Editing fanfic to publication?

It's been done, but it isn't easy. It's probably a heck of a lot tougher than just writing an original story.

Jamesaritchie said:

It's been done, but it isn't easy. It's probably a heck of a lot tougher than just writing an original story.

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One thing though, I think it depends on the original source you're writing fanfic for. Some things are easier to rewrite than others. I've redone stuff that was originally meant to be fanfic a lot (but mostly because I turned out to be a lousy fanfic writer, always wanted to go off on one and do my own thing). Things like my Lord of the Rings-based stuff would be really hard to rewrite because it was so tied up in the Tolkien universe it would be almost impossible to take out the elements from it. On the other hand, my UFO stuff that I wrote years ago, I've successfully adapted into original works, because the idea of a covert ops department looking for something or other is much easier to transplant.

Yes, it's been done.

The process is known as "filing off the serial numbers."

If you're planning to do this, yes, take down/remove every single copy of the original. Even then, the Net has no secrets and an infinite memory. If your story is published, and gets any sort of success, someone will find the original version and publicize the fact -- and the original copyright holder may hunt you down. Tears and sadness all around.

James D. Macdonald said:

Tears and sadness all around.

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Yep. Remember ^^^ when you're filing off those serial numbers. And when you think you're done, I'd suggest another very thorough scrubbing, just to be on the safe(r) side.

Yes, it's been done.

I wish people wouldn't, though. Readers start to look for it. And then authors like myself get reviews claiming our stuff is fanfic for some straw-grasping reason, when it isn't.

James D. Macdonald said:

Yes, it's been done.

The process is known as "filing off the serial numbers."

If you're planning to do this, yes, take down/remove every single copy of the original. Even then, the Net has no secrets and an infinite memory. If your story is published, and gets any sort of success, someone will find the original version and publicize the fact -- and the original copyright holder may hunt you down. Tears and sadness all around.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this situation has ever happened in reality--that is, someone being sued because their original work started out as a fanfic. Of course it's a hypothetical possibility, but it strikes me as very unlikely.

Edit: I can, however, think of an example of someone successfully transitioning from fanfiction to original work; Cassandra Clare. I never read any of her fanfic, but apparently she was well known within the Harry Potter community, and a lot of people speculate that she lifted ideas or characters from her fanfiction and used them in her original novels. Her original work is quite successful, however, and she's never run into any legal trouble, as far as I know. People gossip, but being a bestselling author I'm sure she doesn't give a fig, and in her shoes I wouldn't either.

Ms. Clare was also in a loooot of legal trouble over that, although I believe the situation involved more than just her work starting out as fanfiction.

Here's the vital thing to keep in mind, as Uncle Jim said: if it has been published before, as fanfiction, anywhere, ever, you have a huge potential liability on your hands. If it's just a story that you originally envisioned as a fanfic but decided to push it towards original fiction instead, that's something else, and much easier to deal with.

The Otter said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this situation has ever happened in reality--that is, someone being sued because their original work started out as a fanfic. Of course it's a hypothetical possibility, but it strikes me as very unlikely.

Edit: I can, however, think of an example of someone successfully transitioning from fanfiction to original work; Cassandra Clare. I never read any of her fanfic, but apparently she was well known within the Harry Potter community, and a lot of people speculate that she lifted ideas or characters from her fanfiction and used them in her original novels. Her original work is quite successful, however, and she's never run into any legal trouble, as far as I know. People gossip, but being a bestselling author I'm sure she doesn't give a fig, and in her shoes I wouldn't either.

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I'd care a lot. She did get in legal trouble, and many other times it's been the threat of legal trouble that made writers back off.

At any rate, being a bestselling author doesn't and wouldn't make me treat another writer's work as if I owned any part of it. I don't want another writer doing that to me, and I won't do it to them, legal trouble or not.

Sometimes, money isn't enough. I like a healthy does of ethics to wash the money down.

Cassie C1aire/C1are's woes had less to do with fanfic than they did the presence of "shockingly similar" passages from multiple sources.

Having said that, yes, it's possible to "file the numbers off" a fanfic and sell it. It's been done, and more than one author has included at least bits of their fanfic in their original fiction if the scene fit the new story.

The Otter said:

Edit: I can, however, think of an example of someone successfully transitioning from fanfiction to original work; Cassandra Clare. I never read any of her fanfic, but apparently she was well known within the Harry Potter community, and a lot of people speculate that she lifted ideas or characters from her fanfiction and used them in her original novels. Her original work is quite successful, however, and she's never run into any legal trouble, as far as I know. People gossip, but being a bestselling author I'm sure she doesn't give a fig, and in her shoes I wouldn't either.

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She's the worst possible example to bring up. Most of her "fanfic" was other people's published work that she cut and pasted and called her own. Many of us are utterly disgusted that she got a publishing contract.

A.P.M. said:

Assume also that the writer would take down the fanfic in question from whatever site they post it on.

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It is never truly gone. The wayback machine has a loooong memory.

MM

MaryMumsy said:

It is never truly gone. The wayback machine has a loooong memory.

MM

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Wayback doesn't archive ffn

Before I would publish anything, I would make sure their are no accessable versions of the work on line, anywhere.

Posting a chapter or two in share you work is far different from posting your full book on line. Things can come back to haunt you, or so I have learned...

It just seems like a bad idea. I'd suggest you let the fanfic be fanfic, and that you simply start a new project. Enjoy the skills you polished writing fanfic so you can concentrate on the challenges inherent in creating your own world and characters.

absitinvidia said:

She's the worst possible example to bring up. Most of her "fanfic" was other people's published work that she cut and pasted and called her own. Many of us are utterly disgusted that she got a publishing contract.

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Ah, I hadn't heard about that. Like I said, I never read her fanfics, and I have no knowledge of any legal trouble she got into regarding that. I've read a couple of her original books and I know people have said it's similar to her fanfiction, but that's the extent of my knowledge, so possibly I just stuck my foot in my mouth, heh.

In any case, plagiarism is something entirely different than modifying your own fanfic into original work, and I was referring to the latter.

The original point I was making was simply that, as far as I know, no one has ever gotten in trouble for transforming fanfic into original work (CC ran afoul of the law for other things, if I'm understanding correctly). If anyone knows of any instances where this has happened, I'd be honestly curious to know.

Jamesaritchie said:

I'd care a lot. She did get in legal trouble, and many other times it's been the threat of legal trouble that made writers back off.

At any rate, being a bestselling author doesn't and wouldn't make me treat another writer's work as if I owned any part of it. I don't want another writer doing that to me, and I won't do it to them, legal trouble or not.

Sometimes, money isn't enough. I like a healthy does of ethics to wash the money down.

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I'd agree, and she was probably a poor example to bring up if she did indeed plagiarize other authors' work...which is a different thing from modifying one's own fanfic into original material. I definitely wouldn't condone plagiarism (which, I assume, is what you're talking about here) regardless of whether it got someone into legal trouble.

Cyia said:

Wayback doesn't archive ffn

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I wouldn't bet a writing career on it! It's got a copy of my dinky little Mindspring website from a decade ago.

There's also Google Cache - you can put a dead URL in Google's searchbox and the first link generally goes to that URL, but it often has a "cache" link that has a copy from some previous time.

There are surely other web archivers out there, some may be publicly accessible, others not.

Just for the record, I've never written fanfic.

Cyia said:

Wayback doesn't archive ffn

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It does archive other sites that contain ff though. I've found stuff from defunct sites there.

MM

Diana_Rajchel said:

It just seems like a bad idea. I'd suggest you let the fanfic be fanfic, and that you simply start a new project. Enjoy the skills you polished writing fanfic so you can concentrate on the challenges inherent in creating your own world and characters.

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I like that advice. The thought of converting any of mine gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's the dialogue especially. I'd have to rewrite nearly every line of it, to make those character not proclaim their origin with every word. I'd think you could get away with taking one character from a fan work, put them somewhere else and retain their voice, but it's when you've got a whole group of them with their characteristic banter and interaction that people will start to say "This seems strangely familiar". I mean, can you imagine the work involved in trying to convert a well written Buffy fanfic which used the highly distinctive Scooby gang banter? it would be a nightmare!

Which is an interesting thought, that the better a fanfic is as a fanfic - the more in character it is, the more it captures the characters' voices and the tone and spirit of its source - the harder it will be to convert it. It's a good story, but it's a good story for those characters only and given to anyone else will be lacking at its heart.

Even some of the plot bunnies I have that I never got round to writing before I did my last fanfic don't look workable to me as originals, so actual completed stories, no way.

It seems like there are quite a few people who file the serial numbers off their fanfiction or at least have used pieces/scenes/bits of dialogue/etc. from their fanfiction. I don't particularly have a problem with it if the author takes a kernel of an idea (like a character, a scenario or something) and legitimately does something different with it, builds a whole new world around it, and makes the story genuinely their own.

Here is a very recent example of how not to do it. This person wrote an epically long fanfiction for the Bioware game Dragon Age (basically following most of the events of the game, with an added romance thrown in), sent it into Bioware and tried to sell it to them, and then when she was rejected, put it up as a kindle ebook. This author didn't file the serial numbers off - she lifted the entire Dragon Age plot and used it as backstory, most of the characters from the game and all of the world building. All she did to make it her own was change the names of the characters (barely). Needless to say that the Bioware developers - who are extremely tolerant of fanfiction, even going so far as to encourage their fans to write it with a contest - are not particularly happy about this and I'm very curious to see how this all shakes out.

Can it be done? Sure. I've never done it successfully. I've had ideas for fanfics then realized the situations I was imaging for the copyrighted characters made a lot more sense for original characters. (At that point, I was straying so far from canon that writing it as a fanfic didn't make sense.)

I think converting a fanfic to a publishable original work is incredibly hard. There's so much backstory you don't need to deliver in a fanfic, because the audience takes it for granted. Now you've got to make a backstory that isn't like the canon, but still matches the situation your characters find themselves in. It's like plotting backwards.

Katrina S. Forest said:

I think converting a fanfic to a publishable original work is incredibly hard. There's so much backstory you don't need to deliver in a fanfic, because the audience takes it for granted. Now you've got to make a backstory that isn't like the canon, but still matches the situation your characters find themselves in. It's like plotting backwards.

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This is a good point. I've never converted an entire fanfic myself (though I've used bits and pieces from old fanfics, which I've long since taken down) for that reason. It's almost impossible to divorce the stories from the worlds in which they take place.

I guess it depends on the type of fanfic as well. It seems like an AU would be a lot easier because then you're starting from scratch with the world-building anyway.

I think Katrina's point is key. Working backwards to create a believable backstory and characterization when you've been able to take those things for granted in fanfiction is often much harder than you might think. Legal issues aside, it's simply probably not worth your time.

In the age of e-books and fast self-publishing, filing the serial numbers off fanfiction is becoming easier and easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if more authors start taking this route. Doesn't mean it's a great idea, but a lot of people do do it.

IMO, filing, even if it's legal, often results in a weak book. Too much is taken for granted in the way of characterization and backstory, and plot progression which is rewarded in a serial format (lots of ups and downs) often makes for a jerky novel. Take the theme and the idea and use it to write your own book.