{"id":1959,"date":"2010-04-30T10:38:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T17:38:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-09-18T01:03:37","modified_gmt":"2010-09-18T08:03:37","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/node\/1959\/","title":{"rendered":"Then, everything fits so nicely"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I finished writing down my Warhammer 40k hype, coming on the blog after my rant about genre prejudices (and prejudices in general), and then I discover this awesome conversation abut tie-in fiction<\/a> between Mark Charan Newton (new kid on the fantasy block) and Dan Abnett himself:<\/p>\n

Mark Charan Newton:<\/b> For an author to write tie-in fiction \u2013 that is, fiction connected to a franchise or character, that isn\u2019t technically owned by the author \u2013 it is still treated as a gaucherie by the majority of genre fans. The books suffer by not getting proper review coverage, and sometimes they are not even considered as \u2018real\u2019 works. Why do you think tie-in fiction is treated as the second-class citizen of the genre world? I mean, the same could often be said about the treatment of genre fiction and the literary world. <\/p>\n

Dan Abnett:<\/b> There are any number of contributing factors, and many of them are inevitably contradictory. Let\u2019s start with a basic assumption: if you write as a hired gun, you must be in it for the dosh. You don\u2019t really care what you\u2019re writing. Therefore (obviously), you\u2019re just crapping it out, words per square inch. In other words, tie-in fiction MUST by the very nature of its manufacture, be poor, disposable and second-rate.
\nIt\u2019s possible that an awful lot of people think this. They may not even mean to think it. There\u2019s also a possibility (actually, a very high probability) that an awful lot of people in what I\u2019m happy to refer to as \u201cmy line of work\u201d believe that\u2019s what other people think.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s worth getting this out of the way right at the start: writers of tie-in fiction may, sometimes, involuntarily, feel slightly guilty. They may be, involuntarily defensive. They know what the perception can be, and it contaminates them slightly. Tie-in writers can be their own worst enemies.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the odd and inevitable case of the Emperor\u2019s New Clothes, surely readers can tell if something\u2019s good or not by their gut response? They can tell if someone\u2019s just banging it out and their heart\u2019s not in it? Can\u2019t they? Please tell me they can!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I should honestly admit that sometimes I doubt of myself ;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I finished writing down my Warhammer 40k hype, coming on the blog after my rant about genre prejudices (and prejudices in general), and then I discover this awesome conversation abut tie-in fiction between Mark Charan Newton (new kid on the fantasy block) and Dan Abnett himself: Mark Charan Newton: For an author to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[33,43],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-warhammer_40k"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}