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Many of the people who post at this very BBS not only understand Star Trek, but could write better scripts than what is being written now.

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Oh, good lord, no.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
Official Challenge from The_Tom:
Present me with some Star Trek fanfic that I would rather read then have a drill placed against my temple.

Reward:
Life, love and happiness.
 

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 
Have you read the "Strange New World" short story collections put out by Pocket Books? They're amateur fanfic. Some of them are actually pretty good

Not only that, but almost all of the writers of Trek books are fans, so wouldn't their work count as "fanfic?"
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
A large majority of it, yes.

This is not a good thing.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
I define fanfic to be stuff written by people who are Star Trek fans first and writers second. Some Star Trek novels fall into this category, too. Which is more a comment on the quality of what Pocket churns out month after month than how "professional" some fanfic writers really are.

I did pick up a copy of "Strange New Worlds" and found some of the stories readable, some of them irritating in the typical fannish kind of way, and some pretty god-awful. And these were supposedly the creme-de-la-creme of fan fiction.

Worst job in the world: Sanitation engineer at Third World Zoo.

Second-worst job in the world: Intern at Pocket Book who sorts through all the submissions they get for SNW and culls out the 90% that would make the printing press feel suicidal and thus won't get passed on to the actual editors.
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
Working with slush piles in general exposes you to reams of awful stuff.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
...whether that slush pile is in the elephant pen or at Simon & Schuster's offices.

[ April 01, 2002, 15:56: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"...I bet they could just randomly pick out any fan-script and it would be a major hit."

You have never ever read online Trek fanfic, have you?
 

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 

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believable stories"

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dozens of twists and turns

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*strangle*
Believable stories don't make good fiction. Creating a 'believable' Star Trek story is out of the question. SF relies on suspension of disbelief.

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quote:

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Originally posted by The_Tom:
I define fanfic to be stuff written by people who are Star Trek fans first and writers second.

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Isn't that EXACTLY What Ron D. Moore is/was and he breathed new life into Trek for nigh on ten years.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
No, Ron Moore was a Cornell-educated writer of considerable talent who happened to be a big Star Trek fan and was one of two (2!) writers of several thousand to be picked up thanks to the unsolicited script policy.

And I think we're playing favourites when we start single-handedly placing the mantel of "saviour-of-Trek" on the guy a lot of people can most readily empathize with without realizing that television is a team effort, and good Trek 99 times out of 100 comes from having half a dozen good writers around a table rather than half a dozen superfans.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
I would argue that inventing a crew doesn't necessarily make people "not care". I haven't read much unpublished fanfic, but, speaking from the published stuff I've read, I sometimes find it annoying when the author doesn't quite write the characters the way they've been established. Not to mention that things can be hindered by the simple act of trying to write to an already-established character. At least w/ brand-new characters, the author has a lot more freedom.
 

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Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
Yeah well, with existing characters, you run the risk of writing them Out Of Character, depending on your skills. It's usually not that hard to prevent OOC, if you really understand the character you're writing about. In fact, it's easier usually.

If you create new characters, you have to provide them with a plausible background story and *actively* stop them from becoming a Mary Sue by slapping them down every now and then. You're constantly having to balance between the amount of time you spend on these characters, which is even worst if they have to co-exist with established characters. You don't intentionally create Mary Sues, they create themselves if you don't pay attention. Plus the OOC problem applies to Author Created Characters as well.

I never wrote Trek fanfiction, but I did do a fairly good anime one so I had to deal with all those problems. Not a single complaint or flame mail in 3+ years.

One of the reasons I stopped doing Trek "simming" on IRC was because every mission seemed like a badly written fanfic. I think the worst was being on a Norway class and destroying 3 Warbirds with its "photonic cannon". Yeah, highly original.

[ April 01, 2002, 22:24: Message edited by: David Templar ]
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
For a while, I've planned out characters to use if I ever write a story. Unfortunately, I can't write worth crap, so all my stories never even get up to a whole chapter...

BTW, is it still considered a "Mary Sue" character if you actually base it on yourself? Like, the character sucks as badly as you yourself? :-)
 

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Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 
As someone who pitched scripts to TNG back in the 80s, let me tell you that the closed-door policy of Enterprise isn't such a big roadblock. It just stops fans who don't want to do the legwork any other wanna be writer in Hollywood has to go through.

When I submitted I didn't want to go the fan route, so I made a dozen phone calls and within one day found several agents who were willing to read my work and who had connections with the show (there's a simple trick to it). One particular agent asked to see my work, so I sent her a script and a list of 13 episode concepts. Within two weeks my work was submitted. I still have a letter back from Eric Stillwell around my filing cabinet somewhere.

(No, I didn't make a sale, but that's whole 'nother story.)

The point is, if you can write a good script and you do a little legwork, you can get an agent and get your script submittedand read by the show.

And, as to the "union" -- it's better known as "The Writer's Guild", and it can actually be a friend more than a foe if you know how to use it.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

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Official Challenge from The_Tom:
Present me with some Star Trek fanfic that I would rather read then have a drill placed against my temple.

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I've been involved in a fan fiction endeavor for the past fourteen months. It started with the simple question, "Can fans do better than TPTB in writing for Star Trek?"

(Now that I think about it, that's a pretty naive question. Of course Berman and Braga and the others can write better stories -- that's why they get paid to do it, and why we watch their television show. Our preference only matters in individual reactions.)

Nevertheless, I think that the group that I'm a part of has made a pretty good effort over the past year. (In my admittedly not-so-humble opinion, of course.) We are writing a series of stories in full television script format, and publish on a regular schedule. We created an original cast of characters and a fairly detailed background.

The series is Star Trek: Renaissance. It is set at the beginning of the 25th century, and is intended to address the aftermath of the Federation's experiences in the Dominion War. So far we've published 18 episodes, and we've got 8 more planned for the remainder of the "season."

There are eight of us who are working in this group -- each of us contributes to the discussions in planning the series on a whole, and we all write episodes individually or as a team as our real life allows.

I personally hold no illusions that this is a actually professional-level endeavor, although we try to emulate the professional format. Every contributer is an amateur writer, so this is still definitely "fan fiction." However, I think that we've made a much stronger effort than your average fanfic that's published en masse on the web, and created an interesting and consistent story.

To address some of First of Two's "mistakes" that I think some might find in our work, but I believe can be explained:

Creating your own crew -- Yeah, it's hard to make the reader care about your original characters. But you've only got two options to start with -- established characters or original characters. As we wanted to use an original concept, we always planned on creating our own characters. We approached the story from the perspective of writing a television pilot -- to give each character a foothold and let them grow from there.

Mary Sues -- Well, I can't speak for the other writers, but I consciously tried to avoid the Mary Sue Effect. As far as I know, everyone else has as well.

Megawarships -- Admittedly, the ship of our story can be considered a megawarship with some of the advanced technology that we packed in -- lots of phasers, with refined ablative armor, quantum slipstream, and so on. However, I believe that we address this situation, in the respect that the ship is INTENDED to be a powerful warship. (Also consider that the series is set 25 years after DS9, so the technology has advanced some in the intervening years.) The political state of the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant in our series helps establish the "need" for ships of this kind. It's not just a superior ship for the sake of having a superior ship in our story.

I'd go on, but I've rambled on enough here. I hope that my self-promotion isn't treated as spam, because it's relevant to the discussion.
 

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Posted by Malnurtured Snayer (Member # 411) on :
 
The_Tom, didn't you ever read "Star Trek: Gamma Quadrant"?

Hardly a mega-warship -- by the time the series began (right after DS9 ended), the ship was ten-years old and suffering from major structural problems sustained during the war.

No Mary Sue stories. Similiar to MilitaeMan, I approached the characters individually:

Capt. Connor Macy, an experienced veteran of Starfleet, who lost his wife and daughter in the attack on San Fran, and his eldest son (a Starfleet officer) in combat action. Estranged from his middle child, a son.

Lt. Cmdr. Melanie Kline -- XO. Promoted through rank very quickly due to combat losses (had just graduated Academy before war began). Has lots of flaws.

Other characters included a Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian liason; an Andorian security chief; an embittered second-officer; and some other fairly quirky characters.

Actually, The_Tom, except for yelling at me about using "Lieutenant (jg)" too much, you said you rather liked it ... ::sniffle::
 

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Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
And a chief engineer that was as high as a kite most of the time.
 

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Posted by U//Magnus (Member # 239) on :
 
Y'know, extolling the virtues of your own fan fiction and how it's not like the other terrible shit out there is a bit like voting for yourself in the presidential election.
 

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Posted by Malnurtured Snayer (Member # 411) on :
 
Well, how would you look if you WEREN'T confident enough in your own ability to vote for yourself in a Presidential Election? Hey, it'd make a great camapaign poster for the other guy:

John Doe For President: He WON'T Vote For Himself!
 

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Posted by U//Magnus (Member # 239) on :
 
Well, as like a write-in I mean. Simply because you think you're presidential material, doesn't really mean you are. Y'know, unless you're a TitMonkey.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Oh come on -- that's cheap. I'm not saying that our story is the greatest thing in the world, or that you're guaranteed to love it. But I am saying that I think it's good. And that's my right. This subject is about fan fiction, so I'm writing about the project that I'm a part of. Why do you have a problem with that?
 

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Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
I tried writing Trek fanfiction once. I've all but given up on it because there was so much stuff I wanted to do that wouldn't mesh with Star Trek. So, in a way, I guess I found the established canon too constricting for what I wanted. I've given thought to doing a sci-fi series from scratch, but that's more effort than I can put into it at the moment. Plus, a lot of my ideas so far on it seem to be variations of Trek.
 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
Well the Trek universe is huge, so there is never a shortage of things you could do.. one of the main uses of fanfic is to place characters based on your own reactions into Trek.. such as fan crews or RPG pages.. so basically, everybody can write a fanfic that places themselves in Trek, but rarely does it interest anyone but themselves, since it rarely goes beyond introducing the characters,etc. The next level up of fanfic are people who actually have a story to tell, and the quality depends on their skills as a writer. I've already gone off on semi-leterates once today, so ill stop here... but to create interest, you need a new idea, or a spin on an old idea that people enjoy. (for example, rehashing ST plots but with superb illustrations and passable writing would be enjoyable to me) Another problem is that Star Trek likes to pattern itself realistically (Roddenberry and Justman often commented on imagining if it was on a real navy ship, and seeing if it was plausible) Fan writers sometimes no understanding of life (and severely need to get one, in William Shatner's advice) and so their plots are often convoluted messes of unlikely things, like people being promoted from private to lieutenant in the course of a few weeks (considers classifying Starship Troopers movie as fanfic).
 

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Posted by Malnurtured Snayer (Member # 411) on :
 
Mike,

About your last post ... there was a platoon of American soldiers in Africa WWII. One young soldier went in a private, and came out a 2nd lieutenant not much later, due to combat losses. It's not entirely un-plausible, ESPECIALLY in combat.
 

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Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
Well, I doubt that Star Trek would react too kindly to my idea of intergalactic bridges that allow a typical starship to explore not just the Milky Way but other relatively nearby galaxies. It could be a concept for a distant future Trek premise, but I don't like the idea of stories being so very far removed from the present. It's just a personal quirk, I suppose.

Plus, I guess what really hampers me is that as far as my writing goes, I'm just too damn picky. I can easily write out an outline of what I play on telling the audience and get started writing only to come back the next day and scrap everything because I don't like it anymore.
 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
ive heard that story before upon making that comment, and recognize that things like that do happen. Maybe I'm just biased against Starship Troopers because i expected it to make sense like the book did (i still think it was a great night at the movies)

But then again, i've read fanfics where 5 characters do that at once. booyah. and then they kill Q and use his power to destroy the Borg. In their quad-vector assault vessel. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating. but not much.
 

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 
Pocket Books looked at Star Trek book submissions (excluding Strange New Worlds, and the occasional book written by a cast member) this way:

Don't bother submitting if you aren't already a writer. Writing for established characters in an established universe is harder than writing an original novel (because of the OOC problems mentioned above and other inherent limitations), plus getting a book published proves that you can at least write well enough and creatively enough to get a book through the editorial process successfully.
 

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Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 

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Originally posted by TSN:
BTW, is it still considered a "Mary Sue" character if you actually base it on yourself? Like, the character sucks as badly as you yourself? :-)

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AFAIK, the terms "Self Insert", "Author Created Character", and "Mary Sue" have all become mish-meshed these days, at least in my corner of the playing field. If you do a SI, they automatically assume it's gonna be a MS. Same goes for ACC, though not quite nearly the same extent, since anime fanfics usually stick to existing characters.

I've done a SI, he's just as useless, inoffensive, and ambigious as me. Probably the only reason why people haven't lynched me yet.

As for megaships... If I ever do a Trek fanfic, it's gonna be me on an Excelsior-B. I've had quite enough of ships that does everything a super-galactic spider can, and more. I don't see why people have to always write about the state-of-the-art ships, they aren't the real workhorses. Where's the sense of real danger, when you're behind two layers of regenerative shielding, two feet of advanced ablative armor, a self-sealing hull, and your own ego?
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
Hehehe. You said self-insertion.
 

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Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Siegfried:
Well, I doubt that Star Trek would react too kindly to my idea of intergalactic bridges that allow a typical starship to explore not just the Milky Way but other relatively nearby galaxies."

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I'm just curious, why explore other galaxies where there are on the order of 100 to 400 billion stars in our own?

Assuming the low figure of 100 billion, even if you had 10,000 starships each visiting one star every 4 days, that would be a total or 912,500 stars per year, and it would still take 109,589 years to visit them all.
 

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Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
Well, the entire premise was that it takes place in the late 25th to early 26th century (approx 100 to 150 years past Voyager). By that time, I assume, our galaxy largely be explored and it was time to move out. It was basically an attempt to add a bit of life to The Original Series' and Enterprise's theme of early exploration.
 

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
 
From what I can see, using self-created characters in an existing universes defeats one of the primary points of fan-fiction (and spin off stuff). People who read fanfic want to read about characters they know. If they wanted to read about new stuff, they'd read original books.

MinutiaeMan: You do realise you have still done several classic "Overdone and usually rubbish Trek fanfic cliches"?

1/ Setting it in the 25th century/aftermath of the Dominion War. Done to death.

2/ Having a powerful warship as the main ship. Usually with "Advanced Quantumn Torpedoes", "Advanced Ablative Armour", "Advanced Batman armour".

Those two usually go together too. A destabalised Alpha Quadrant allows for lots of shooting and stuff. Because Star Trek is about shooting. Yes it is.

Sorry, you're fanfic story series might be good. It really might. You can have stories full of cliches and overused ideas and still have it be really good. It just doesn't fill me with hope.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Yeah, what's w/ putting different characters into a known setting? Who the hell is this "Pickerd" character? The captain of the Enterprise is Jim Kirk, dammit!

Personally, I think putting new characters in an old setting is a good thing. You don't have to go into great historical detail to let the readers know what's going on. And, since the characters are new, it isn't just the same old shite.
 

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
I think the point Liam is making is that once you toss out familiar faces and substitute a new cast into fanfic, it ceases to be a tribute from a fan to a particular Star Trek show but instead a tribute to the various paraphanalia of the franchise, like ship classes and alien race archetypes and stuff. And that paraphanalia inevitably seems to hog the spotlight (generally easily superceding poorly-realized original characters or boring plots), so instead we get multi-page descriptions of non-commissioned rank structures or attempts to stuff in (and draw attention to) as many different classes of starship as possible.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
But, if that happens, isn't all that stuff the problem? Not the lack of known characters?
 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
The Star Trek universe is a 'character' in itself.. thats why pieces of work like New Frontier and Challenger are doing well (with me, anyway).. because they have the familiar setting, but new takes on the familiar topics of the ST universe... Justman's rule always applies.. he said that when they were trying to write Star Trek in the beginning, they tried to write it as a standard story (to get the realism), then add the sci-fi/Trek elements later.. and any story you get has to be judged on the basis of whether or not it could succeed as non-Star Trek.

For example, if you made "The Undiscovered Country" a present day assassination thriller on a Navy ship, the story holds up. The addition of the fantastic element only adds to the story.

If you take a piece of fanfic and subtract the Star Trek universe, none of it makes sense. Why would the Navy launch seventeen prototypes at once, whats their mission, what are these character's motivations, etc. Subtract the familiar Star Trek character and you are left with a child's crayon drawing interpretation of how things work in real life
 

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Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
 
Totally agree with you. I once thought about that as well. I knew that most Trek writers before Voyager and maybe even DS9 took real life events as a basis for good stories.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by PsyLiam:
1/ Setting it in the 25th century/aftermath of the Dominion War. Done to death.

2/ Having a powerful warship as the main ship. Usually with "Advanced Quantumn Torpedoes", "Advanced Ablative Armour", "Advanced Batman armour".

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