Deep Water

George was the undefeated champion of the West Coast Racing circuit, but Willow Rosenberg, rising phenom of Team Hellmouth auto racing thinks she has what it takes to beat him. But why did he have to be so darn cute?

                                               

……….Yeah……ok, there’s about 20 things wrong with that whole concept, but chances are you’ve waded through dozens of these just to find something good to read.  This is something I’ve seen a lot of over the years. Writers who take the characters from a popular series and change almost everything about them so they can be shoehorned into some story concept that they have no business being in. It makes me kind of wonder if the writers were ever fans of the series at all. If you like Harry Potter, then I can only assume you like the things that define him as Harry Potter.  Why then change everything about him so you can write a story about a British Punk Band called the Scarheads with a lead singer whose name is Harry Potter , but whose chain smoking and tattoos belong to Sid Vicious.

 I feel like there are two kinds of fanfiction writers out there.  There are writers who love a particular storyverse, who feel a connection with the characters  and want more from that universe than the creator can reasonably keep putting out.  Sometimes they want to “fix” things they feel the author did wrong.  Sometimes they just want to explore divergent paths that the writer did not take. Ie.  “What if Peter and Olivia raised alternate Universe Olivia’s baby together.”  The characters however are recognizably themselves.

There are other writers however who should really be writing original stories. I feel like using established popular characters has become a crutch that some writers use because their afraid nobody will like their stories if they don’t already love the characters.  I think it’s entirely possible that someone could take the example above and write a very acceptable Romantic Comedy about a woman trying to make it in the intensely male dominated world of Auto Racing, and having a love/hate relationship with the reigning champ marked by lots of witty dialogue and dramatic tension in the races that mirror the state of their relationship. But the woman behind the steering wheel should not be Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen or even Buffy Summers.  

 It’s like there is this invisible barrier that we feel separates us from the “Real Writers” That somehow the Steinbecks  and the Hemingways of the world are part of a different species , Homo-Sapiens Writewellus, and we could never in a million years do what they did. That somehow it’s too hard.  Why is it too hard? Because books are long? I know a Batman fan fiction writer who has turned out almost six novels worth of story.  I saw a Harry Potter story the other day that was just a few thousand words short of being War and Peace. Maybe it’s because real writers can weave a deeply compelling fabric of imagery and metaphors and they did that foreshadowing thing they told us about in middle school, and then they shined the light of truth on some aspect of society.  Those are just tools available to any writer who cares to use them properly.  What is Art? That really depends on who you ask.  I can tell you that I’ve read most of the classics from Homer to Hemingway, and I’ve never found “ literature” that has affected me more than the best of the fan fiction  that I’ve encountered.

Using someone else’s successful characters to prop up your story is kind of like being one of those ancient sailors who always hugged the coastline because the thought of what lay in the deep blue terrified them.  It’s kind of safe. There will always be someone willing to transfer the goodwill they feel for the characters onto your race car story.  I think you’ll find though that your best writing, the hardest and most rewarding writing you’ll ever do is waiting for you to point your boat into the deep waters, where there are no guarantees, limitations or copyrights. Also, this is the only writing anyone will pay you for.