I’ve said before that I don’t review books; I just like to talk about them. I’m also not a writer, published or otherwise. About a decade ago, however, I did discover fan fiction, both reading and writing it, although only in one fandom. (Look on the Lois & Clark Fanfic archive under B.B. Medos to read some of my short stories.)
The significance of this is that until that time I’d never written creatively and it was with great surprise that I discovered I liked it. Not enough to become an author but definitely enough to enjoy the storytelling process. Over the years of playing with this pastime along with my ever present love of reading a good romance novel, however, I’ve formed a personal theory:
Romance is the fan fiction of mainstream literature.
Of course, I fully realize that most storytelling is fan fiction to some extent as one story idea builds on another, but I truly believe that romance takes even that to the nth degree in a very specialized way and always has.
Consider these two crucial points:
1.) The fundamental premise of fan fiction is that it starts with an established work of some kind, most commonly a TV or movie property, and then asks that ole “what if”.
2) The most commonly asked “what if” in fan fiction invariably has to do with a romantic situation that’s cut short in some way and I’d venture to say an extremely high percentage of those are about completely missed opportunities.
Then ask yourself how many times you’ve read or discussed a mainstream work be it in print or video form and thought “what if”. I could make a long list here but I seriously doubt I need to if we’re honest with ourselves.
It does make one wonder how many romance novels began to germinate in the author’s brain due to frustration over some particular circumstance in “real” literature. Or even more mainstream popular fiction if one wants to be completely honest. You know those iconic stories where the hero never gets the girl . . . which explains quite a bit of my Lois & Clark obsession when one thinks about it. (VBEG)
So that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it until someone proves me wrong. Any comments?
Well, sure, Meljean. That’s more or less a given. What I find interesting about romances, though, is that the entire genre tends give “happy endings” where most stories in a lot of other genres and particularly the more lofty “real” literature wouldn’t. Heck, I’d bet if we dug deep enough someone has probably written a romance at some point or other where “Romeo” and “Juliet” don’t die . . . that’s the kind of relationship thinking I’m referring to and where I see an extremely strong element of romance being THE fan fiction of the rest of literature.
Give us a bad relationship anywhere and we want to find a way to fix it. (VBEG>
I’d argue that even mainstream literature can be fan fiction, in it’s own way — another book, a movie (but especially another book), a non-fiction article, and on and on. If fan fiction is defined as taking a germ of an idea found somewhere else and playing with it, then yeah…definitely 😀