Just how original is your fanfic?

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

This question was prompted by the comments of one of my all-time fav fanfic authors. This person freely admitted to "ripping off" (that person's words) other works.

I readily admit that I once copied exactly the rhyme and meter of a Dr. Seuss poem(and even kept in one verse word for word), so I, too, have "ripped off" another writer.

Obviously we "rip off" Stargate SG-1 when we write SG-1 fanfic, but that's different.

Or is it?

So I was wondering just how many among us do this?

Why do you do it?

How do you, the reader of fanfic, feel about this?

[ShadowMaat]

Unless I'm paying specific "homage" to something, I try not to consciously copy things. But the key word there is consciously. I do take ideas from here and there and mash them all together, but I try not to steal things whole hog unless I'm gonna twist them.

[MartoufMarty]

How many do what? Steal lines from other peoples stories or fics, or write fan fiction?

I've never stolen lines from other peoples fan fiction (though so people wanted to try to accuse me of it *grumbles*).

My fan fiction is usually very crappy and cliche. I may have gotten ideas from other peoples fan fiction so they seem kind of similar but I don't steal.

I think that people need to come up with their own stuff and don't steal.

That's about stealing fan fiction.

About writing fan fiction... I don't really see anything wrong with it. I don't count it as stealing from the big-wigs.

We're not claiming that the show is ours. We know it's theirs, we just like to have our fun with it.

They might possibly get a bigger audience because people may read fan fiction.

But what do I know... I'll shut up now.

[UberAeryn]

This question was prompted by the comments of one of my all-time fav fanfic authors. This person freely admitted to "ripping off" (that person's words) other works.

I readily admit that I once copied exactly the rhyme and meter of a Dr. Seuss poem(and even kept in one verse word for word), so I, too, have "ripped off" another writer.

Obviously we "rip off" Stargate SG-1 when we write SG-1 fanfic, but that's different.

Or is it?

So I was wondering just how many among us do this?

Why do you do it?

How do you, the reader of fanfic, feel about this?

I freely admit to ripping off 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' quotes. But I'm STILL trying to figure out how to work in:

"Angel's lame. His hair goes straight up, and he's bloody stupid."

[Skydiver]

I've never stolen lines. Ideas? sure. Like the concept of sam keeping jolinar, or asking what if in zero hour.
In one of my fic, i loosely took the idea from Space Above and Beyond, the eps Sugar Dirt and used that for a fic.
the idea for jack to walk through the halls in the buff came from MASH (Hawkeye did the same thing)
I got 3 stories off of the eps wormhole extreme and meshing it with gatecon

Have i ever rewritten someone else's fic as mine? No.

There is a difference between ideas and concepts and a whole fic. I've had fic come from a 'what if'

such as what if jack didn't stop jacob in meridian, or what if sam never visited casssie in ITLOD, or what if the nid got sam before the ashrak did, what if sam married jonas hanson

I know there are times when the fandom goes through a phase. there will be a rash of sam pregnancy fic, or sam rape fic, or jack death fic.....where in a month or so, several stories based on the same premise come out.

I try to not even use someone else's title if i can avoid it (in other words, if i know that there's already a fic titled 'only human' i'll avoid using it.....but it's not a perfect world because there are tons of fic that i don't read, therefore i have no idea about thier titles)

some authors are very conscientous about referencing others fic. I've had people ask me permission to use 'wormcon' in their fic. I asked darren permission to reference his worm guide in my first wormies fic. I've had authors ask permission to use characters i created to be SG-11 in their fic.

[ShadowMaat]

I've had people ask if they can borrow Luke.

[MartoufMarty]

I've had people ask if they can borrow Luke.

Hehehe.

You're famous!

[lionel_pendergast_rocks]

i write fics every once in a while, and i dont feel im ripping anyone off. i mean, i guess you could steal someone's idea, and not even read their fic, kind of like you didn't know you were commiting a crime in real life. but most of my fics deal with an sg1 spinoff, so i dont feel anyone's getting ripped off by my actions. sure, i kind of borrow and twist other ideas, sometimes from completely different sources than stargate ones, but many good authors borrow ideas, big and small.

check out the begginings my fanfic! im currently writing the story itself(hey, you might see familiar things, but i dont care, i like what i write) http://forum.gateworld.net/showthread.php?t=4930

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Writing fanfic is not the subject of this thread, but rather, whether or not we rip off other's works in the fanfic that we write?

I know that there are plenty of fic that have the same themes, use the same SG-1 episodes to establish their original story situations and so there is automatically going to be some similarities. (I was struck with just how similar one of my story lines resembled Skydiver's. I hadn't read her story beforehand but I remember feeling quite uncomfortable even though I knew I hadn't ripped the idea off of her. ) I wasn't really thinking about ripping off other fanfic writer's works, but, yes, that too.

What I was actually thinking, though, was how we felt taking large, recognizable(or not) portions from other works and just doctoring them up a bit to fit the Stargate fic; say, whole scenes from Star Trek or from one of the classic novels like Gulliver's Travels or the Iliad.

Have you ever read a fic and started to get that sense of deja-lu(Lu=read in french)only to remember that this is exactly how Peter David had written this scene in his last Babylon 5 book only now it's with Stargate characters?

Are you okay with that?

[ShadowMaat]

It depends on how much of it is lifted and to what purpose. Generally, I'd say I didn't like it. If a writer can't come up with his/her own ideas or a way to make a previously established idea new and original then they shouldn't be writing. IMO.

That being said, I wrote a Jonas fic that was rather heavily influenced by an HP Lovecraft story called The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It was in answer to a challenge to "write in the style of..." a famous author. On reflection, it probably drew a little TOO heavily from the source, but I still did my best to try and add some twists of my own.

EDIT: I don't know about fics, per se, but I know that when I was reading the Hawk & Fisher books by Simon Green I noticed that his descriptions of the main characters was almost exactly the same in each story. Certain other bits of dialogue and whatnot were also copied almost verbatim. I loved the stories, but those "recycled" bits got tedious after a while and it drew me away from an otherwise great story. Of course, I don't know if you can really steal from yourself...

[Skydiver]

Well, like i said, i've nicked general ideas from other things. Such as the idea of being trapped on a planet with no supplies (SA&B's Sugar Dirt) for a zine fic, That'll be the Day, but it was just the idea of being marooned with no way off the planet and no supplies. In the end, i don't think it resembled it too much.
or the Hawkeye/Jack walking naked bit

I think there's nothing wrong with the idea being nicked, but it's up to the author to do it in his/her original way.

Scribe used to have a 'shower series' which always focused on daniel getting in the shower. I used that general idea for 'cleaning up' where all four of them think while they bathe. for me, the emphasis was more on thinking than the potentially lovely visual images

[ibwolf]

This is a very interesting topic.

Until very recently I've only been writing orginal fiction (none of it web-published). In that I've been very mindful of not copying anything, although I've used similar motifs, or concepts, to what others have done. But then that is only normal. Once boiled down, there are really only so many basic stories. It's all in the execution, and that is where originality must prevail.

I've recently started writing a Farscape/ST:TNG/SG-1 fanfic. As a matter of course I 'borrow' heavily from each of the fandoms. But while doing so, I try to twist things about. The story, Wormhole Junction (see sig for a link), basically rewrites a famous ST:TNG episode with Crichton and SG-1 thrown in the mix. So obviously I have to borrow a lot from the fandoms. But I think that is only normal. And of course, despite the same premise, the events unfold very differently.

As for borrowing from other sources. Not at all. In fact one of the reviewers commented on how unusual the story was. This is partly because I don't really read many fanfics (just the odd one here and there) and partly because I've got some really funky ideas floating around upstairs

[ShadowMaat]

Actually, I don't read a lot of fanfic, either. I'm too much of a perfectionist. I can't stand stuff that's full of bad grammar, gratuitous scenes and/or has the characters acting wildly uncharacteristic. I can't turn off my internal editor when I read so it makes it less fun all around.

[Matt G]

Nicked a line from a cartoon when I was writing a story in primary school once - never nicked lines to the best of my knowledge for fanfic.

[Mr Prophet]

My writing, fanfic or otherwise, is way intertextual. I tend to knock off quotes from just about everything under the sun, but as quotes rather than as my own lines. In particular, Jack often gets lines from Kurt Russell movies - alongside the occasional Star Trek reference - and Cassie quotes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Very occasionally, I borrow a character from elsewhere, like the Blue Cat.

My ideas come from all over, but I never take anything whole cloth. If I thought the idea was good enough as it was then I wouldn't bother to do anything with it; I only take ideas which I think have unexplored potential. But the point with fanfic is that since it does use other people's IP - by its very definition - you can't publish it. Technically you can't even put it on the internet, but your friendly neighbourhood PTB often don't mind too much.