In 1991, Bow began to unite obsessive international science fiction lovers with a fan magazine about the television show, Doctor Who. Before there was an Internet to connect them, Bow created Doctor Who-themed fan fiction journal, Trenchcoat. Combining photocopied pages, primative word-processor documents, and lovingly-detailed pages, this journal lasted five issues under Bow's supervision--creating a dedicated Doctor Who fan fiction community.
I discovered Bow when I read his helpful primer for fledgling writers looking to promote their work on the Internet. I knew then that James Bow had to participate in my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
You began your fiction writing career with Doctor Who fan fiction. How did you build your readership for your fan fiction and fanzines? How did your Doctor Who fan fiction experience affect your fiction?
James Bow:
I'm not sure how much your readers know about Doctor Who, but it's tailor made to make fan fiction a training ground for professional fiction... Doctor Who is a television series commissioned by the BBC in 1963. It produced full seasons each year until 1989 and has recently resumed production. The main character, the Doctor, is an alien known as a "Time Lord" who can die twelve times and be reborn.
Ten actors have played the character during its television run, and many others have performed in one-off movies, plays, et cetera. The show is nominally a science fiction program because the Doctor travels around in a time machine known as the TARDIS, but the premise boils down to the Doctor being a wizard with a magical cabinet that can take him from adventure to adventure. The Doctor is a heroic stranger, who shows up, sees a problem, and fixes it.
This makes Doctor Who the most flexible format in fiction. The TARDIS provides the means to go anywhere. You don't even need to confine yourself to the science-fiction or fantasy genre; there are plenty of stories in the canon where the arrival of the TARDIS is the only science-fiction element in the story.
In terms of fan fiction, the Doctor provides you with the heroes, and you have the program's large stable of villains and other supporting characters to play with. You can try to fit your story within the show's long and complicated continuity, or you can go someplace completely different -- even another universe -- to create new villains and new characters for the Doctor to interact with.
You are free to create your own plots, or your own set of supporting characters, while relying on the hero that the show offers up -- and not even that. Since the Doctor has the ability to change his appearance and personality, you can even create your own incarnation of the character.
The bulk of my creative output was for a fan fiction magazine I edited and wrote for called Trenchcoat. Its premise was that it continued the adventures of Doctor Who as if the show had never been canceled. I created my own Doctor and companion characters, relying on the program's stock of villains to help generate my plots. And as I got more adept at creating my own material, I used the ready-made material less and less.
Doctor Who also has a significant fan base. I've belonged to the Doctor Who Information Network since 1984. They produce a news magazine and a fan fiction magazine that I had the privilege of editing from 1993 to 1998. They also provided a connection with other fan clubs and fan bases, so I gained access to an audience interested in fan fiction, and as I persisted, that audience grew.
It's a modest-sized audience, but it gives you that much more incentive to write and develop your craft. I really enjoyed putting the stories together, and I gradually got better at creating my own plots and characters.
Finally, in 2001, I decided to take the training wheels off and see if I could write in my own universe. The story that came out of that, entitled The Unwritten Girl, took five years and a number of rewrites to get published, but I got it done. The story owes a lot to Doctor Who for its inspiration, and the fans who so encouraged me when writing my fan fiction will be among my initial audience.
Jason Boog:
Fan fiction writers build the most amazing communities. Most writers would kill for the amount of feedback writers like you get from other fans. How can a fledgling fan fiction writer establish a connection with readers? What's the worst thing a writer can do to break that connection?
James Bow:
I think people respond to an honest effort, ambition and persistence, as long as you aren't arrogant or defensive. If you take the feedback you get from your first effort and use it to improve your second, you will build an audience.
You need quality and quantity. You need to participate and be active. It's a club, and you have to get involved in order to get noticed. So, just like anything else worth having in this world, succeeding in fan fiction -- if that's what you want -- takes hard work and time.
Want to meet some mainstream writers that got their start with fan fiction?
Looking for a break as a web journalist?
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion to Five Easy Questions for James Bow...
» Five Easy Questions: James Bow, Part One from ThePublishingSpot
Most readers of ThePublishingSpot haven't heard of James Bow yet, but he can teach us more about fan fiction web publishing than a week of interviews with some bestselling author. Bow's first genre-bending novel is still almost published and his... [Read More]
Tracked on: March 16, 2006 2:11 PM | Permalink to Trackback