Week 3: Brief 2

Hey!

So this week I made a solid start on my own fanfiction. When I was reading some of other people's work, I found that they had often taken their writing to one extreme of the other. Either they made it SO different from the original that you could hardly tell what it was based on, or they made it so similar that it could be confused with the original. This showed me that it is difficult to find middle ground in this aspect. It's hard to make the writing far enough from the original to be its own, and yet close enough that the topic is clear.

I wanted to find this middle ground in my own writing. For that reason, I kept all of the stock characters that can be found in the original screenplay of The Office, but changed attributes to match that of characteristics in other comedies, such as the movie 'Stepbrothers' and the TV show 'IT Crowd'. My fanfic consists of the characters Michael Scott (the boss), Dwight Schrute (the self-proclaimed assistant manager), Jim Halpert (the hilarious and sweet middle management persona), and Pamela (the secretary). Other characters involved in the original screenplay have comical benefits to the series, but I felt that using too many of the stock characters might detract from my story-line.

Week 2: Brief 2

Hi there!

So this week I came across a website filled to the brim with Harry Potter-based fanfiction called MuggleNet. If you wanted to check that out, click this link- there are some awesomely inventive pieces of work on there! Backing up what I said on my Mahara portfolio, Harry Potter is the number one most popular topic of fanfiction worldwide, so I don't know why I was so surprised by the millions of works. I myself read the first few Harry Potter books as a child, and watched the first couple of movies, however I wouldn't really consider myself a fan. In fact, I didn't even go to see the latest installment of the films. It just doesn't interest me. However, some of the works I found on this site were very entertaining.

As with all online writing, plenty of the entries on this site had spelling and grammar mistakes. Though this certainly niggles me, I found that it was easier to forgive because I was reading it on a screen and not on paper. In fact if anything, it almost seemed that it added to the originality and authenticity of the writing. However, despite this, I will not be writing my fanfiction with spelling and grammar mistakes as I find that to be 'clunky', in the words of Frank, and messy.

As my second week of working on my own fanfiction work progresses, I am becoming more and more certain of my topic. I have chosen to do my fanfiction on the US version of the hit TV show 'The Office', and this is my final decision. NOT Harry Potter. NOT Twilight. NOT Glee.


FYI: The site also has a forum for all the writers to discuss their fanfiction work and the reasons why they decided to change certain aspects of the storyline or character development. They also have links to purchase a Harry Potter fanfiction writing guide on Amazon online.

Week 1: Brief 2

Hello there!
This is my very first blog entry for brief 2 of iRefect, semester 2 2011.

I have chosen to work on a fanfiction of my own while simultaneously comparing my work to the work of other writers in an online forum.

For the first week of this digital assessment I made a start on seeking out various fanfics online to compare my work to. There is a very large forum of people writing fanfiction online, and it has become something of a trend in the last 5 years. For that reason, it wasn't difficult to find examples of fanfiction to compare my work to.