Imitating another author's style. Here's the blurb from the class description:

"Almost anything written or performed involves some imitation. Sometimes the imitation is enforced (do it by the rules!) while sometimes it is voluntary (I'm choosing to work in the genre of...). The university is no exception: students find themselves being asked to imitate or conform to styles, vocabulary, methods, and folkways prevalent among their professors and academic departments. In this seminar we'll look at acts of imitation and required behaviors both outside and inside the university, and ask what their causes, functions, advantages and disadvantages are. We'll ask what room is left for creativity, and when it is more useful to imitate or conform, vs. when it is more useful to strike out on one's own."

Does that make more sense? To me, fan fiction is a form of imitation...of the show it is written about. I guess I'm wondering how closely you guys, as fan fiction writers, feel like you stick to imitating the show and characters you're writing about, and how much you feel like you're just doing your own thing, borrowing characters from the show.

There are many challenges (and at least one site) that are "If _______ wrote Star Trek/X-Files/etc".. And people will write fanfic in the style of, say, Raymond Chandler or Jane Austen. It's really quite remarkable.

Wow. That's really interesting and kinda cool!

I guess I'm wondering how closely you guys, as fan fiction writers, feel like you stick to imitating the show and characters you're writing about, and how much you feel like you're just doing your own thing, borrowing characters from the show.

The character voices have to be right, or it's difficult for me to enjoy a story. For shows with distinctive dialogue patterns, like Buffy, this can be difficult.

There's more flexibility with the overall aura of the show, but that depends on the show again. Some fandoms lend themselves to being twisted in all sorts of interesting ways. Some shows, like Gilmore Girls, I'd find it very difficult to read anything that deviated much from the main feeling of the show.

Does that make more sense? To me, fan fiction is a form of imitation...of the show it is written about. I guess I'm wondering how closely you guys, as fan fiction writers, feel like you stick to imitating the show and characters you're writing about, and how much you feel like you're just doing your own thing, borrowing characters from the show.

It varies wildly. Some people borrow the names and physical features of the characters, and some try to fit everything so seamlessly into canon that you cannot tell where the story begins and the show ends. In between, there is most everything else.

I try to mimic the voices and motivations, and recreate the world as best I can while adding new facets or ideas to it.

I think that filk is very close to what you're looking for, vw. Because if you don't get the rhythm and style of the original poem/song/story correct, the filk doesn't make sense.

The character voices have to be right, or it's difficult for me to enjoy a story.

This makes a lot of sense.

In between, there is most everything else.

Do you think (and I hate to make a generalization, so that's SO not what I'm trying to do here) one of the draws to fan fiction is that there is a structure to follow? Or am I talking out of my ass here, not being a fan fiction writer and all?

burnt toast

I think that filk is very close to what you're looking for, vw. Because if you don't get the rhythm and style of the original poem/song/story correct, the filk doesn't make sense.

Good point. Oh, and Elena, do you know where any of those challenges or that website is? I'd love to take a look at them.

I know that, in addition to JW, Tom Fontana, and David Simon, my current WIP owes a lot to Philip Roth too...I think writing fic can be like doing impressions.

Go to the filk site and look at the Literary category.

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You can also find pastiches in fanfic, where, say, someone writes a Smallville story in the style of a noir detective story.

I don't know. I don't write in the style of the show very much at all, really, though I try to match dialogue patterns and canon information. But the stuff I tend towards ends up being kind of froufy and amorphous (I think) and largely character-driven, internal dialogue stuff that doesn't mimic the plot-based stories of the shows I write about.