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Serial numbers
Posted on 2003.04.18 at 19:37
It occurs to me that I have no idea how sophisticated someone who reads this might be in the expressions fan writers have traditionally used. By “filing off the serial numbers,” I and they are not, of course, talking about plagiarism or ripping anybody off.
Actually, I sometimes wonder if I’m the one who started the use of the phrase in the fan community, but perhaps I’m fooling myself. At any rate, some years ago I borrowed the phrase from Robert Heinlein, who wrote books like Citizen of the Galaxy -- clearly inspired by Kim -- and Double Star (reminiscent of Prisoner of Zenda. As he put it so cheerfully, “File off the serial numbers, drive it over the state line, and it’s yours.”
There are a certain number of basic plot ideas and archetypal characters floating out there, and the work of our brothers and sisters who came before enrichens the soil we have to work with and make our own. I could point out, for instance, that Buffy is full of archetypal characters we’ve seen before -- Giles, the mentor; Buffy, the champion; Xander, the lovable loser; Willow, the wise best friend; Spike, the good-looking and popular rogue, in need of redemption through love. Obviously, none of these are ripoffs of similar characters that we’ve seen before; Joss Whedon took the power of those archetypes and individualized them, made them uniquely his own, and put them in a world with his own tonal spin.
That’s what we mean by filing off the serial numbers -- finding character types, relationships, themes that excite you, and making your own creations from them.
Here follows Part Two of my original response:
[A friend who shall be nameless because I haven’t asked them for permission to use names] wrote:
> > I'd be interested in some discussion on *how* to file the serial
> > numbers off of fanfic. What kind of fic is file-able in the first
> > place? What kind of markets are we talking about?
And another friend answered:
> Well, I find that the biggest things you have to change are the amount and
> kind of description. Somewhere early in your 'new' story, you're going to
> have to find a way to talk about:
>
> 1) what the characters look like
> 2) what they 'sound' like
> 3) what their surroundings look like.
>
> You can get away with a lot of bare bones dialogue in fan fiction
that you
> really *can't* with original fic. I've been forced to teach myself
how to
> say more than I ever would with fan fiction.
I talked a little in my previous post about the art of filing off serial numbers. FWIW, here are a few more thoughts.
[Name Withheld], your fan fiction is true to fan fiction, form following function in a craftsmanlike way. That is, spare and careful, like the branches of a tree against a white sky in winter. You throw the reader into a situation, and no description is necessary. So-and-So's car? We know what his car looks like. Etc. The background is almost irrelevant to the dance, which is psychological and dialogue-
oriented.
OTOH, there are a lot of different styles to fan fiction, just as there are to fiction. I think the description thing is probably something a lot of writers who've only done fanfic will be suddenly grappling with for the first time; I was giving feedback to another writer recently on the same issue, and this was a script, so you'd think you'd need less description than you would with prose. And you do, but still you need some -- you need to set time and place and atmosphere, so the reader can sink happily into the story like a stone and think, "Yummy! I am now on a small island in Greece in the year 980 AD. Entertain me, writer!"
There are occasional fannish writers who -- well, I think of them as fan writers who are almost writing original fiction with fan characters. Anna's "In A Dark Time," for instance. The description was as important as the dialogue, and not only did I feel as though I were seeing Mulder's apartment for the first time (even though it was shown on screen) I also felt as though I were being given a walking tour of his head.
I'd peg the style of that story as almost anti-fanfic; very rich and dense, like biting off cake in every sentence. You couldn't chew it up too quickly, it just wasn't possible. It was fascinating to me not simply as a story but as another way of approaching fan fiction; re-imagining it as though the show didn't exist and this were the first novel written about these characters. (Even though it was very much show-dependent in terms of the plot.)
OTOH, if you're used to being spare and not needing to parcel out the information, I think the biggest leap is this: becoming naive again. That is, writing original fiction is like writing a tech manual or giving someone directions to your house or teaching someone who has no experience in a certain subject. There was a cliche in the Wall Street firm where I used to do user support, that the techiest of the techs could not be trusted to write manuals or give directions, because they couldn't make that leap and put themselves in the head of someone who was a blank slate. It's like an American taking a foreign visitor to a baseball game: "Who is that player there?" "That's the catcher. The catcher catches the ball, and the pitcher throws it." Foreign visitor, floundering as he looks over the field: "But all the players are throwing the ball and catching it." Yes, but the American just knew too damned much, and didn't see the field the same way -- it's the COIK fallacy ("Clear Only If Known").
You cannot enter the kingdom of writing heaven unless you become like a child again. And personally, I'd follow up the "naive" rule with this: description should not be a chore. No part of writing should be a chore. There must be a way to make it interesting -- either in the sheer poetics of atmosphere, if you're taking the leisurely route, or in the choice of descriptive detail, that matters because you're in the pov of one particular character, so everything he sees is flavored with him. Or if it's an SF story, it might be what the choice of description tells you about that society.
However, this does not necessarily address the question of what kind of fic is file-able. Because some stories just aren't. What's unsuitable? Well, I've always been drawn to stories in which baseline expectation is violated. As an example, let’s look at a fan story called "The Sin-Eater." In it, Scully jumps ahead in time five years, and finds a very different Mulder. She doesn't even realize that it's been five years for a while, because Mulder lies to her about that. He's involved with the consortium, she sees him destroying evidence that he would once have given his life to find, and she's freaked -- what the hell is going on?
That story's power was all based on the violation both of expectation and relationship, and the questions they raised. To achieve it in original fiction, you'd have to write 400 pages setting up their relationship, showing you the pre-existing Mulder-character, etc., and then in the last 200 pages, you might be able to violate pattern. Except, even if you went to all that trouble, you'd have a pretty unwieldy structure for a book. I mean, get the reader all involved in a story, and then jump ahead five years? They'd hate you.
I think the best way to file off the numbers, really, is to take the characters you love, and come up with a setting that will allow them to display their plumage. Let's say you've got a Mountie and a cop. What you really have is a kind of dark-edged divine innocent and a cop. Suppose instead of him being a Mountie, he's from a small town in Alaska or the Azores or (stranger yet) Pitcairn Island -- someplace out of the way of real life -- and he came to mainland USA six years ago on a personal mission, and got into an accident almost immediately. He's been in a coma in UCLA Medical Center for five years and had some very odd dreams that may or may not have affected his sense of reality. (Maybe a hint of the supernatural here, or not.) He still has all the power of Fraser and his odd confidence in how life should be lived, but it's coming from another place. All he knows of life in LA/Chicago/NYC is what he saw on television -- and some of that is rather dreamlike, from the coma years. ("Is Bush really President again?" "Bush *junior,* man.")
Meanwhile, the man he was pursuing just before the coma has disappeared into the population, but our hero means to find him.
Or this is SF, and your Fraser avatar was like one of those cloned, tape-educated people in CJ Cherryh's books. Designed to follow certain rules, perhaps to be submissive to authority, but with talents and abilities and a way of seeing things that's different from the human norm. (And bred for looks as well, because, why not?) Your cop partner, originally freaked by the "person" he's chosen to partner with, becomes in the end moved by him and defensive of him, because there's a level of... divinity isn't quite the word, but it's closer than anything else I'm coming up with... that is moving both in its impressiveness and its pathos. And this semi-Fraser horrifies his partner with the choices that he makes.
Or maybe you don't need to file serial numbers. Maybe you just need to find a hero or heroes that move you, that have nothing to do with your fannish side. Were you ever particularly attracted to the rakish pirate archetype, or the rumpled questioner of the status quo? You can design your own heroes, if you like, with as much blending or non-blending of others as you wish.
Once you have the characters and the setting, the plot is the easiest part of it. Plot is the one thing that can be taught, unlike dialogue or sheer love/exuberance of character. Once you've got your version of Mountie and partner, you ask yourself, "What's the most disturbing thing I can do to this character, given this background?" -- and start constructing. Adding humor and banter and flavor and world-building as you go.
Then, a little sauce, a little sprinkly cheese, and voila.
Actually, I sometimes wonder if I’m the one who started the use of the phrase in the fan community, but perhaps I’m fooling myself. At any rate, some years ago I borrowed the phrase from Robert Heinlein, who wrote books like Citizen of the Galaxy -- clearly inspired by Kim -- and Double Star (reminiscent of Prisoner of Zenda. As he put it so cheerfully, “File off the serial numbers, drive it over the state line, and it’s yours.”
There are a certain number of basic plot ideas and archetypal characters floating out there, and the work of our brothers and sisters who came before enrichens the soil we have to work with and make our own. I could point out, for instance, that Buffy is full of archetypal characters we’ve seen before -- Giles, the mentor; Buffy, the champion; Xander, the lovable loser; Willow, the wise best friend; Spike, the good-looking and popular rogue, in need of redemption through love. Obviously, none of these are ripoffs of similar characters that we’ve seen before; Joss Whedon took the power of those archetypes and individualized them, made them uniquely his own, and put them in a world with his own tonal spin.
That’s what we mean by filing off the serial numbers -- finding character types, relationships, themes that excite you, and making your own creations from them.
Here follows Part Two of my original response:
[A friend who shall be nameless because I haven’t asked them for permission to use names] wrote:
> > I'd be interested in some discussion on *how* to file the serial
> > numbers off of fanfic. What kind of fic is file-able in the first
> > place? What kind of markets are we talking about?
And another friend answered:
> Well, I find that the biggest things you have to change are the amount and
> kind of description. Somewhere early in your 'new' story, you're going to
> have to find a way to talk about:
>
> 1) what the characters look like
> 2) what they 'sound' like
> 3) what their surroundings look like.
>
> You can get away with a lot of bare bones dialogue in fan fiction
that you
> really *can't* with original fic. I've been forced to teach myself
how to
> say more than I ever would with fan fiction.
I talked a little in my previous post about the art of filing off serial numbers. FWIW, here are a few more thoughts.
[Name Withheld], your fan fiction is true to fan fiction, form following function in a craftsmanlike way. That is, spare and careful, like the branches of a tree against a white sky in winter. You throw the reader into a situation, and no description is necessary. So-and-So's car? We know what his car looks like. Etc. The background is almost irrelevant to the dance, which is psychological and dialogue-
oriented.
OTOH, there are a lot of different styles to fan fiction, just as there are to fiction. I think the description thing is probably something a lot of writers who've only done fanfic will be suddenly grappling with for the first time; I was giving feedback to another writer recently on the same issue, and this was a script, so you'd think you'd need less description than you would with prose. And you do, but still you need some -- you need to set time and place and atmosphere, so the reader can sink happily into the story like a stone and think, "Yummy! I am now on a small island in Greece in the year 980 AD. Entertain me, writer!"
There are occasional fannish writers who -- well, I think of them as fan writers who are almost writing original fiction with fan characters. Anna's "In A Dark Time," for instance. The description was as important as the dialogue, and not only did I feel as though I were seeing Mulder's apartment for the first time (even though it was shown on screen) I also felt as though I were being given a walking tour of his head.
I'd peg the style of that story as almost anti-fanfic; very rich and dense, like biting off cake in every sentence. You couldn't chew it up too quickly, it just wasn't possible. It was fascinating to me not simply as a story but as another way of approaching fan fiction; re-imagining it as though the show didn't exist and this were the first novel written about these characters. (Even though it was very much show-dependent in terms of the plot.)
OTOH, if you're used to being spare and not needing to parcel out the information, I think the biggest leap is this: becoming naive again. That is, writing original fiction is like writing a tech manual or giving someone directions to your house or teaching someone who has no experience in a certain subject. There was a cliche in the Wall Street firm where I used to do user support, that the techiest of the techs could not be trusted to write manuals or give directions, because they couldn't make that leap and put themselves in the head of someone who was a blank slate. It's like an American taking a foreign visitor to a baseball game: "Who is that player there?" "That's the catcher. The catcher catches the ball, and the pitcher throws it." Foreign visitor, floundering as he looks over the field: "But all the players are throwing the ball and catching it." Yes, but the American just knew too damned much, and didn't see the field the same way -- it's the COIK fallacy ("Clear Only If Known").
You cannot enter the kingdom of writing heaven unless you become like a child again. And personally, I'd follow up the "naive" rule with this: description should not be a chore. No part of writing should be a chore. There must be a way to make it interesting -- either in the sheer poetics of atmosphere, if you're taking the leisurely route, or in the choice of descriptive detail, that matters because you're in the pov of one particular character, so everything he sees is flavored with him. Or if it's an SF story, it might be what the choice of description tells you about that society.
However, this does not necessarily address the question of what kind of fic is file-able. Because some stories just aren't. What's unsuitable? Well, I've always been drawn to stories in which baseline expectation is violated. As an example, let’s look at a fan story called "The Sin-Eater." In it, Scully jumps ahead in time five years, and finds a very different Mulder. She doesn't even realize that it's been five years for a while, because Mulder lies to her about that. He's involved with the consortium, she sees him destroying evidence that he would once have given his life to find, and she's freaked -- what the hell is going on?
That story's power was all based on the violation both of expectation and relationship, and the questions they raised. To achieve it in original fiction, you'd have to write 400 pages setting up their relationship, showing you the pre-existing Mulder-character, etc., and then in the last 200 pages, you might be able to violate pattern. Except, even if you went to all that trouble, you'd have a pretty unwieldy structure for a book. I mean, get the reader all involved in a story, and then jump ahead five years? They'd hate you.
I think the best way to file off the numbers, really, is to take the characters you love, and come up with a setting that will allow them to display their plumage. Let's say you've got a Mountie and a cop. What you really have is a kind of dark-edged divine innocent and a cop. Suppose instead of him being a Mountie, he's from a small town in Alaska or the Azores or (stranger yet) Pitcairn Island -- someplace out of the way of real life -- and he came to mainland USA six years ago on a personal mission, and got into an accident almost immediately. He's been in a coma in UCLA Medical Center for five years and had some very odd dreams that may or may not have affected his sense of reality. (Maybe a hint of the supernatural here, or not.) He still has all the power of Fraser and his odd confidence in how life should be lived, but it's coming from another place. All he knows of life in LA/Chicago/NYC is what he saw on television -- and some of that is rather dreamlike, from the coma years. ("Is Bush really President again?" "Bush *junior,* man.")
Meanwhile, the man he was pursuing just before the coma has disappeared into the population, but our hero means to find him.
Or this is SF, and your Fraser avatar was like one of those cloned, tape-educated people in CJ Cherryh's books. Designed to follow certain rules, perhaps to be submissive to authority, but with talents and abilities and a way of seeing things that's different from the human norm. (And bred for looks as well, because, why not?) Your cop partner, originally freaked by the "person" he's chosen to partner with, becomes in the end moved by him and defensive of him, because there's a level of... divinity isn't quite the word, but it's closer than anything else I'm coming up with... that is moving both in its impressiveness and its pathos. And this semi-Fraser horrifies his partner with the choices that he makes.
Or maybe you don't need to file serial numbers. Maybe you just need to find a hero or heroes that move you, that have nothing to do with your fannish side. Were you ever particularly attracted to the rakish pirate archetype, or the rumpled questioner of the status quo? You can design your own heroes, if you like, with as much blending or non-blending of others as you wish.
Once you have the characters and the setting, the plot is the easiest part of it. Plot is the one thing that can be taught, unlike dialogue or sheer love/exuberance of character. Once you've got your version of Mountie and partner, you ask yourself, "What's the most disturbing thing I can do to this character, given this background?" -- and start constructing. Adding humor and banter and flavor and world-building as you go.
Then, a little sauce, a little sprinkly cheese, and voila.