Years ago, I read that Rex Stout, the creator of the Nero Wolfe character, was aggressively opposed to anyone writing stories that used his characters. It wasn't that he feared the writers changing the image of them -- though I'm pretty sure he didn't like that idea -- so much as he simply thought it was wrong. Let them get their own characters, he said. These are mine.
As someone who has occasionally dabbled in doing that kind of writing, I was a little offended. Didn't he understand that such writing was an act of homage, a way to show how much you liked what he did? What about that Star Trek novel where they met the characters from Here Come The Brides? After a very brief period, though, I realized that he was exactly right. They were his characters, people and places and styles that he had created out of whole cloth. Simply taking them, without recompense, was theft. Fun, but not right.
My daughter is on the mailing list for several authors who publish their own writings at FanFiction, and I will occasionally look at the stories. Usually, its just so I can reassure myself about the kind of thing she's reading (his passionate lips met hers in a paroxym of fevered lust), and also to get a feeling about the style of fiction she likes. It's worth looking at, just to read or even to try your hand at it. Just don't write any stories with characters that I'd recognize.
Though...what if the guys from the Man From UNCLE series met Nero Wolfe? Hmmm......
2 comments:
My feelings are if as long as you aren't gaining financially from it people should be allowed to use characters.
And as much as the author thought of these on his own do you think he wasn't inspired by other books or people he knew?
When I was really into CSI I loved reading fanfiction. I wonder if anyone has done a dissertation on fanfiction subculture, it is an interesting world.
Inspired, sure. But a direct take apparently crosses the line. At least, for him. I've read authors who say that fan fiction is fine with them; some say, though, that they make a point of not reading it, lest them use something in their own writing that echoes something a fan wrote -- lawsuit potential. Aren't lawyers wonderful?
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