Establish Your Fandom Cred with Blogging
One of the worst things you can be when it comes to “fandoms” is an outsider. Fandoms have existed for a long time, but only really became part of the public consciousness when several high-profile casting and character choices brought out the “fandom menace” (as some critics called it, rightly or wrongly). What it comes down to is that writing well can be difficult. Not everyone can do it, and when a given intellectual property, franchise, or series has established a reputation for being, well, good, the fans notice and object when their perception of the quality changes.
Content producers, from individual authors to big corporations, sometimes make the mistake of blaming the fans when this happens. Other times, they don’t seem to say much, but may make course corrections in the future. For example (and if you’re currently reading Thomas Harris’ series about Hannibal Lecter, spoilers ahead), Thomas Harris made a very controversial choice in one of his books. You will know him best for Silence of the Lambs, the movie that was based on one of his Hannibal Lecter novels. In a sequel, he makes the strange choice of having his protagonist essentially fall in love with the cannibal Lecter, whereupon the two go off to live happily ever after (or something).
This choice outraged some fans, who felt it seemed contrived and strange. You may recall that this was the problem with the last season of Game of Thrones, a television series based on the work of George R.R. Martin. The consensus seems to be that because the folks working on the show made the choice to rush the events of the final season into just one (rather than two or more seasons), characters suddenly started behaving in ways opposite to the ways they previously behaved. This caused many to condemn the writing of the final season.
“There’s an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine — ‘Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.’” – Margaret Atwood
You see that I’m making no distinction between novels and screenwriting. It’s all writing and storytelling, and in these examples, the fandoms are intertwined. Many writers aspire to this type of fandom, too: They want their work to become so huge that there are books, television shows, etc., and this leads to a massive franchise empire. Few of us will actually get to that point, but it’s a nice dream for which to shoot. You can destroy that dream before it begins, however, by not establishing your “fandom cred.”
In other words, why am I telling you any of this? I’m telling you this because a blog is a great place for you to expound on your thoughts about your work, or the work of any other property. For example, let’s say you, as an author, start writing for an established franchise. Famous authors write for established franchises all the time. Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelization of the movies Aliens, The Last Starfighter, Pale Rider, and others. Orson Scott Card wrote the novel of The Abyss. Matthew Woodring Stover wrote the novelization for Revenge of the Sith (he also wrote a fantastic novel for Jedi Mace Windu). The list goes on and on. But what all these actors have in common is that they seem to have genuine love for the properties in which they are writing, which shows in their work.
Now imagine that you’ve written a series of blogs about how much you love a given property, or you’ve used your blog to expand the universe of your own book or books beyond the limits of what you could write in the novels you’ve published. Maybe you’ve used your blog to host fan discussions or answer fan questions. Maybe you’ve done some more world-building or even just offered your thoughts on philosophies that go with your books. All of this supports your fandom. It establishes your “cred,” your credibility, and demonstrates that you are earnest in your approach to the work.
People love earnestness. They love an author who is genuine and who genuinely loves their work. What they don’t want is someone who doesn’t understand the property or doesn’t understand them. When an actor attacks his or her fans (by suddenly getting political, for example), when a corporation blames the “fandom menace” for a poorly written work being poorly received, when an author causes characters to behave in ways they really shouldn’t and for which there is no justification… this damages credibility.
Use your blog, therefore, to establish your earnestness and your credibility in everything you do. Let people know that you’re one of them, that you understand, that you are behind your work, and that you are sincere. People respond to sincerity and honesty. This is what will help any author no matter there sphere in which they operate. From fiction to nonfiction to massive franchises and small one-off books, this type of sincerity can make or break an author.
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*This blog was written 100% by a human and contains no AI-generated written content.