Thread at dearauthor.com on fanfic about genre romance
The thread goes off into tediously elementary discussions of the ethics of fan fiction, but the original question posed is an interesting one: Why isn't there more fanfic about genre romance? Some of the respondents said, "Because the romance is already there in the original," but that's true also of plenty of canon m/m that slashers have written about. I mean, just look at the amount of Queer As Folk slash that is out there.

I don't write fanfiction, but I do daydream, and when I daydream, it's not about characters that do the usual. Perhaps this is true of fanfiction writers. Perhaps they do the fanfiction about characters that don't do the usual. I'm not talking about writing the fanfiction. I'm talking about the original premise of these characters. For example, the Stargate characters do not do the usual. And even the Queer as Folk characters aren't really usual, not compared to mainstream characters who are het. If daydreaming is about letting boundaries drop and going where you don't normally go, then perhaps this is true of fanfiction. Genre romance is normal, as is ordinary, stuff already known. Whenever I daydream het relationships, it was in odd situations that weren't normal, which at once took it away from plain old romance. Perhaps it's just me, but why bother writing fanfiction if it's about the same old stuff, is what I'm saying.

I must be reading the wrong meta about genre romance; I was under the impression that a lot of it was pirate stories and vampires and other unordinary stuff. You have a point, though; fanfic descended from SF/F fandom, so it's likely to be scarcer in contemporary romance. "Perhaps it's just me, but why bother writing fanfiction if it's about the same old stuff, is what I'm saying." My impression - from having been forced to wade through it to get to the stuff that I like - is that yaoi originalfic (and I gather yaoi fanfic) is positively overflowing with schoolboy love stories. Personally, I can't think of anything duller than reading about schooldays, but I think I can guess where this impulses comes from, because Leather in Lawnville is about (as Ann Somerville put it) "mixing the mundanity of laundry and potlucks with . . . kink." That's a rather fun way to write a story, actually: To take some ordinary setting and spice it up with the imaginary. ("Lawnville" is actually my old hometown, and yes, the basement in my old house does have a laundry room with all the implements I describe in "Clothesline." Including that dresser with old bike chains. My mother never threw out anything.)

Am I reading that right? Are they asking why more fanfic doesn't have romance in it (as apposed to sex)?

I guess the word \"genre\" applied to romance always throws me. I see romance and I think romance genres--historical, modern, regency and such. I always thought these were it's genres. So perhaps I have it wrong.

They are asking why more fanfic isn't based on romance-genre novels. Overlooking, perhaps, that very little fanfic is based on any kind of novel with the exception of Harry Potte.

K. M. Frontain said: "I guess the word 'genre' applied to romance always throws me." Yes, it's confusing. I think they use the word to distinguish between the publishing genre known as romance and other types of romantic fiction that don't fall into that genre (like my stuff). I actually like it when the word is used, because it's a tacit way of acknowledging that romance doesn't begin and end with RWA-type writings. veinglory wrote: "very little fanfic is based on any kind of novel with the exception of Harry Potte." Are you referring to the size of literary fandoms, in comparison to the size of movie and TV fandoms? Then yes, not unless you count Lord of the Rings (which is really more moviefic than bookfic). But when you add up all the tiny little fandoms, it turns out to be a very healthy percentage of fan fiction. Rarelitslash is the most active multi-fandom LJ I know of. And look at the book section from Fanfiction.net. There are nearly 500 fandoms there, and over 25 of the fandoms have more than 500 stories each. Tamora Pierce alone has inspired 7000 stories, for heaven's sake.

I would still, no doubt blithely and with unjustified confidence, estimate that proportion at less than 5% for all literature, perhaps more like 1%. Compare Tamora Pierce to Star Trek or even something like the Sentinel... I am much more aware of lit slash as it is pretty much all I read these days and I find it hard to get hold of. Whereas TV slash it's more a matter of finding the good material from amidst the billion of teen-shipper blog stories. But the examples of Pierce and Rowling my be indicative--most ficcers, by volume, are still quite young whereas the romance reading demographic is on average in their mid to late 30s. The older fanfiction writers seem to skew historical/literary. I do think the angst and emotion element of fic is already in canon for romance and often not in other genres.

Me lecturing you on book fandoms above. I should know better. :) "Whereas TV slash it's more a matter of finding the good material from amidst the billion of teen-shipper blog stories." Depends on the fandom, I think. Basically, it's fair to say that nearly all litslash is rareslash. If you were to compare litslash to rare TV slash or rare movie slash, I think you'd find that the situation is comparable. (And if anyone can find me some China Beach fanfic and some *good* Casablanca slash, I'd be very grateful.)

I don't pan the slash much anymore. I trawl Britslash occassionally--and still hope for some decent Dr Strange slash.

I don't pan the slash much anymore. I trawl Britslash occassionally--and still hope for some decent Dr Strange slash.

I don't pan the slash much anymore. I trawl Britslash occassionally--and still hope for some decent Dr Strange slash.

connected to the original question but not that much...
I actually know a lot of fanfic writers, and I've written some myself, which usually gets cannibalized later for other projects. There is one thing about fanfiction that I really love, and that's the ability to just pick it up and run with it. A ficwriting friend told me once that "Fanfiction writers tell the stories that the original writer couldn't." I like that statement on one hand, on the other it makes me shake my head at how arrogant we can all be when we're young. Honestly, fanfiction is probably one of the best breeding and training grounds for new authors in the 16-21 range. I know ficwriters who are better than some of the commercial novelists out there, but they haven't yet found their own niche. In the meantime, they're sharpening their claws on fanfic,learning what works and what doesn't, figuring out how to craft what should be an impossible scene into something that you really can believe in. One writer in particular that I know and read avidly writes Celebrity fanfiction, and she does it so well that most of her readers agree that we catch ourselves watching some celeb expose and wondering why the paparazzi hasn't gotten a picture of so-and-so with his wife and kids... and then we remember that so-and-so doesn't HAVE a wife and kids, that's just in the fic. I think that as we see this generation of fanfiction writers move out of that safe pool and out into mainstream writing and publishing, we're going to be doing a lot of head-shaking and wondering why we didn't see them coming. Just my .02, and I hope it doesn't offend.

Welcome to the forum. I think you'll find us harder to offend than that ;)