Lies, Damned Lies, and Confirmed Kill Counts

Here's the thing. I believe strongly that most people are not inclined towards evil. But I think a lot of people are weak, and with proper motivation, are easily pushed towards bad things. And in the end, we all are ultimately responsible for our own actions - a person's original motivations in life mean very little when they kill a person in the process of mugging them.

One of the weaknesses most of us share is a fascination with the darker things in life. Almost everyone I know (including myself) has had a true crime phase that started when they were a young teenager. You know what I'm talking about - you start feeling more grown up, and you want to explore subjects that feel forbidden. So you gorge yourself on a dozen serial killer biographies until you feel sick.

As grown-ups most of us aren't much different from that. Just look at the news.

HEAR 911 CALLS FROM
USHER'S HOME
(are you kidding me?!)

You hear people complain about it all the time ("I hate the news, it's so depressing") but why do these businesses sell us these stories? Because it's what we buy.

Literally - there's an entire "Kill Count Memoir" genre now (that I won't link to), where ex-soldiers claim higher and higher "confirmed kill counts" under titles like Carnivore. Books and movies like this glamorize the bloody confusion of war into scalp-hunting.

And these books only exist because consumers demand them. Were any buyer to spend more than two seconds thinking about "confirmed kill counts", they would realize that the public is choosing to trick themselves. Confirmed kill counts do not exist. Why would the military care about the number of people one individual killed? And even if they did, how exactly would you confirm the results of a shot taken from a distance, likely through foliage or buildings and in the middle of other action? The whole idea is absurd.

And guess what, even the guys who write these memoirs say their probable numbers are wildly inflated by publishers. Wow, it's almost like these books are fiction made up in order to please the public.

And of course, even the less
violence-obsessed side of news
is often tawdry. "These photos are
so disturbing that we must SHARE
THEM WITH ALL OF YOU!"

Like I said, I really don't think that people tend towards evil. But when we see the words "sex scandal" or "most killed" or "which star is looking chubby", it's so easy to click a link out of morbid curiosity.

Morbid curiosity isn't always wrong. There's some value in understanding what life is like inside a prison, or about the psychology of a serial killer. But I think there's a thin, clear line between attempting to understand a taboo subject and wallowing in violence and sleaze.

We can't overhaul the news, publishing, and Hollywood all in one day. But we can consistently make better choices that are in line with our beliefs. We can choose to click links that don't prey on cheap sensationalism. We can choose to buy thoughtful non-fiction. We can choose to shape the world in a better image, one small act at a time.

One Size Fits None

Finish every manuscript you start. Set a word goal and meet it every single day. Show, don't tell. Don't use adverbs. Read everything in sight. Write what you know.

Any of that sound familiar? I'm pretty sure it does. These are respected tenets of the writing community. Their certainty is almost comforting, in a way.

Here's a nasty little secret - statistics mean nothing to the individual.

Most writing advice is well-meaning and comes from a good place. Obviously if you never finish a manuscript, it's at least 30% harder to sell your book. Reading a genre is unquestionably the best way to know what other readers are expecting.

But there are no absolutes. Not in writing, not in life.

Writers are passionate people and you will find folks all over the internet and the real world arguing vehemently for one side or the other on these and other issues. People will absolutely insist that vampire books are dead(heh), or self-publishing is a fool's game, or that you cannot use a prologue.

These people don't know you. These people don't know your book.

All too often I'll see writers asking for not just advice, but judgement - "Is this story idea a good one?" "Is it okay to talk about this topic?" "Is it alright to break genre convention in this instance?"

Folks, you are the pale moon and the golden sun of your writing world. Nobody else can tell you in certainty that a character or a plot or a book will or will not appeal to readers. If that were possible, we would all be bowing at the feet of Random Schuster Harper Disney and its one employee.

There's nothing wrong with taking advice. At least considering the advice of others is not just a good way to write, but a good way to live. There are limits, though. All things in moderation. The advice of other writers cannot write, edit, or save your book.

You are the master of your destiny. Accept no substitutes.

Why Selling Fanfiction is Weird Science

Putting aside moral and ethical quandaries, today I want to talk a little about the business aspect of pulled-to-publish, or P2P, fanfiction. All of what I'm saying here applies to self-publishing as well as trade publishing, but I'm going to talk about it in terms of trade publishing for ease of reference.

When publishers buy fanfiction and repackage it for the mainstream market, they're making two big assumptions:

1. This book has an appeal beyond its initial fanbase. 

2. This book's popularity in fandom says something about its potential popularity on the mainstream market.

And I’m not entirely sure those are good assumptions to make.

There is a very definite possibility that E.L. James was another Octomom; that she got big on notoriety rather than any real interest in her content. She wrote a story about something relatively taboo, and the way in which it was published was also (or at least it used to be) taboo. BDSM and intellectual property theft - turns out that the two of those things churn up enough interest to make you a bestseller.

This was the first time something this raunchy went mainstream. It got a lot of attention and started a movement. There's no doubt that E.L. kicked erotica into high gear and that a lot of other people have been successful in that field since. But I notice that all of the breakout successes since have been original fiction.

I think the forbidden unknown was the draw of E.L.'s work and the reason it succeeded. I do NOT think it succeeded because it was formerly a successful fanfic, and here's why: Fanfiction has already had an audience. Therefore, many of your potential fans have already read the story, and the rest of your potential fans know that they can find it online for free.

What you're doing when you re-publish a successful piece of fanfiction is putting it on the market and assuming that the same things that made it appeal to a fanbase will make it appeal to everybody. But fans of whatever it may be are a self-selecting group, and doesn't it seem likely that a lot of them will have already read the story?

Additionally, fanfiction and original fiction are not the same thing. Fanfiction relies on at least a passing knowledge of characters, themes, and setting. Fanfiction also tends to be written in a serial style with an emphasis on spending more time with your favorite characters v. tight plotting and action. It makes sense that different forms of storytelling would have different focuses, but one of these things is not like the other and there's no reason to assume this style will sell well on the mass market. (And no, Fifty Shades does not count as a reason - it is one example. That makes it an anomaly, not the norm.)

But wait! Authors say their P2P stories are reworked and edited so that they barely resemble their original forms. Okay, fine. I wonder how far you can take these stories from their original form without losing the very things that made them popular, but even if this is so...

What about legality?

Thus far, publishers have been acting under the "it's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission" principle. That's fine right up until it isn't. Stephenie Meyer may not be interested in suing anyone, but E.L. James herself has demanded fanfiction of her work be taken down, and many well-known authors like Anne McCaffrey have long stated that they don't allow fanfiction of their works in any form. Eventually, somebody is going to balk.

The courts may decide that P2P fanfiction is in fact legal. But publishers don't know that. They're walking on thin ice.

What it comes down to is just because something's salable doesn't make it legal, and just because something's legal doesn't make it salable. Either or both of these things may be true about pulled-to-publish fanfiction. But neither are proven. I don't think this is a good move by publishers, and I wonder what this says about their attitude toward the industry.