What's the deal with copyrighting fan fiction? Obviously you can't copyright characters that someone else has created but what about a story involving someone else's characters, could they steal your story because you used their characters?

In my opinion, and being a fan-fic writer myself, I think the owners of the characters you use in your scripts can have complete control over what they do with your script.  If they want to use the story and not give you credit, so be it.  You stole something from them, why can't they steal it back?

It's a whole different story if you get permission of course, but nothing you write with someone else's characters is yours.  It's that simple.  

Hmm, that's interesting. I would've thought they could stop you from using their character, but I'm surprised to hear they could actually take scenarios you created for the character and claim ownership of them.

I loath fan fic... It's , perhaps, one of the most absurd things to waste your time on. It, to me, just screams "I'VE NO IDEA'S OF MY OWN, SO I'M TAKING SOMEONE ELSE's"

Now, some of you might be using fan fic to exercise your writing and that's cool. That's great. I'm all for expanding upon and learning from mistakes and all that bullshit... However, when I see 13 Jason scripts and 23 A nightmare on elm street scripts and countless Texas Chainsaw Massacre scripts floating around... IT makes me sick!

The worst part isn't even the fact these writers don't have idea's, it's simply that they suck at writing all together.

I wrote a Super Mario Bro's script one time "just to do it" I never posted it, or touted it as something either. I simply thought to myself, "I wanna write a movie, that's better than the shit ball they came up with" and I did.

I don't play video games. I don't like videogames and you probably wouldn't catch me scoping out a videogame website or section in a store... I did, however, have fond memories of playing SMB growing up and thus I wanted to explore that character.

That is the only reason I wrote a fan fic script. And if someone can tell me that they feel the same way about a certain someone else's character, by all means... Go for it. Sadly, no one ever does.

They just butcher other people's hard work.

So in lite of my rant here... I believe that the owner of the content has free reign to do whatever, whenever, and however they want with the content you've come up with. A good idea, is a good idea... and Hollywood is out of them...

But, seriously, I don't think you'd have to think twice about someone taking your idea anyways, though. If they could, I'm sure they'd alter it so much that you wouldn't know it was yours to begin with.

Here's my understanding of fan fiction. When you write something, it belongs to you. When you use someone else's characters, you can't necessarily market it because those characters and their stories are the product of someone else's imagination, or their intellectual property. However, when you go to the work of creating a new story for them to live out, you actually own the script you wrote for them, but not the characters in the script. Hence, neither you nor the characters' creater could actually market or produce this script without the express permission of the other. Of course, it is worthwhile to mention that IDEAS cannot be copyrighted and if the characters' owner thought the basic idea you came up with was swell, he could write his own script based on it, and that would be legal.

Quoted from Balt The worst part isn't even the fact these writers don't have idea's, it's simply that they suck at writing all together.

To make such a blanket statement is not exactly the best way to present yourself. I consider myself to be a pretty decent writer most days of the week, and yet, with a fanfic on my record, one might suppose from this statement that I suck at writing all together, which some might disagree with. However, your opinion being your own, I suppose you are entitled to it. I think you actually did comment on that thread, if I remember correctly...

But there does exist good fanfic, if you can find it. This involves using characters in an original situation. In some cases this is creating a story based on someone else's universe. One of this category is Star Trek: Renaissance, for which its creative staff used Star Trek's rules, but created their own ship class, crew, backstories, and plots; the only thing they didn't use was their own universe. Monster Zero is ripe with fan fiction, but most of it is of this better variety, and some of those guys over there can really write. One person even took a fanfiction, and then changed it around to be original, since it had departed so much from the original spinoff it started out as.

I think everyone should start somewhere, and sometimes it is easier to get your feet wet writing off someone else's ideas, but as long as these writers learn from their experiences, then they can improve and find their own voice in the future. That's what we should aim to do instead of just shooting it down before any part of it is explored.

You missed the point of my point, George...

"Now, some of you might be using fan fic to exercise your writing and that's cool. That's great. I'm all for expanding upon and learning from mistakes and all that bullshit... However, when I see 13 Jason scripts and 23 A nightmare on elm street scripts and countless Texas Chainsaw Massacre scripts floating around... IT makes me sick!

The worst part isn't even the fact these writers don't have idea's, it's simply that they suck at writing all together."

Now read it again and put the whole paragraph into perspective. This is what I'm talking about and those are the people I'm talking about... Hell, like I said, I've got a fan fic script... I know for a fact I don't suck. Simply and clean.

I don't believe you fit in this mold either. As a matter of fact, anyone who comes in here and tells me how big of a prick I am or whatever, probably won't fit the mold of who and what I'm talking about.

It's people that write countless Freddy scripts and slap them out over and over and in nothing flat. The people who write Jason vs whoever one week and then turns around and writes a Texas Chainsaw massacre script the next.

It's the people who then live and thrive on those idea's when writing their own material. That's what I'm saying...

Now, you can come at me like whoever and whoever and think I'm being overly critical but I'm not. Fan Fiction is hurting these people "as writers" over time. It's true.

I sure hope this is cleared up, but I'm probably pretty sure it's not. I'd also like to add that I don't care how I'm presented here, there or anywhere. My work speaks for itself.

It's good. It's original and it's all from my own mind. I've never borrowed an idea, once! My merits as a writer should not be reflect-ant upon my merits as a member here... If you think I'm bad here, check out my website or go ask around myspace about me.

I understand you perfectly, and I figured this much before, but it can be misunderstood. We have to consider what will help these writers and what will not. If you find Freddy vs. Jason Part LXVII, and tear the guy a new hole because it's old, overdone, stupid and unoriginal, (true as it may be) this does not qualify as constructive criticism.

I've read some very good fanfic material and I generally give the comment that if some of the particular aspects of the story that they lifted were changed, the story would function admirably on its own. This is because of a few things. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; characters are actually a dime a dozen and not as unique as people give them credit for; and most of the time, the writer creates a BRAND NEW STORY for the characters to do. If the plot is new but the characters are old, rewrite the plot with new characters...easy as that.

Now there are those that do rehash EVERYTHING, and to them, we smile and nod and describe what went wrong and tell them to write something new, but others know what they're doing and just need that extra bit of confidence to go at it without the security blanket of someone else's established work. It is the latter of these that we should pay attention to since they are worth supporting.

Yes, there are a fair amount of rehashers out there, but rather than telling them what animal's arse they should feed their script to, we should look at the script as an exercise they undertook and maybe they will have the confidence to strike out on their own. Who knows? Maybe they really can turn out a better Freddy vs. Jason 2 than the pros can. Then maybe they can write something original... Baby steps sometimes.

And to clear the air, mine was for fun. I needed to bridge the gap between two movies that didn't make sense. I didn't turn out the typical Freddy flick, but it makes sense...at least to me.

I think writing a fan-fic script is great practice for the art of storytelling.  I mean a video game/novel/prerequisite film is a great foundation for a story.  I think if you can manage to put a good story with the characters that already exist, you can be well on your way to becoming that much better as a storyteller.  Because not all screenplays written our your own original ideas.  What if you are signed on to write a script based on another person's story?  Like the Goonies and I believe Poltergeist?  Those were all stories written by Steven Spielberg, but the screenplays were penned by separate writers.  So if you have a good foundation of writing on existing stories, you have another weapon in your arsenal.

Another example:

Say you finally have gotten represented by a talent agency, your name is in the pool for big time screenwriting projects, and your agent tells you a big time production company would like you to pen the sequel to Terminator 4.  Isn't that writing a story based on existing characters?  Isn't that just the professinal form of fan-fic?  Are you saying you would pass that up because its a "rehashed" idea?  I hope not, because I will be getting paid for that, if it came around my way.

People have won Oscars for "using other people's ideas" (Brokeback Moutain, anyone?).  It's a dam Oscar category for crying out loud!  Best Screenplay on an Existing Source. so don't give me that crap abut them being sucky writers.  That's just ridiculous.  I think it takes a hell of a lot of talent to adapt something from a non-screenplay medium to a screenplay that makes sense and keeps it faithful to the original story.  

And I completely endorse George's opinion on this subject.  It is spot on.  

He isn't saying all Fan Fic writers are sucky writers. He saying that being fan fic writers isn't the real bad part...it's the fact that most of the people who write Freddy Vs. Jason scripts do stink at writing even if they wrote an original idea.

-Chris

One thing I do know about fan-fic:  you can write it all you want.  Show it to your friends, show it to peers who can comment on your writing ability, etc.  But you cannot market it or attempt to make one red cent off of it without permission from the person/persons who own the rights to the characters you're using.

I've written fan-fic.  Never have submitted it, though.  I'm one of those who think there's nothing wrong with using fan-fic as a way of practicing.  Hell, after soaking up David Trottier's Screenwriting Bible, I sat down for a few weeks and did nothing but watch movies and write my own scripts for what I saw onscreen, all for practice.  After all the best way to learn to write a movie is to write a movie -- I just did it more literally than most, I guess lol

I'd say the same thing could apply to fan-fic.  It's great practice; you have previously established characters and previously established tones, and histories.  All you really need to do is drop them into an original storyline (which is what you're really practicing).  

I've seen a couple Spider-Man 3 fan-fics here which received a lot of bad replies.  That made me decide not to submit my own Spidey fan-fic, which I wrote over a year ago and which features one villain (as the first two Spider-Man flicks have) but also dealt with a series of issues from the 70s where Peter's spider-mutation jack-knifed and left him with with six extra arms.  I thought it came out quite well (especially during the scenes he tried to hide it from Aunt May), but again, after seeing the replies to the others which had already been posted, I decided I didn't need that kind of aggravation.  In the interim, I've gotten rid of it.  But as of now, I think I would have liked to have submitted it just to see if the writing was effective.  It wasn't like I was going to try to market the script; I doubt I could afford to option the rights to Spider-Man from Sony Pictures or Marvel Entertainment lol

Still, all that having been said, I don't mind reading fan-fiction, because I do so with the understanding that what I'm really reading is someone practicing their form.  We know they didn't make up the characters, but it lets us see if they have the ability to put those well-known characters into interesting and compelling situations.  So, I'm all for fan-fic as a tool of helping one become a better writer.  Though I'll also be the first to admit that 90% of them aren't exactly gold.

I see nothing wrong with writing a fan fic.  Sure, you can't market it, but there doesn't seem to be a large number of big money screenwriters writting on this site so its no different than writing an original script that is crap.  Even some of the well written screenplay would just be down right boring as movies and will never sell.  In both you are just increasing your skills as a writer and there is nothing wrong with that.

I have written a Green Lantern script that is on this site.  The reason I did this was for several reasons.  I first did it because I read a Green Lantern fan script by another writer, who felt he had written the greatest piece of fiction out there.  He also was confident that DC Comics would contact him and buy his script right away.  I found the script to be a poor man's Star Wars, complete with corney dialogue and moments so stupid it made me cringe in my seat.  This alone made me want to write a script to prove I could do something better.

I then did it to show that Green Lantern could be taken seriously and turned into a serious movie.

The next reason I did it was to prove that a super hero movie could survive without a super villian.  My Green Lantern script focused on a man learning about his powers and excepting responsibility (a la Unbreakable).