Fans and Fiction

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,”—Wordsworth

In an interview, Stephanie Meyer confessed some fans were disappointed with her conclusion to Bella and Edward’s affair. She recommended that her readers write their own stories if they think they could do better, just to see where it leads. I’ll agree with that advice; I could make a killing if I wrote a vampire novel. I finally realize the formula, take as many insipid memes about love, beauty and sexual tension as I possibly can and force them into 300 plus pages.

While I believe creative writing ought to be encouraged, I think writing Twilight fan-fiction is poor practice. For those not in the know, fan-fiction is a genre writing in which one takes characters or celebrities from various films, books, and other media and places them in situations of one’s own choosing. Making Edward have a homosexual affair with Jacob Black no doubt fulfills somebody, but I would be hesitant to call that fine prose.

I think that fan-fiction is a way for people to amuse themselves. Often, the trend with fan-fiction is manipulate the story only slightly, to continue it a different way or to change the characters ever so slightly. I don’t think this is creativity as much as it is rehashing what’s already been written. Though, considering Meyer’s success in burping up the same old pop-culture chime, it’s obviously a lucrative business.

So much of creative writing is highly personal. You cannot use someone else’s characters, ideas and values in the same way without decimating the quality of your own writing. You cannot discover your own voice unless you decide to encounter a blank page go your own way. In process you will reveal facets of yourself, your life and your unique experience which no one else can stake a claim on, regardless of familiarity.

Powerful prose is like a strip tease. You’ve got to show some skin. You’ve got to dance a little bit before taking off another layer so you can make sure the reader is paying attention. But in the end, you’re on stage naked. Books like Twilight don’t have the raw intensity that such writing can give. It inspires wannabes (or, more properly epigones).