said that Dr. Who fanfic was better quality than EQ fanfic, so she had to be extra careful before she posted a Dr. Who story.

It stung a bit, but I'm in no place to say otherwise, since I've fallen back to bad writing habits. And we're getting ready to leave, so I wanted to throw this out for possible discussion.

I don't like thinking about fanfic in terms of quality, unless in terms of bad and good; let's face it, some fanfic in any fandom is bad and/or written badly - people who refuse to use spell check and/or that are English speakers/writers and insist on using all caps or junky spelling, or .... Yes, I'm a bit of a grammar nazi.

I say that Dr. Who fanfic is "higher quality" because there are more writers and readers and fandom folks in the fandom, and it's been going on for a long time. Many more people know the episodes and stories forwards and backwards; so there's more folks that can "trip you up," so to speak.

But EQ is 20 years old, for example. Sure it was popular, but it doesn't rival Dr. Who's popularity now. If it was showing today, if that was possible, would we need to say EQ fanfic had to have "higher quality"?

I try to write the best I can, whether fanfic or not, not caring what fandom. Perfectionism is part of my writing problems.

So, what do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill here, or should a fanfic's/fandom's quality be a big thing?

Comments

[newredshoes]

What is EQ?

And yeah, I'd say it's more of a numbers issue -- I tend more toward small fandoms (or rarepairs and gen in large fandoms), so whatever fandom tends to like more in the bigger fandoms just gets more air time among more fans, no matter what the subjective quality.

I'd say don't worry about it -- there's nothing about any one fandom that makes the quality of the work inherently better or worse, and fandom is about your own enjoyment of the experience, so... nobody else gets to dictate that but you. :)

[gramarye1971]

Seconded. If you operate on the purely cynical Sturgeon's Law adage that 90 percent of everything is crap, a larger fandom like Doctor Who is likely to have a larger proportion of 'higher-quality' fic simply because there's more of it. But operating on those lines, there's also a much larger pool of 'lower-quality' fic. It may also be that people in some larger fandoms are more likely to complain about fanworks that don't meet their needs -- in my largest fandom, I've seen 'bad fanfic' used to describe everything from technical writing problems and sloppy proofreading or fact-checking to this story doesn't have the ship that I like! or this story has the wrong person on top! or this story makes my favourite character look like a jerk! After a point, once you've spelled all the characters' names right and filled in all the plot holes, quality is subjective, and it's all about the writer's enjoyment.

[barbayat]

How, does this even matter? It's not a cooler fandom contest or is it? I could not give a rat's ass whether anyone thought the fanfics in my fandoms were about average, generally excellent or plain sucky as a whole.

This whole good/bad story thing is often highly subjective any way. *shrugs* Even if a fandom is made up mainly of 50 Shades of Suck type fanfics with no plot, bad spelling and horrible characters and might arguably be called a haven for sucktastic fics - what difference does it make when the focus is writing the best fanfic you can write (which is what I always do)?

[linaewen]

^^^^ What they said!! :-)

It seems to me that quality lies more in individual stories than in the fandom on the whole; you can have a small fandom and have quality stories alongside the less than well-written ones. But it's also easier to see the lower quality when there are fewer stories to look at. The fact that some fandoms are larger (like Dr. Who) makes for a larger number of stories and thus the chance to have a higher amount of quality fics. Also, who decides whether it's quality or not? I like some stories that are not necessarily well written, yet the idea and plot of the tale is so intriguing, I can overlook the bad spelling and grammar or characters out of character. That's not low quality to me, though someone else might think it is.

I hope your friend wasn't implying that your fic isn't quality, but I sure can see how you could take it that way. The fact that the fandom in general is being called into question as to its quality is certainly upsetting. People write in fandom because they love it and because they feel something in that universe was not told that should be; I think that's the more important thing -- more important than quality. The story should be told in the best way it can be; there is no rule that says it has to be perfect. That said, of course I do my best to tell my stories as perfectly as possible, but I'm unhappy to think that an entire fandom is being thought less of because another fandom is perceived to be "better."

[dirty_diana]

one thing I try to remember is that different fandoms have different tropes, both inherently and in fanon/made popular by the bnfs. So if fandom X is heavy on mpreg fics, or the Cinderella themes, or whatever, a reader who doesn't like mpreg is automatically going to be like "this all sucks". Even if the fandom is producing excellent mpreg. And if you don't write mpreg your stuff might not be as popular - but that's not to do with objective quality.

[krait]

I do think there are fandoms out there that tend to bring in new fans, and therefore have many less experienced writers; likewise, there are fandoms that tend to attract very young fans, who are inexperienced writers by virtue of age. I know there are also fandoms that don't seem to attract writers at all!

All of those factors could influence the perceived overall 'quality' of fic in a given fandom, especially to someone who has multiple fandoms under their belt and thus tends to perceive the differences between them.

There are plenty of temporary factors that could come into play, too - the most obvious one I can think of is the presence/activity level of kinkmemes, since kinkmeme fic tends to be shorter and rougher than "regular" fic, but often gets crossposted to archives where people who aren't reading the kinkmeme will still find it. A fandom whose kinkmeme is exploding with activity is going to be rife with non-beta-read fic, much of it with strange premises or other oddities that might attract frowns out of context. Things like the schedule, for TV-based fanoms, might have an influence, and for books the in-progress versus completed state of a series, and time since the last book release, probably come into play. Are you coming into it in the middle of the season, when fanlove is high and creativity is blooming, or is it off-air till next season and the fen are starting to get restless or distracted?

A very interesting question, in short, because I must admit there are fandoms I complain about there being 'no good fic for'; mainly because there's little fic to begin with, but a few of them are pretty active places with a fair amount of fic, and I still have trouble finding something I want to read. (At least one of them I attribute to the average age of the writers.)

[dragonbat2006]

It's been my experience that it's not so much the size of the fandom as the age and likelihood of attracting inexperienced writers. I can name a couple of small fandoms off the top of my head that had a greater proportion of goodfic and then got an influx of new fans due to... oh, let's say, a new movie; DVD release of original series... and then comes an outpouring of new fic, of which a lot of it is... well, I agree that "bad" can be a ymmv thing. To me it means, more sues, less beta-reading, more sloppy research and awkward smut.

And I think a big part of it is that if it's a cartoon that aired in the early 80s, and then came out on DVD last year, the vast majority of fanfics out there before the release are being written by people who loved the show 30 years ago. Older writer does not necessarily equal better writer or more experienced writer. I think most of us realize that and can point to horrible fic written by 40-somethings and great fic written by teens. Still, it seems to me that proportionally speaking, more goodfic is written by older writers and more older writers gravitate to the fandoms we were into when we were kids.

When new fans come in, they may not be writing with a full knowledge of canon because it may not all be available on DVD/in translation, etc. They're writing what they know with an incomplete picture. Or they may be writing with (on average) less life experience and messing up on things that older fans... older folks have picked up along the way. As an example? Confidentiality breaches (e.g. HIPPAA; bank teller rolling their eyes as a client leaves and telling the next customer, "that's the fifth time he's been overdrawn in two weeks.") I'm not talking about quality of writing. I'm talking about stuff written by people who haven't yet learned "how things work outside the classroom."

All that being said? Have fun. Write the best fic you know how regardless of the fandom, and don't let anyone tell you to stop!