Posts Tagged ‘authors’

Reborn City: The Last Editing Stretch

Posted: June 11, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Ladies and gentle-bloggers (I so have to patent that term), I have wonderful news.  My friend and fellow author Matt Williams (you can check out his work here) has sent me the final chapters of Reborn City, my science-fiction novel. He has also sent me his praise and some great feedback, so I can’t wait to get to work.

In fact, I’m going to get to work now. I’ve got 5 or 6 chapters to edit still, and then RC will be done. Then I will be able to write a dedication and an acknowledgements page, create the cover myself (I already have an idea for what I want the cover to look like), format the chapters for e-reader, and send it off to the copyright office. At this rate, I’ll be ready for publication by November, which is my ultimate goal. I can even create a book trailer for RC in that time. It’ll be great.

Thanks to Matthew Williams for looking through each chapter and giving me plenty of great feedback. I hope you’ll consider looking at RC‘s sequel, Video Rage, when I’m ready for beta readers to look at that. And thanks to everyone who’s been supporting me since I first began to write RC back in high school. I cannot wait to finally hand it to you and let you read it.

Just pay me a $2.99 download fee first so that I can afford to buy groceries, okay?

Off to edit now. Wish me luck!

Kindle Worlds: Genius Idea or Bad For Fiction?

Posted: June 9, 2013 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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If you haven’t heard, then here’s a news piece that’ll at least raise an eyebrow on your forehead: Amazon has announced their intentions to create a new publishing platform for Kindle called Kindle Worlds. The exact nature of this platform is for authors to publish fan-fiction and make money off of it. Yes, you read that right. People can now make money off of fan-fiction.

Naturally, this has set off a storm in the publishing and literary worlds, and a whole lot of discussion across blogs and Internet boards. Fan fiction is, by definition, fans of franchises making up their own stories based on these franchises and display it online or in writing groups for all to see. For many years, fan-fiction, or fanfics for short, have been hidden in the Internet closet. But with this announcement, fanfic writers can now post their stories–some trying to stay true to the original franchises they are based on, some showing unexplored romantic connections between characters, and some of those downright erotic in nature–on the Internet and make money on them.

Of course, there are a few catches. There’s no exact date as to when this platform will be available, and at this moment only certain franchises–The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, etc.–are confirmed as allowing their work to be used by Kindle Worlds. In other words, unless the creators give the okay, you can’t publish a short story or novel based on a franchise unless the franchise owners are okay with it. The ones that are confirmed as allowed are franchises with already-large fan bases who write their work regularly in secret and in the Internet version of public. In addition, the owner of the original franchise gets a cut of the money, so they stand to gain too.

However, many authors are seething. Anne Rice is famous for being against fanfics of her work, and the same goes with George R.R. Martin (sorry GoT fans). I’m of this camp, simply because I feel that my stories and the characters within are like my babies, and I don’t want people taking my baby away and telling it what it should or shouldn’t do like it was theirs.

Yeah, he’s not allowing fanfic of his work. I’m not surprised.

Other authors however, have outwardly allowed fanfics of their work. Sci-fi franchises such as Star Trek and Star Wars have always had fanfics, the former at one point having an official fanfic magazine, and the latter creating a specific set of guidelines for fanfics based on the galaxy far, far away. JK Rowling was quoted as saying she was “flattered” that people wanted to write stories based on Harry Potter, while Stephanie Meyer has set up links from her website to fanfic websites where Twilight-esque works are featured.

There are arguments for both camps that each have valid points. For the sake of this post, I’m going to list a few points from both camps. For the pro-fanfic group, here is why they say fanfics are okay:

1. Fanfics encourage reading and writing and imagination. In this digital age when attention spans are short and people are reading less, fanfics allow people to return to reading and writing by giving them the opportunity to read and write things they already love, be it books, TV shows, or movies. If this is encouraging people to guess at what might happen if so-and-so happens to such-and-such character and they read about it or write it down, why should it be discouraged?
2. Good stories can evolve from fanfics. The famous (or infamous) 50 Shades of Grey started out as a BDSM Twilight fanfic. If such a crazy bestseller can result from fanfic, why can’t a best-selling YA series result from a kid in Omaha doing a Naruto fanfic, or a woman in Cardiff create a new type of espionage novel when she has James Bond take on villains with codenames based on The Wizard of Oz, or a new literary novel that has reviewers crying at the end arise from a teen in Johannesburg imagining himself having conversations with Captain Kirk, Darth Vader, and the Doctor and then writing them down?
3. Fanfics could be good source ideas. It is entirely possible–particularly for TV shows with ever-changing storylines and characters–that fanfics could be a source for new material. Perhaps fanfic writers will one day be commissioned to write scripts for new episodes based on a story they wrote when they were exploring a new possibility for a character in their favorite franchise. It could happen.

And now for the opposing camp:

1. Legally, this could be a crime. Many writers don’t approve of fanfics, and in the United States, you can sue a fanfic writer if they created a fanfic based on your work without permission, and the fanfic writer could pay dearly for it. And since most fanfics don’t constitute as fully original works or parodies, they can find themselves at the mercy of a very angry novelist or screenplay writer, especially if the fanfics were sold for money.
2. Fanfics may discourage writers from doing original work. There may be plenty of talent among fanfic writers, but if they spend too much time creating fanfics, how can they achieve their full potential by creating original stories? We may have the next Faulkner, Paolini, or Sparks on our hands, but they may be too busy writing stories based on Scandal or Harry Potter or Friday the 13th to create an original work. Heck, they may be too scared to do an original work, thinking no one will like a story with original characters or that fanfics are the best they can do.
3. Fanfics may create false expectations. You hear of shippers, those people who are rooting for two characters to get together on a show or in a series and talk about it online and write fanfics about it. What if by reading those fanfics, you come only to expect that somehow, some way or another, those characters will be in the relationship by the end of the show? And what if the creators of those characters have other plans? We’ve heard of how some fans were angry about how Charlaine Harris’s final Sookie Stackhouse novel ended and threatened her for it, and years ago when Books 6 and 7 of Harry Potter came out, Harry-Hermione shippers complained that JK Rowling had willfully ignored them or shot them down, particularly in that one scene with the locket Horcrux and Ron holding the Sword of Gryffindor. It’s entirely possible this could happen if fanfics become mainstream.

To do fanfics, or not to do fanfics? That is my question for you right now.

As the debate rages, we may see more and more authors joining the Kindle Worlds platform. Or we may see a retraction, as certain authors launch campaigns against Kindle Words (could happen, you know). I certainly know that I don’t want people making fanfics out of my work, but I can’t speak for other authors.

How do you feel about fanfics? Would you allow fanfics based on your work?

Plenty of Good News To Share

Posted: June 6, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
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Yes, I have some good news for you, and I cannot wait to share it with you. So I shall not mince words and just tell it to you, in order from smaller pieces of news to bigger pieces of news. Here we go:

1. I finally bought a Kindle. Yes, I finally bought one. It took a lot of saving of Amazon gift cards, taking part in those websites where you fill out surveys for prizes, and more than a little resisting the urge to buy mangas I can’t get at my local library or through interlibrary loan services. But yes, I finally bought one, and it should be arriving sometime next week. I’m very excited, not only that I’ll have my own Kindle, but I can download the books of friends and fellow authors I’ve met while blogging and on Facebook. Heck, I can even download and read my own fiction on my Kindle.

And speaking of which…

2. Daisy has been downloaded 130 times. Yes, the short story I published as a promotional piece for The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones has been downloaded that many times. I’m very grateful to all those who are downloading and I hope that if you decide to do a review on Amazon or Smashwords or B&N or wherever, that you let me know so I can feature it here on Rami Ungar the Writer. And if you haven’t read Daisy yet, please do. Unless you’re easily scared to the point that you soil yourself when you get scared, in which case I don’t recommend reading.

And last, but certainly not least…

3. I’ve accepted a new opportunity. Some of you may remember I wrote an article for the blog Self Published Authors Helping Other Self-Published Authors. Well, one of the blog’s writers, Ruth Ann Nordin, emailed me and said she really enjoyed my article and asked if I would like to be a regular contributor to the blog. I had maybe a moment’s hesitation before I emailed an emphatic “YES!” As of today I am now a contributor and will have a profile page and whatnot soon. I already have a few ideas for what I’d like to write, including interviews with other self-published authors and some more articles with tips for writers on how to do this or that for their stories. I’m really excited and I would like to thank Ruth Nordin for thinking so highly of my article and  for giving me this chance. I won’t let you down.

That’s all for now. If I have any more good news, I’ll be sure to share it with you. Wish me luck in the future.

Getting Reacquainted with the King

Posted: June 2, 2013 in Living and Life
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I recently ran out of things to read. I had free time, so I took the bus down to the library and went on a search for books I wanted to read. Unfortunately, there were no copies of the books immediately on list, so I decided to pick up some good old Stephen King.

I first discovered the current King of Horror when I was 12 or 13 when I read It and I found myself hooked. For the next couple of years, I read a huge amount of King’s work. Unfortunately, around age 16 or 17 I started to grow tired of the King, and I stopped reading him. As sad as it is to admit, I got sick of Stephen King, and rarely picked him up unless to read one of his new books (Duma Key or Under the Dome) or read an old favorite (The Stand or It). But this trip to the library was the perfect opportunity to get friendly with His Scary Highness again.

So I picked up Carrie (read once before and needed to read again before the remake comes out in October), Misery (seen the movie, never read the book) and Cujo (never read, have to since they’re talking about remaking the movie), plus two other authors I’d heard or read good things about and I started to read. As I read Carrie, I felt all the old love come back. By the time I’d finished, I was back on loving Stephen King.

I’m looking forward to meeting this dog.

I’m now in the middle of Misery, and although I’m not that easily scared, it’s proving a good read. I also can’t wait to read Cujo, but I think afterwards I’ll take a break from the King. After all, I don’t want to get sick of him again! That would be horrible.

Have you ever gotten sick of a certain author and then rediscovered your love of them? Which author?

Different Types of Chapters

Posted: June 2, 2013 in Novel, Reflections, Writing
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In the article I wrote that was published last weekend (you can read it here if you like), I mentioned that chapters and scenes don’t always mean the same thing. Some scenes take up several chapters, while sometimes several chapters are needed for one scene. This got me thinking on the different types of chapters I’ve seen over the years and doing an examination of these sorts of chapters. Hence the post you are currently reading.

I’ve divided the chapter types into three categories. Note that the names are my own creation and if there’s a proper name for these chapter types, then they’ve escaped me. Also, feel free to add any criticism or any fourth type of chapter that I may have missed or I am unaware of by leaving a comment, and I will gladly write a second post.

The Harry Potter chapter

When I wrote Reborn City, I used this chapter format. This type of chapter I first encountered when I read the HP books, so I’ve always associated the type with Harry Potter. However it is by far the most common type of chapter out there, mostly because it is easy to write and can encompass many events within itself, such as when Mr. Dursley has a very odd day, followed by his nephew being left on his porch in the first chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone. And changes of scene within the chapter are very easy to do, as they can be accomplished by a large space between the ends and beginning of sections or a series of asterisks (I prefer using ~~~ though). When I outline this sort of chapter, it usually looks like this:

Chapter 1: Rami Ungar sits down in front of his computer. He has published several novels, but has written nothing new lately and can’t even be inspired by his trusty list of ideas. He decides to write a story about a man haunted by a muse for no reason but to write something, and when he wakes up, he finds said muse on his couch, telling him to continue to write so that she can take form in this world.

Yes, that sounds like a recent movie, but I’d probably put a more sinister twist on it.

The Alex Cross chapter

This is the chapter format I used when writing Snake. I first encountered this format when I read The Da Vinci Code, but I’ve come to associate it with the Alex Cross books since then. In this format, a scene can take up several chapters, each likely very short, and is usually best utilized in the form of a thriller or other fast-paced novel, due to the short chapters heightening the tension before stopping and leaving the tension to continue in the next chapter. When I outline this sort of chapter, it might look like this:

Chapter 1: Rami Ungar wakes up when he hears a noise in the living room. He goes down to investigate with a baseball bat, but when he looks into the mirror hanging on the study door, he sees someone behind him.
Chapter 2: Rami turns around but sees no one there. He looks back in the mirror and sees no one there. He goes back to his room when he hears someone calling his name. He goes into the kitchen and sees a face peering out of the television beckoning for him to come closer.
Chapter 3: The face in the TV tells Rami she will be his muse from now on and will bring him fortune. Rami is stunned.
Chapter 4: Rami accepts the muse’s help and she tells him his name: Melly. Rami thinks it’s a nickname and wonders what it could stand for.

I could actually use this idea if I’m smart and change some names. Don’t steal it!

The Mark Chadbourn chapter

I have yet to use this sort of chapter, but I’m sure I will at some point in the future. This type isn’t named after any sort of literary character, but is named after the fantasy author Mark Chadbourn, who used this style of chapter with his series of nine fantasy books starting with World’s End and ending with Destroyer of Worlds. This format is unique, because it uses chapters, but each chapter is like a section of the story, and it has numbered sub-sections. I find this helpful for novels where there are a lot of different characters and plotlines to follow and you want to switch between characters and plotlines as dramatically as possible without being cheesy. When outlining this sort of story, it usually looks like this:

Chapter 1: Muse Makes Contact
           I: Rami Ungar wakes up and finds a ghostly woman in his room. She calls to him before she disappears.
           II: A witch has a prophetic dream of danger to come and summons her familiar. The witch, whose names is Azzie, tells her familiar Collos to head to Columbus Ohio and investigate an author by the name of Rami Ungar.
           III: Rami goes to work and then to classes, but sees the same ghostly woman everywhere he goes. Also, he feels like he’s being followed…and is then attacked by a man with a knife.

It goes on like that, if you get my drift, and can have any number of subsections. It’s a tough sort of format to pull off, but it works best with stories like this with multiple narratives, and can leave the author the option of working with many different characters at once.

As I’ve demonstrated here, there are many different types of chapters, and probably some that I’m not even aware of. Whatever one you use though, if you use one because you’re comfortable with it or you switch it up depending on the story, it’s probably because you know the story best and therefore you know what sort of chapter is needed. And if you can give your story what is needed, including chapter, then that is one mark of a great author.

Great Stories vs Great Lines

Posted: June 1, 2013 in ideas, Novel, Reflections, Writing
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Every author wants to write a great story, one that’ll be remembered for years and years after the author has passed on from this life. It’s the reason why so many of us spend years bettering ourselves, polishing ourselves and learning from as many experts in the field as we can so we can be great at our craft.

But what about writing great lines? Every author also has a desire as the person who coined a phrase like “To be or not to be”, or “Luke, I am your father”, or “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die” (That last one I had to find through Google to get the quote right). How do you create a line that will be remembered throughout all time and be dissected in high school and college classrooms for generations to come?

I wish I could offer a trick to creating a great line that’ll stand out in your work. Unfortunately, none exists that I know of. In my experience, the most famous lines happen through accident and luck. Take Stephen King’s The Shining, arguably one of his best novels. The term Redrum has become a part of our social consciousness and is often used for creepy (or sometimes comedic) effect. I bet when King created the term though, he was just looking for something scary and strange, a device to add another layer of menace and mystery to the Overlook Hotel. I also bet that when the novel (and later the movie) became a success, King was very surprised by how popular the term Redrum was becoming.

Or how about “Live long and prosper”? Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, was drawing on his Jewish roots, as that phrase and accompanying hand symbol were used by the priests in the days of the Holy Temple to bless the nation of Israel. When they were looking for an iconic catchphrase and symbol for the Vulcan character, Nimoy suggested, “How about ‘Live long and prosper’?” It stuck, and thanks to the show’s sometimes mind-boggling fandom, the phrase entered into our culture.

(By the way, that story has been a beloved tale among Jews for decades ever since the show began, and we still get plenty of oppurtunities to tell it and sometimes educate non-Jews about its Biblical significance. L’chaim!)

I guess the best way I can say for someone to create an excellent line is to just write as great a story as you can, and hopefully someday, just by writing a great story, you’ll pen or type out a sentence or phrase or piece of dialogue that’ll really catch the reader’s eyes and resound in their consciousness. Basically, keep doing what you’re doing as a writer and someday a great line may be born.

What’s your take on creating great lines? And what constitutes as a great line in the first place?

Doing the Same Old Dance?

Posted: May 24, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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I’ve heard fiction writers say they worry that they’re writing the same story over and over, just changing the names, the locations, and the situations. They say they worry they’re becoming one-liners, that their work is unoriginal and that they might as well be using cookie-cutters to write their stories.

I’ve had these worries myself. A lot of ideas for novels I have sound very similar if you look at them from certain angles. I’ve gone on thought trains that go something like this: “Oh, this story’s heroine reminds me of this heroine from another story…and she reminds me of another heroine…and don’t their stories sound a little similar?…and what about their male counterparts?…oh my God, did I repeat myself?!” Luckily I’ve got so many ideas for stories that I’m sure I can space these similar sounding stories enough so that critics and readers can’t accuse me of being unoriginal. But even if I didn’t have so many ideas, who cares? You can tell so many of the same story and still be successful. Look at Shakespeare! Every tragedy ends up with a ton of blood, every comedy ends up with bad guys getting butts kicked and lovers falling into each others’ arms in comical fashion, and every history…well, it’s history.

But if you still worry that your work is repetitive and just looking like the same old story over again, then don’t despair. Treat it like you do writer’s block–in my case putting the story aside for a couple of weeks and then getting it out again to look it over. In the amount of time that break took up, I’ve probably done a lot of fun things, or read several awesome books and graphic novels, or watched some pretty interesting TV shows or movies. I can add all that I’ve experienced to the story as I go over it and try to find some way to improve it. And if that doesn’t work, try using a random word generator and using three nouns from that generator to help mix up your story (it’s something I learned to do in high school. Thanks Mr. Guinan).

But if you still feel that you’re only repeating yourself, look on the bright side. Most people don’t have the energy or the fortitude to write a full story, even if they are born with the talent to do so. The fact that you can write only one story, you can do a lot more than others. Perhaps you can even make the best version of that story ever written. And isn’t that worth all the repeats over the years?

Snake: Third Draft Almost Finished

Posted: May 24, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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As of this evening, I’m only fifteen chapters away from finishing the third draft of my thriller novel Snake. Boy, it’s been a lot of work. I added two chapters, and I cut out a bunch of words and I added a lot more words than I deleted because it was necessary…and I’m starting to worry that it’ll be so long nobody will want to read it. It’s already kind of scary. If it’s long too, will anyone want to read it?

I hope. And I also hope to get this draft done by the end of this coming Memorial Day Weekend. Because once I’m done, I’d like to work on other projects before I decide if I need another draft or if I should go straight to the presses. I want to edit a couple of short stories that have been waiting for their next drafts. I want to finish “Vile”, the short story about coming back from the dead that I had some writer’s block on when I last looked at it. And I want to write a short story that’ll be a homage to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Premature Burial” (and yes, I love  The Following despite how crazy its story can get). And yes, I want to put out The Quiet Game and get ready for when it’s time to put out Reborn City.

But I do like how this draft of Snake has turned out. With every draft my story is a bit more polished, what the characters do makes more sense. I added a lot of character development and I fixed some things that I’m pretty sure some fanatic will nitpick to death on the Internet. And I’m sure that if I do another draft, give my story to a beta reader, or just send it to the presses, I can at least say this story turned out much better this draft.

So whether or not you like books up to 400 pages, I hope this book finds its niche and a group of fans…and hopefully not any mentally unstable fans. Until that time though, I’m going to finish this draft and keep working on my writing. Wish me luck.

Review: “World War Z” by Max Brooks

Posted: May 16, 2013 in Novel, Review, Scary Stuff
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I include the “by Max Brooks” part to distinguish this review I will eventually do on the movie (both will probably get a ton of traffic once the movie comes out, I bet). Also, I know I keep saying that I like to put a week’s distance between reviews and it’s only been a few days since I did the review for The Great Gatsby, but this was such a phenomenal novel, what could I do?

As a History major studying the Holocaust and World War II, I read a lot of memoirs by survivors and soldiers alike. As I read Max Brooks’s zombie apocalypse novel, one of the things I was struck by was that it sounded so much like a Holocaust memoir, it was uncanny. And I don’t mean in terms of content–it’s a zombie apocalypse novel, after all–but in terms of how haunted the voices of the characters are. Each section of the novel is a different person’s experience during “The Great Panic” and the war against the living dead, ranging from Chinese to Russian to Chinese to American to South African to Middle Eastern to English and everything in-between. The horrors and haunted tales of each survivor, which are all assembled by a nameless interviewer (Max Brooks in a world that he created, playing the role of reporter, perhaps?) into a single collection of tales, will keep you reading for hours after you should’ve gone to bed.

That’s kind of what happened to me: I was reading late last night, finished the book, and then went to bed. I had the craziest dream afterwards where I lived through my own zombie apocalypse. Just one problem: I didn’t find out what happened to the woman I met in my dream and the baby we were having together! I felt like Dorothy wanting to get back to Oz! Cursed alarm, waking me up in the thick of the battle.

Anyway, another thing I noticed about World War Z was that Brooks thinks of several things that we don’t. I’m not going into detail, but let’s just say that he considers everything from the disadvantages of conventional warfare on zombies, to survival plans foolish and wise, to how the public would react to zombies, and how other people would react to those reactions. It’s so detailed and so well thought-out, you think you’re reading something that actually happened. I’ve read memoirs and history books that have the same level of detail, and it’s crazy how real it all seems. Like Stephen King’s The Stand trying to pass for nonfiction, it feels that real.

A very engrossing read, 5 out of 5 definitely and deserved. I wonder how the movie, which will probably take more liberties than any other book-to-movie adaptation in the history of moviemaking (with the possible exception of Priest), will compare.

Oh, funny story while I have your attention: on Tuesday night, Jews everywhere started Shavuot, one of our more important holidays. During Shavuot, it’s traditional on the first night to have a long study session that lasts late into the night. The study session I attended was divided into two parts, the first consisting of different classes we could take. I took the one on bikkur cholim, which is the commandment to visit the sick but also implies praying and caring for the sick. Near the end of the session and after some lively discussion about the effects of biblical and modern-day quarantine, I asked about bikkur cholim and zombie plagues. The instructor’s answer: “Throw bikkur cholim out the window, and run for your life!” Sounds sensible, doesn’t it?

The Rabid Fans

Posted: May 12, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, Writing
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At the end of the 2012 presidential election, riots broke out at a Mississippi university where racial slurs were shouted by the mob, and over the ensuing months the White House was inundated with petitions asking for individual states to secede from the Union. All these and a few other interesting little acts of rebellion and political anger were the result of President Barack Obama nabbing a second term and, in the eyes of these people, sitting comfortably in a position to create a dictatorship.

I thought these people were being overdramatic and possibly a little unpatriotic. I mean, why not wait till the next election, like the Democrats were forced to do from 2000 to 2008? Why threaten leaving the Union? And until this past weekend, I thought nothing could match this overreaction.

I was wrong.

Author Charlaine Harris is receiving hate mail and death threats for wanting to end her vampire series and to end it a certain way. Seriously?

This past weekend, I read several articles, online and off, about how Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse books, was receiving negative reviews, angry letters, and even a few death threats. Why, you ask? Because a small but extremely passionate legion of her fans are upset that the latest book, Dead Ever After, also happens to be the last Sookie Stackhouse book. Some were angry that Ms. Harris was ending the series. A few were threatening to do horrible things to themselves or to Ms. Harris if the ending doesn’t put their favorite couples together (and when a leaked copy of the novel appeared in Germany, some fans did what they threatened).

This isn’t the first time an author has received this sort of treatment from fans. Stephanie Meyer received some very angry letters when she said she didn’t want to write any more vampire stories, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got his share of haters attacking him when he threw Sherlock Holmes over a cliff, seemingly killing him. For the latter, this led to Holmes’s resurrection, which can show how powerful fans can be, and in the age of the Internet, a few people can create a tidal wave of faceless anger and indignation.

But can I remind everyone of something? THESE ARE FICTIONAL STORIES! There’s no actual Sookie Stackhouse or Bella Swann, Sherlock Holmes doesn’t actually mysteries in London, there are no vampires or Hogwarts, Klingons are the creation of talented make-up artists working with patient actors in seats, and the fact that adults get so worked up by a show about talking animated ponies seems a little creepy! None of it is real, but the fact that so many people treat these things like life or death just seems to disturb me.

The new target: celebrities and artists. It’s ridiculous.

So why do people go all Annie Wilkes when their favorite author decides to do something that a few fans disagree with? Or to go a little broader, why do some fans threaten to boycott or do horrible things to a celebrity when that celebrity does one little thing that doesn’t fit with the image these fans create of certain idols? And yes, fans create the images of their idols, because it is only in their minds that Tom Cruise is truly a dashing, charismatic, very eccentric man, or that the super model is the cool, serious seductress of your dreams. Magazines and TV and movies may help perpetuate these images, but the fans are the ones who create these images in the first place.

But to return to my original point, I don’t know why certain fans act so crazy when an idol does something that doesn’t fit their image, be it a pure actress that cannot be anything other than the sweet girl from the country, or the author that wants to end a book series after so many years, or the bad-boy musician who keeps his marriage and family secret because “that does not fit his image”. I always look at what these people do as gifts: they give us a wonderful story or a performance or a song and we appreciate it because of all the work that went into creating such a beautiful present.

“Mr. Spock, please set fanatics to minimal. Their interference could jeopardize the smooth running of our operations and the lives of many civilians.”

Even more so, plenty of artists treat their work like their babies, children they create and give birth to inside themselves. What happens when someone else tells them how they should raise their own children, what those children should learn and who they should love? It’s a little freaky, to say the least.

But it seems that some fans don’t see things the same way. They love their idols while the idols do what the fans want, but as soon as the idol does the opposite, the fans become hostile, believing they are owed something. The truth is, the rabid fans are the ones who owe something to the artist, and that’s an apology. You don’t own the work, you didn’t create it, and you sure as heck can’t tell the creators of such work what they should do with it. And if you are willing to go to such lengths such as try to ruin an artist’s career like hurting yourself or go on a hate campaign, then I seriously worry about your mental state.

So people, the next time you want to do horrible things to an artist for doing something not remotely criminal but you still find yourself feeling really upset about it, take a step back and ask: Is this really worth going to war over?

I highly doubt it.

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