Why bad fic is good

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I was reading another screenwriter's blog (as I am wont to do), and found this post. The point of it isn't so much relevant to me, since he's talking about why you should take a writing job on a crappy show and not worry about having a crappy show on your resume, but the reason he recommends it is really interesting:

You can't learn from something that's done right.

It may seem counterintuitive, but I've found it to be true in fic writing. I can't count the number of times I've read a really awesome fic and said, "I wish I could write like that," whether in reference to the prose itself, or the storytelling, or the plot, or the literary device used, or whatever. But the problem is, it gives me a benchmark without any real way of teaching me how to reach that benchmark. What makes a good story work? Often, it's not something you can explain - it's just that everything clicks and things come together perfectly and it's not really something you can replicate. And I've found myself endlessly frustrated in trying to do things I've seen other authors execute flawlessly, when I really don't know how they did it, and thus, don't know how to do it on my own.

(This was also an issue I had early on with dialogue. I knew funny lines when I heard them, but I didn't know what made them funny, so the only way I knew how to write funny lines was to steal jokes from other shows and adapt them for whatever I was writing.)

On the other hand, you CAN learn from a fic that gets it wrong. You can look at their mistakes and figure out how you'd have fixed them. You can see where they went wrong and vow never to do that in your own writing. It's often much easier to learn what not to do than it is to learn how to recreate the best story you ever read. (It's also why concrit is helpful, because then someone is pointing out your own mistakes so you can learn from them.)

Maybe this is striking a chord because I just read another fic last night that didn't go the way I wanted it to, and much like with He Will Come For Me, thinking about how I'd have made it more interesting gave me a fic idea of my own (not that I'll ever write it, but that's a different issue).

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Not only do we learn from our own mistakes (when we can recognize them as mistakes), but we learn from other people's mistakes also.

This is very interesting and true.

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I definitely prefer to learn from other people's mistakes. Saves me the trouble of making them myself. :)

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Huh. You have a point.

Though I think this only works for the mediocre bad fics. The fics that might be good if a couple things got fixed (and you can identify what those are). There are some fics that are just plain bad and would have no hope of ever being anything but, and there's no use even trying to figure out what's wrong because the answer is: everything.

I like the connection to concrit. So very true. It's hard to get that distance from your own fic to see the mistakes, but someone else pointing them out can be a huge help. And I know that, even with fics I enjoy reading, I notice technical or structural problems that I just mentally note as things that could have been done better, and it makes me more aware of that stuff in my own fics.

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Yeah, there's some fic that's just unsalvageable, and that's not worth spending time on. It's more the kind of thing where a fic is going along really well, but then the author blows the ending. Or the writing is really good, but the plot has a big hole in it, or the characterization is off, etc.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

vow never to do that in your own writing

This is where I get tripped up, because then I'm compelled to take that thing that really bugs me in a bad fic and try to make it work. It's a thing. I keep telling myself stuff like absolutely positively NO: crossovers, songfic, poems, effulgent! Then I do it anyway, and it gets nommed. I'm trying hard not to tell myself "never write _________", because as soon as I say it, I'll end up doing it. Contrary thing, my muse.

Still, point taken, and I generally agree.

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Hee! So you're one of those contrary ones. :) Though I wasn't really thinking of those kinds of fics when I wrote this. Crossovers and songfics and the like aren't inherently bad, they're just not often someone's cup of tea. (Probably because when they are bad, they're usually really, really bad, which turns a lot of people off.) But other things, like plot structure or literary devices, are more about skill than preference.

[urania-calliope.livejournal.com]

It's one of the reasons I love bad movies, especially ones with big ol' plot holes. It's almost like a writing exercise trying to come up with ways to stitch the thing logically together.

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Exactly - in fact, the original post used movies as an example.

[shapinglight]

Have to admit, though I see your point, I'm not sure I agree that you can't learn something from something that's done right.

If you can analyse why it's done right, surely that can be a help in learning to do right oneself?

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That's true, although I think it's usually a lot easier to pinpoint the thing that makes a fic not work than it is to figure out why it does work. Often, it's not one thing that makes something work; it's the way the whole package fits together, which is a lot harder to emulate when you're trying to apply the lesson to your own fic.

[snickfic]

I agree wholeheartedly about being able to learn writing from reading mediocre stuff. Obviously, you don't want to just read that -- I'm of the opinion that reading quality work will rub off on you, even if you can't analyze why it works for you. If nothing else, it gives you a standard to measure the mediocre stuff against. But yeah, I've always found it easier to spot what's wrong with something than what's right with it.

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Oh, definitely - you'll never be a good writer if you can't tell the good stuff from the bad, so you'd have to read both to know the difference. :) Also, while it's good to learn from other people's mistakes, it's much more enjoyable to read quality fics for fun.

[shapinglight]

:Thud:

What a wonderful icon!

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LOL, I couldn't remember which icon I'd used for that comment, so when I saw this in my inbox, I was sure it'd be a sexy Spike one. :) That one is by stormwreath. There's not enough Gunn love in the world.

[shapinglight]

No indeed. I have some wonderful Gunn ones uploaded to my other LJ, but on this one, I only have this.