What is the general feel for the idea of writing unpublishable franchise fict...fan fict...just to get your name out there by way of the fan fict sites (Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who <dunno if they even have a Doc Who fanfict site but they may) ...and the somehow funnel readers of your fanficts to your own website, or other sites where you have other ficts put up, of your own world-building and stylings....would you consider any fanfict dabblings as 'prostituting yourself' in anyway? Just curious....I had an idea of a big DS9 story myself and wondered if this fanfict approach was considered by anyone...

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First, please be aware that our concern for author's rights means that this workshop is not for stories about someone else's characters or settings; no STAR TREK stories, no ALVIN MAKER stories, no MURDER, SHE WROTE stories, and so on. These, and others like them, are copyrighted and such stories are only published under very special circumstances. We'd like you to be able to see your own stories published; professionally, if possible.

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I have a strong belief that most people who take writing seriously feel the same as me about this.

Theresa Nielsen-Hayden knows a little bit about real writers, and sees it somewhat differently than pantros:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007464.html#007464

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go work on my novel, Jimmy Bowler and the Obvious Fact That Bumblebore Isn't Really Dead.

For instance, I just got hired to write a short story for a Dr. Who anthology. Two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that because I wouldn't have been established enough to get an invitation.

(I draw atttention to the fact that I am not naming what particular TV show I either ripped off or did homages to or parodied. It isn't science fiction, in any case, though some of the stories I wrote were. And it's not one that ever gets published in the traditional manner.)

(1) I wanted to comment on some of the fanfics I had read, and did not want any comments I made to be taken in a "those who can't do, criticize" kind of way.

(2) I had some ideas I wanted to try out.

(3) After many long years of failing to get anything published in the traditional manner, the kind that somebody passes judgment on and then buys or rejects...well, I felt it was time to try some utterly non-commercial writing.

(4) In the writing of fanfics, I found myself able to unload a number of ideas and thoughts that had cluttered up my writing mind for years. It helped clear the slate.

(5) I've gotten far more response from the fanfics I've written (about a hundred thousand plus words), than anything else I've written (closing in on two million words).

Though I stopped, eventually---I wrote more than I originally intended to---I felt it was well worth doing. I don't have any regrets. (Yet.)

I would like to say that I was in touch with the fan referred to in that incident--at the time it happened--and the story is rather different from the fan's point of view.

One point against taking any action: the people writing fanfic are often the Biggest Fans---why needlessly alienate them in this manner? (I've heard through the grapevine that the creator of the series I wrote fanfic about isn't particularly thrilled with the idea of it, but hasn't yet chosen to take any action.)

I think printing up a book and trying to sell it is probably crossing the line. I'd be flabbergasted to learn that some of my fanfic wound up in a printed book.

In some ways, fanfic is like Shakespeare, who dusted off old stories and characters written about by others, and wrote more (and better) about them.

It's also like the use of mythology. Whereas in the olden days somebody might have put their thoughts and ideas and philosophy through the vehicle of Job or the Greek gods or Snow White or somesuch, now they do so through the characters and situations they see on TV and in the movies. These are, after all, the modern-day mythology...

As for the original question, my sense is that the vast, vast majority of people surfing fan-fic sites are more interested in finding more stories written in their favorite universe than in finding new authors who will spend their paying careers staying out of that universe. While most writers probably think that fan-fic can be fun in various ways, I don't think any of them think of it as a beneficial promotional tool. If people were writing fan-fics of my universe, I'd feel flattered that they were that invested in it, but I don't see how it could possibly help me...they'd just be expending their enthusiasm for the stories I had yet to write, and anyone reading my stories after being exposed to the fan-fics would be reading them in the context of those other stories, rather than the other way round.

That's just my own, highly arrogant speculation, but it seems to be born out by most of the fan-fics I see. Fan-fic doesn't actually help the original creators that much (unless it helps convince a publisher that there is a willing market...but since it dilutes the value of the original intellectual property I'd say that's an iffy point).

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On the planet Xhaldia, ordinary men and women are mutating into bizarre creatures with extraordinary powers. But is this a momentous evolutionary leap or an unparalleled catastrophe? The very fabric of Xhaldian society is threatened as fear and prejudice divide the transformed from their own kin.

Dispatched to cope with the growing crisis, Captain Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise™ receive some unexpected visitors from another reality -- in the form of the group of mutant heroes known as the uncanny X-Men®. Storm, leader of the X-Men, offers their help in resolving a situation that is agonizingly similar to the human/mutant conflicts of their own time and space.

But when hostile aliens appear in orbit around Xhaldia to try and abduct the transformed for use as a superpowered force in an attack on the Federation, even the combined forces of the crew of Starfleet and the X-Men may be unable to prevent an inferno of death and destruction.

Starfleet's finest crew and Earth's greatest mutant heroes will need all their powers and abilities to save the Xhaldian people and stop a deadly threat to the Federation.

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I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

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There's also a negative side. If a fan who writes fanfic is hit upon by a creator's corporate lawyers with cease-and-desist orders, will that fan remain a fan?

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It reminds me of the old saying:

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I remember being struck forcefully by one that had Spock dropped into the cast and background of an old 1960s show called "Here Come the Brides." Oh, wait. That one actually got published. "Ishmael" by Barbara Hambly.

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And that book was a joke within a joke. My memory is that the tv show character of Aaron Stempel was portrayed in the book as an ancestor of Mr. Spock. The joke is that the television character was played by Mark Leonard who, of course, portrayed Spock's father in television and in the movies.

Since I liked both shows, Star Trek and Here Come The Brides, I enjoyed the book, even though it WAS hokey.

I can't help but imagine that editors and agents giggle behind their hands at fanfics and their writers.

Look, nobody here is saying that there are no suckastic editors/publishers/markets out there conspiring to kill the literary tradition by dealing with nothing but "hot" (controversial) and "cool" (celebrity) work, but that kind of hostility doesn't get you any closer to changing things.

Fan-fic won't get you closer to changing things either. It's something you can do for fun, because you're a fan. There can be arguments over whether it helps the original creators of a property, I don't see that it really does all that much other than serving as readily available market research, but that's not relevant to the current point. As a fan-fic writer, you don't stand to gain anything (other than the fun of it) unless you break the law.

There are things I did as writing exercises to develop my skills that were completely unpublishable. Like trying to novelize my favorite comic books was always fun, but I knew this was not legitimate.

If you like fan fic, develop your own characters and stories and the such. Become a NY Times bestseller, and then get your agent to put some feelers out to Paramount (or whomever) and let them hire you.

Honestly, I can’t take anyone over 18 (and I’m being generous there) who still writes fan fic, (especially when the show it off as a point of pride) seriously.

It’s like the 50 year olds in a cover band who never write or preform their own songs and are still holding out for a record deal.

And I have dreams set in trademarked universes all the time. By the way, my inexplicable slump of combat themed dreams recently ended in a tour de force of Aliens, Halo, Unreal Tourniment, Half-Life, that monster inscect scene from the new King Kong (which I hadn't seen at the time), an SF milieu that I can't attribute properly (it involves brutal melee bording actions after hiding our ship in an ice cave on a comet or something like that), and a lot of lesser themes that were, apparently, being suppressed by that "Suki no hitto ni, Suki to ieru" song. Okay, so part of the reason that I don't indulge in fan-fics is because the sort of thing I would write if I did is not the sort of thing I think anyone ought to be reading.

On notions of control of copyrights and profiting from the work of others...up to relatively recently, copyright didn't exist. Writers swiped this plot and that character all the time. Shakespeare plotted and cast his plays almost entirely from the works of other writers. And the whole of it seems at the very least a way of the "haves" keeping the "have nots" from having fun.

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up to relatively recently, copyright didn't exist.

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If by relatively recently you mean 1709, then you are correct. However the idea of protecting the rights of authors from plagarists goes back to the ancient greeks. While Shakespeare did borrow plots he did not borrow them from living authors. These were stories which were in "the public domain" and he very much made them his own. Today we call this a retelling.