deCOMPOSE - What FanFiction Reveals About the Nature of "Story"

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

The latest (as of this post) entry on Christian horror writer Mike Duran's blog is an interesting piece on fanfiction and the evolving nature of story. Given the leaning towards collaborative storytelling on this site, I feel that it might be well-received here. I feel it's certainly worth a thought or two.

http://mikeduran.com/2016/09/what-fanfiction-reveals-about-the-nature-of-story/

Tell me what you think. If you have the chance, let Mr. Duran know as well.

[Raven]

It might be me, but I've tried two browsers and can't access that link or the main www.mikeduran.com url. I'll try to check back later, as I'm interested to read the blog post.

[Raven]

Okay, the website was up today.

I think Mike raises some important points -- but I have to say his ending questions are not particularly compelling to me. The idea that our characters exist prior to our invention -- as in the example that Harry Potter existed prior to Rowling in some kind of individual or collective subconscious or other kind of existence -- is not particularly sold on me. That's not because I don't think that narrative direction doesn't exist in us, but that Harry Potter represents something more specific. When I was getting my storytelling degree I studied oral traditional stories quite a bit. While it is truly interesting how humanity seems to have a shared narrative framework to a remarkable degree, I think that has to do with how God made humans. I use the metaphor of a dry creek bed. When the rains come, the water will tend to find the creekbed and flow in its channels. I believe humans were made with creek beds of narrative, and when the rains come, the stories tend to run in those channels. However, that doesn't mean Harry Potter existed exactly, but I think it does mean that humans will always tell stories of a hero who was willing to sacrifice his own life to save others by dying and essentially returning to life, and many other such important narratives. I think that these creekbeds were placed in us by God, and that God brought about the fulfillment of these things through Jesus Christ.
As far as fan-fiction, it is true that humans have shared and riffed on collective stories for ages. I agree with Mike on that, and it isn't surprising that fanfiction writers do the same.
But I also much, much prefer it when writers work on their own characters and worlds, as some of the authors quoted in the blog post said. As a reader, I don't like to read fanfiction largely because of the lack of a sense of authorial authority -- maybe that concept of authorial authority is a cultural inheritance for me, but it matters as far as my enjoyment of a story. But if it doesn't matter to others, I don't see a reason not to enjoy fanfiction. For me, I'd rather someone work on creating a new specificity for the ancient, God-given narrative channels.
I like Tolkien's discussion of the subcreator and his use of the metaphor of a prism that refracts God's pure white light into colors. In a sense, we get our stories from God, but we refract -- or even warp -- those stories according to our quality as a prism.