I’ve thought about this a LOT.
Every time I hear about either Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey (which, quite frankly, is just too often) I think about how the latter began as a fanfiction of the former and E. L. James did little to make this less obvious before publishing her books. The fact that Fifty Shades began as a fanfiction of Twilight ought to be pretty well-known by now, but I figured I would talk about it anyway because that’s the kind of stuff I do here.
I started thinking about this in-depth on Sunday after watching Clueless for the umpteenth time. For those of you who don’t know, Clueless is (very) loosely based on the novel Emma by Jane Austen. For a long time the movie adaptation of Emma simply didn’t exist, but I found Clueless did more than enough to fill this gap until last year when the film came out.
Actually, the 90s was quite a hot time for modernized adaptations of our favorite classics. One of my personal favorites, 10 Things I Hate About You, is another adaptation loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. And we can’t forget the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes (who apparently hated each other, but that chemistry… Am I right?). Each of these used a previous work to build their script, characters, and plots, but the new works that came to be were different enough that they felt original in their own right.
A note here: I’m not arguing that movie adaptations need to be unrecognizable from the source material. In fact, most adaptations try their best to be faithful to the source material because that’s what an adaptation is. However, in the examples I’m using, the adaptations created are far from the source material and present an original product which is why I’m talking about them in this context. Both types of adaptations are fine, but only one serves my purpose here.
Anyway, how does this relate to my original topic of the Twilight/Fifty Shades thing?
Well, there are books that also follow this concept. A popular one that comes to mind is Pride and Prejudice vs. Zombies. While I’ve not read the book, I do know it’s essentially the plot of the titular novel with, you guessed it, a zombie twist. Another example is Cassandra Clare, an author who became known originally for her fanfiction writing, using Harry Potter as an influence for her series The Mortal Instruments.
The thing is, while these authors used well-known influences for their novels, the resulting works look almost nothing like the original books. This seems fair, right? No one idea is truly original. Everything we do is influenced by something else, and admitting these influences isn’t akin to plagiarism or copying. In fact, I think it’s respectful to give a nod to the particular works that influenced your writings because it shows proper acknowledgement of this fact.
Fifty Shades and Twilight is a different story, though. I’m not going to go through and highlight all the similarities and differences because several people, like this Redditor, have done that already. What I want to do is discuss the differences between writing fanfiction and publishing it as “original work” versus taking inspiration from another work to create something truly original.
In Fifty Shades, the characters are the same as they were in Twilight. Their descriptions, their mannerisms, their personalities etc., there’s no new interpretation or twist aside from Christian and Anna’s sexual relationship (which, as discussed in the Reddit post, is an aspect taken from another fanfiction altogether). The plot events, even the ones that have been changed to avoid too much similarity, closely mirror the events of Twilight. It’s very clearly a plagiarized work, and I’m not sure how anyone can really disagree.
In the movies and books I used as examples earlier, there are major differences between the original work and the adaptation to the point that they are nearly unrecognizable. The characters in Clueless, for example, largely mirror the characters in Emma, at least for the first act of the movie. The slang, fashion, and plot were all modernized, though, creating a completely different entity from book to movie. If you weren’t extremely familiar with the novel, you wouldn’t know that Clueless is related to it at all.
The same can be said for The Mortal Instruments. If you know it was originally a fanfiction based on Harry Potter, you might be able to see some (though few) similarities. Without that knowledge, though, you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. The same cannot be said for Fifty Shades as the comparisons are extremely clear to those who are familiar with both sets of books.
This brings me to my next point: How can a book be published when it is pretty clearly a plagiarized book? (Hint: if you guessed money, you’d be right)
It’s actually kind of brilliant. First off, people loved Twilight. Say what you will about the quality of the novels, those babies SOLD. With this knowledge in mind, the publishing company knows people will buy a similar story, even if the works are supposedly unconnected. Secondly, sex sells. People were upset Stephanie Meyers didn’t give them a sex scene in the final book of Twilight (thanks for that, Stephanie. I did not need those sordid details in my teenage brain), but in Fifty Shades they got all the sex they want. How about that?
With a few name changes and the vampire aspect removed, the publishing company likely felt confident enough that they could publish this novel without being accused of plagiarism. And, if they did happen to come under fire, they would have made enough money to defend themselves by far. Really, there were no downsides for them. An unfortunate truth of the world follows: Sometimes shitty books make a lot of money, and sometimes that money is worth a potential plagiarism lawsuit.
Not to mention, the scandal surrounding the novel lead to major publicity. It truly doesn’t matter if the publicity is good or bad, being all over the news will lead to more sales. People bought the books just so they could talk about how bad they were. I will take the opportunity to brag here and say that I bought the books from Goodwill (yes, really), so my money didn’t go to E. L. James. I still spent money on them just to see how bad they were, though, so it’s not that much of a brag, all things considered.
So, where does this little examination leave us? Here are my final thoughts about all this nonsense:
- If you’re afraid of someone writing crappy fanfiction of your work and publishing it as their own, probably don’t publish anything at all. Ever. If you write something that gets popular, especially in a fantasy genre, people are going to fanfic it. They don’t all get published, but a precedent has been set now so that it is quite possible for fanfiction to turn into actual published novels. Beware.
- Fanfiction that closely follows characters and plotlines of the original work should stay fanfiction. If you want to publish your fanfiction, stretch your creative muscles and turn it into something uniquely your own. Please.
- There is no harm in using other ideas or influences for your own work AS LONG AS YOU MAKE IT YOUR OWN. I have no qualms with this concept whatsoever. It happens all the time, and I have respect for the people who actually admit works they were influenced by rather than play off everything as their own.
- People are motivated by money. If you’re ever wondering how a crappy book was published, look at how many copies it sold. If the number is high, that’s your answer. The laws surrounding plagiarism are only sometimes enforced, and rarely when the person doing the plagiarizing has a lot of money. We see this with music, art, and all creative pursuits. The little guy gets taken advantage of because they usually can’t afford to fight back.
- This is a blog about books but the movies I mentioned are really good and I highly recommend watching them.
That’s really all I’ve got for you today. Stay salty and don’t get your work stolen.
The Lit Wiz
P. S. This is being published on a Tuesday because yesterday, July 5th, was an “observed holiday”. I like to observe things too, you know?