Don't Pick Up the Rasp
Should you, fanfic author, repurpose your own fic?
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!
I regret to say that I used to be a part of a Potter-head household. I genuinely loved HP at the time, but the true super-fan was my ex-husband, who was absolutely infatuated with the series. To this day I miss the era of feel-good HP fandom and all the nostalgia tinged memories I have of the book and movie releases.
But good times fade and true colors rise, so it’s been a few years now since I tossed my entire HP collection in the trash. (I love books as artifacts, but I had zero regrets throwing away those representations of hate, bigotry, and cruelty.)
I know it’s still popular worldwide, but in my little social bubble no one even mentions it anymore without doing the virtual online equivalent of spitting on the floor. So, it was a bit of a surprise to find HP discourse wedging its way back into my life.
Especially given that it was discourse around former-fanfics-turned-original-fiction.
I am not actually going to dive into that whole hoopla, since I don’t have skin in the HP game as a fan, a HP fanfic author/reader, or a fan of the authors involved. Here is a good breakdown on youtube by Jill Bearup which digs into it, and you can decide for yourself it the matter is vitally important or simply overblown.
My take on it is about the circumstances at the core of the wank: fanfic authors filing off the serial numbers to republish their fanfiction as original works.
TL;DR - Don’t do it.
I understand how tempting it is for a fanfic author to take their most popular fic and rework it into an “original” story, because it feels like it will be an easy way to publish a story you know people enjoy reading. Personally, I have about four fanfic that I think would make great original stories if I put some time into filing off the serial numbers, but every time I come close to doing that, I stop myself.
It’s not because I think it is “wrong” on some level, nor is it because I’m worried about intellectual property (IP) infringement…no, I have the skills by now to push the stories far enough from their source material not to make me liable for a lawsuit.
I could, but I don’t.
The reason I don’t do it is the same reason I suggest you don’t do it: it won’t make you happy as an author.
There are several factors behind why I believe this is true, based on the many authors I know who have done it anyway. I’m not speaking for all authors, obviously. I’ve never heard Naomi Novik regret turning her Master & Commander fanfic concepts into a highly successful original series about dragon riders of the Napoleonic Wars era. Cassandra Claire and E.L. James have done okay for themselves too (even despite their own controversies)
Those kinds of successful transitions are few and far between, but they happen often enough to tempt newer writers into trying to do it for themselves.
The drawbacks are real, though, and if you are considering filing off the serial numbers on your most popular fanfic, it’s worth considering the following points before picking up the rasp:
1. The Cheat Code Effect: Sometimes it is great to just win the damn game, no matter what it takes. More often, though, it’s a false sense of accomplishment. You cheated, and you know you cheated, and now you don’t know if you could win the game honestly. Many authors who go this route never publish a second book, because they sink into the quagmire of uncertainty: can they write original fiction? Do they have the chops? I think that most of the time, they can and they do; but the Cheat Code Effect saps their confidence.
2. Breaking the Fandom Social Contract: This is something that can sneak up on an author. It happens when they decide (or are forced by their publisher) to take down the original fanfic version of the story in preference to the novel being released. Admittedly, some people don’t care about the fandom they wrote in (ref. Cassandra Claire). If that’s you, then godspeed! Don’t look back! But most of us feel a sense of kinship with our fellow fans, and deleting a fic can result in a profound sense of guilt* even if you don’t think it will at first. It can also make former fans of the story very angry and bitter toward the author, which, especially in smaller fandoms, can resonate for years.
3. Haunted by Your Past (Fandom Edition): The basic fact is that no matter how much you shift the world-building and file down the numbers, your “original” story will always, always be remembered as “that story that used to be fanfic.” Again, witness E.L. James: you might not give a damn! But that really does bother some authors I know, especially the ones who have gone on to write a lot of other genuinely original stories. While we are moving past the era of fanfiction being a career killer for an author, there remain plenty of people in publishing and writing and reading circles who look down their nose at fanfiction in much the same way they look down their nose at the romance genre. (Misogyny all the way down? Yes. Still a factor in an author’s career? Also yes.)
All of this is why my go-to argument for anyone considering this course of action is to put down th rasp and stop doubting yourself. If you have written one popular story, you can write another!
If you don’t think you can find an original story idea that is fresh enough to interest you or potential readers, I suggest sitting down and identifying the tropes and archetypes that attract you to a fandom in the first place, then build out a story from there. This is a process I go into detail on in my book, Out from Fanfic, so if you are curious (or desperate?) you might start there!
* The situation I am addressing in this post is very specifically about authors who delete a fic because they repurposed it into a (semi-)original novel. There are a lot of other reasons people delete fic, and while I do judge a little bit, it’s not my place to question why or confront them about it. Or yours. Or anyone’s! While I think orphaning fic (as allowed by AO3) is a much kinder and more responsible road to take, the final decision rests with the author of the story.
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Interestingly enough, if copyright terms had never been extended in the United States, HP and the Philosopher's Stone would be in the public domain this year. In another world, the fanfic authors could have had their cake and eaten it too and possibly reclaimed the brand.