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laleiaSo given I haven't done any serious literary analysis (for a given value of "serious") since high school, and I have little to no background on the different schools of literary analytical thought of whatever, I'm sure what I'm about to say is either redundant/reinventing the wheel, or uselessly stupid.
Either way, this what makes a story "valid" for me, whether in books/novels, in tv/movies, or in fanfiction ...
I think that most stories are a mix between a "Message" and a "Story." And by Message, I don't mean "moral message." Rather, it's that one thing you want to get across that is painfully obvious.
So for example, while Ayn Rand's books generally have a fairly obvious Message, so do most if not all fanfics that originated from prompts.
Your Message can be, "I think Character X kicks ass" and your fanfic is a situation in which Character X would have to demonstrate that he/she kicks ass. Or maybe your Message is "Character X and Character Y are destined to be in deep, eternal, true love and/or have lots of hot kinky sex" and you set up the situation accordingly.
(For example, I can't even begin to mention the amount of Mal/Kaylee Firefly fic out there that has some iteration of "And this is why Simon and Kaylee would never go together and would make a bad couple" in there somewhere.)
I think every fanfic ever has a Message. I don't know if the same is true for original fiction, though I suspect it might be. But with fanfiction, there's always that interaction with the original source, where you think, "Hmmm, but I think THIS would happen," and you feel this way strongly enough you bother to write a story about it.
For this reason, people will use artificially convoluted plot devices so the two canons they've chosen can cross over. They'll have contrived set-ups where their favorite character HAS to do this certain thing and demonstrate their awesomeness. They'll give a minor character that first-person POV so he/she can say what he/she REALLY thought about that one incident.
For example, there have been "Missing Moment" fanfics I've read, where I've spent years wanting to know what would happen in that crucial missing moment, and then someone writes a fanfic about it, and I finish the fanfic feeling ... flat. It's not that the fanfic's not good. It's technically perfect, with good grammar/spelling. The writing style is also good. I even believe that this could very likely happen in the canon material.
But I'll finish the fanfic and think, "This person wrote this fanfic to fill in this missing moment. That was their intention, and I could see it throughout the fanfic; they never let me forget." Instead of a story, it was just a vessel for them to achieve their goal. It's empty.
(Obviously, this will be a very subjective opinion -- plenty of people will like it, just as I'm sure plenty of people think that stuff I adore is empty and too purposeful and contrived. Probably how much you notice the intentional-ness of it depends on how much the Message resonates with you to begin with.)
I generally describe these stories as ones where the Message overtook the Story. By Story, I tend to mean the artistry/aesthetic of the story itself. This will include the building of tension, the narrative twists and tricks, the climax, the denouement, the sense of resolution. You don't have to have all of that, but if you don't have enough, your story will take out the Story and just retain the Message.
So for me, for example, long stories are almost impossible to write because they require too much long-term attention. Short fanfics, on the other hand, don't require as much time worrying about building tension, climax, or whatever. So for me, the difference between a finished snippet that doesn't go anywhere and a fanfic that I post on livejournal with the headers and everything is whether there's a resolution, a sense of ending. If not, generally the Message > the Story, and it doesn't read as a valid story, more a presentation of events.
Obviously, if you let the Story overtake you, and disregard the Message, your story's Message (and the Message your story is sending will vary from reader to reader, I think, this being the source of a lot of reader/writer "interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" contention) may end up making it so people can't bear to read your story because of its Message.
So for example, I began my White Collar fanfic with the Message: "Kate is not evil and she is not necessarily terrible for Neal, I think she is a perfectly nice person, probably, maybe" with a side order of "Wow, it's really hard for me to tell Kate and Elizabeth apart" and the story, narratively, worked out so that it flowed better if I put this segment there, and that segment there, and then included a few lines here, and somehow the Story overtook the Message, and my Message morphed into "Neal and Kate are an OTP" which ... I do not ship them, am not really a fan of Neal/Kate, and don't understand how it happened.
But because it has a Message and has a Story, even if the Message isn't something I agree with, I put it up.
There's other stories on my harddrive that I haven't because the Message vastly overshot the Story. So, the Undercovers fanfic about how Samantha is just as awesome as Steven ... is still sitting there. The Samurai Champloo fanfic about how Fuu can manage fine on her own even if she does miss her boys ... kind of trailed off with a whimper instead of ended with a bang.
Now, for me, the Message overtaking the Story is a bigger problem than the Story overtaking the Message because usually when the Story overtakes the Message, it gets too complicated and I don't get around to finishing it.
For some people who do publish, however, I think that they look at their story and see a beautifully-constructed Story, and they'll fail to see the Message it has, because that's not the Message they started out intending to promote. But they lost sight of the Message when their Story started developing plot twists, and suddenly, people are noticing the Message that the readers can clearly see, and that's when they notice all sorts of tropes, stereotypes, -isms, triteness, etc., that the writer didn't notice because they were too caught up in the Story. They didn't realize that their Story had morphed their Message into something else entirely.
Flawed Messages aren't always unintentional by-products of too-creative Story, though. Sometimes, it's intentional.
For example, your primary message may be, "If Ianto were put in THIS situation, THESE things would happen and Jack would still love him." But then, if while reading your fic, I notice an awful lot of instances of "Gwen is terrible", "Gwen is annoying", "Gwen does annoying things", "Ianto wishes Gwen would go away", "Gwen is selfish", "Gwen does something hypocritical", "Gwen is nosy" .... then guess what.
I'm going to stop reading your story, because I don't like your Message -- that you quite obviously hate Gwen.
(I'm still not sure, in retrospect, if this fanfic author was doing this subconsciously because he/she really felt this way about Gwen and genuinely thought they would react this way, but I suspect they were doing it intentionally to send out a side Message about their opinion of Gwen. Which, I do Side Messages all the time -- they're the random digressions you'll frequently find in my fic, where I think it's absolutely necessary to give you this parenthetical so you know this is what I think would happen, even if it's not super relevant to the story.)
But while even a throwaway digression side-Message about "How Gwen Sucks" would annoy me, a similar throwaway digression about, say, "Why Dick from Veronica Mars is an asshole, a rapist, and a terrible human being" would make me ecstatic, because hey! Someone else out there whose message isn't "Dick Casablanacas is a woobie/nice guy too!"
In any case, this Story/Message thing is something I've been reflecting on, in regards to the fic I read, as I fling down a story with a disgust because I can't handle the Message anymore, or finish a story feeling vaguely disquieted, like someone tried to hammer a Message down my throat (even if it's one I agree with), or yawn, because the Story isn't there, or because of thematic Message inconsistency (ooh, this happens a lot with sitcoms -- even if they keep consistent historical events, they often won't keep themes consistent -- what's the point of learning Lesson X three weeks ago if Lesson Y this week teaches the exact opposite? Generally, the "point" is because the Story is funnier that way).
But it's also something I'm working on in my writing, as I evaluate why this fic that I've actually written and finished three times still doesn't read like a valid story and more like a series of events, and why I'm trying to rewrite it again
Either way, this what makes a story "valid" for me, whether in books/novels, in tv/movies, or in fanfiction ...
I think that most stories are a mix between a "Message" and a "Story." And by Message, I don't mean "moral message." Rather, it's that one thing you want to get across that is painfully obvious.
So for example, while Ayn Rand's books generally have a fairly obvious Message, so do most if not all fanfics that originated from prompts.
Your Message can be, "I think Character X kicks ass" and your fanfic is a situation in which Character X would have to demonstrate that he/she kicks ass. Or maybe your Message is "Character X and Character Y are destined to be in deep, eternal, true love and/or have lots of hot kinky sex" and you set up the situation accordingly.
(For example, I can't even begin to mention the amount of Mal/Kaylee Firefly fic out there that has some iteration of "And this is why Simon and Kaylee would never go together and would make a bad couple" in there somewhere.)
I think every fanfic ever has a Message. I don't know if the same is true for original fiction, though I suspect it might be. But with fanfiction, there's always that interaction with the original source, where you think, "Hmmm, but I think THIS would happen," and you feel this way strongly enough you bother to write a story about it.
For this reason, people will use artificially convoluted plot devices so the two canons they've chosen can cross over. They'll have contrived set-ups where their favorite character HAS to do this certain thing and demonstrate their awesomeness. They'll give a minor character that first-person POV so he/she can say what he/she REALLY thought about that one incident.
For example, there have been "Missing Moment" fanfics I've read, where I've spent years wanting to know what would happen in that crucial missing moment, and then someone writes a fanfic about it, and I finish the fanfic feeling ... flat. It's not that the fanfic's not good. It's technically perfect, with good grammar/spelling. The writing style is also good. I even believe that this could very likely happen in the canon material.
But I'll finish the fanfic and think, "This person wrote this fanfic to fill in this missing moment. That was their intention, and I could see it throughout the fanfic; they never let me forget." Instead of a story, it was just a vessel for them to achieve their goal. It's empty.
(Obviously, this will be a very subjective opinion -- plenty of people will like it, just as I'm sure plenty of people think that stuff I adore is empty and too purposeful and contrived. Probably how much you notice the intentional-ness of it depends on how much the Message resonates with you to begin with.)
I generally describe these stories as ones where the Message overtook the Story. By Story, I tend to mean the artistry/aesthetic of the story itself. This will include the building of tension, the narrative twists and tricks, the climax, the denouement, the sense of resolution. You don't have to have all of that, but if you don't have enough, your story will take out the Story and just retain the Message.
So for me, for example, long stories are almost impossible to write because they require too much long-term attention. Short fanfics, on the other hand, don't require as much time worrying about building tension, climax, or whatever. So for me, the difference between a finished snippet that doesn't go anywhere and a fanfic that I post on livejournal with the headers and everything is whether there's a resolution, a sense of ending. If not, generally the Message > the Story, and it doesn't read as a valid story, more a presentation of events.
Obviously, if you let the Story overtake you, and disregard the Message, your story's Message (and the Message your story is sending will vary from reader to reader, I think, this being the source of a lot of reader/writer "interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" contention) may end up making it so people can't bear to read your story because of its Message.
So for example, I began my White Collar fanfic with the Message: "Kate is not evil and she is not necessarily terrible for Neal, I think she is a perfectly nice person, probably, maybe" with a side order of "Wow, it's really hard for me to tell Kate and Elizabeth apart" and the story, narratively, worked out so that it flowed better if I put this segment there, and that segment there, and then included a few lines here, and somehow the Story overtook the Message, and my Message morphed into "Neal and Kate are an OTP" which ... I do not ship them, am not really a fan of Neal/Kate, and don't understand how it happened.
But because it has a Message and has a Story, even if the Message isn't something I agree with, I put it up.
There's other stories on my harddrive that I haven't because the Message vastly overshot the Story. So, the Undercovers fanfic about how Samantha is just as awesome as Steven ... is still sitting there. The Samurai Champloo fanfic about how Fuu can manage fine on her own even if she does miss her boys ... kind of trailed off with a whimper instead of ended with a bang.
Now, for me, the Message overtaking the Story is a bigger problem than the Story overtaking the Message because usually when the Story overtakes the Message, it gets too complicated and I don't get around to finishing it.
For some people who do publish, however, I think that they look at their story and see a beautifully-constructed Story, and they'll fail to see the Message it has, because that's not the Message they started out intending to promote. But they lost sight of the Message when their Story started developing plot twists, and suddenly, people are noticing the Message that the readers can clearly see, and that's when they notice all sorts of tropes, stereotypes, -isms, triteness, etc., that the writer didn't notice because they were too caught up in the Story. They didn't realize that their Story had morphed their Message into something else entirely.
Flawed Messages aren't always unintentional by-products of too-creative Story, though. Sometimes, it's intentional.
For example, your primary message may be, "If Ianto were put in THIS situation, THESE things would happen and Jack would still love him." But then, if while reading your fic, I notice an awful lot of instances of "Gwen is terrible", "Gwen is annoying", "Gwen does annoying things", "Ianto wishes Gwen would go away", "Gwen is selfish", "Gwen does something hypocritical", "Gwen is nosy" .... then guess what.
I'm going to stop reading your story, because I don't like your Message -- that you quite obviously hate Gwen.
(I'm still not sure, in retrospect, if this fanfic author was doing this subconsciously because he/she really felt this way about Gwen and genuinely thought they would react this way, but I suspect they were doing it intentionally to send out a side Message about their opinion of Gwen. Which, I do Side Messages all the time -- they're the random digressions you'll frequently find in my fic, where I think it's absolutely necessary to give you this parenthetical so you know this is what I think would happen, even if it's not super relevant to the story.)
But while even a throwaway digression side-Message about "How Gwen Sucks" would annoy me, a similar throwaway digression about, say, "Why Dick from Veronica Mars is an asshole, a rapist, and a terrible human being" would make me ecstatic, because hey! Someone else out there whose message isn't "Dick Casablanacas is a woobie/nice guy too!"
In any case, this Story/Message thing is something I've been reflecting on, in regards to the fic I read, as I fling down a story with a disgust because I can't handle the Message anymore, or finish a story feeling vaguely disquieted, like someone tried to hammer a Message down my throat (even if it's one I agree with), or yawn, because the Story isn't there, or because of thematic Message inconsistency (ooh, this happens a lot with sitcoms -- even if they keep consistent historical events, they often won't keep themes consistent -- what's the point of learning Lesson X three weeks ago if Lesson Y this week teaches the exact opposite? Generally, the "point" is because the Story is funnier that way).
But it's also something I'm working on in my writing, as I evaluate why this fic that I've actually written and finished three times still doesn't read like a valid story and more like a series of events, and why I'm trying to rewrite it again
