(no subject)

[shadowkat]

I wonder what would have happened on various tv shows if the writers weren't interacting with fans and did not know what the fans thought? I always wondered the same thing about Buffy. Would the tv series be better - if the writers never knew what the people seeing it thought? Sort of like novelists who write their books and only one who sees it first is their editors/publishers as opposed to a fanfic writer who is posting chapters and getting comments as they go forward?

Don't know.

Matt Wiener the show-runner and head-writer of Mad Men recently stated that his wife and fellow writers insisted he stay off the internet. That he'd discovered you can get hurt on the internet. And how foolish he felt - that he allowed some random bloggers opinion to hurt him as much as it had.

Aaron Sorkin used to rage at the fans on discussion boards during The West Wing, and even got into a fight with a few of them. So he wrote a hilarious and somewhat satirical bit about the same thing happening to one of his characters on the West Wing. (Never piss off a writer - they'll kill you in their story.)

Joss Whedon used to tell fans that he never gave them what they wanted he gave them what he thought they needed. Which I think came across as a tad more condescending and patronizing than he may have intended.

Marni Noxon pissed off her fans so badly, they called her names and never forgave her.

GRRM doesn't engage with angry fans. But he has admitted to changing things in his novels due to things his fans noted. Discrepancies. And that he is incredibly attentive to small details. Due to the fact that he knows his fans will notice the tiniest thing - like a horse haven't a different name or being a different color than it was in a previous book or chapter. The fact that someone can pick that up from A Song of ICE and Fire series and actually cares...is another discussion.

David Fury and Tim Minear both got into trouble on boards defending their writing to fans.

Anne Rice, a novelist, did as well. As has JK Rowling.

Making me wonder if fandom's interaction with the artist can be a detrimental thing? A lot of artists are like myself - not wishing to be the center of attention. Not wanting that level of devotion or attack. They just want to create and get some recognition for it.
Many theater artists do not read reviews. A lot of actors and writers never go on the internet. They ignore it. If they are on it - it's just for email. Noah Baumbach, a film director and writer, stated this recently in an interview. It's also true of most if not all professional and popular television actors. As James Marsters once noted - "I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to stay away from the internet. You either get too full of yourself and begin to act like an ass" or "feel like a horrible bug and want to fall into a hole".

IF they go to a fan convention - it's Comic Con or one of the big marketing events, and they do it in an entourage, with a group of fellow actors, and with lots of protection. They don't interact. They keep up that third wall.

Again I don't know. I think I'd be tempted to interact to go online, to see how people were reacting. And most likely, I'd react the same way Matt Weiner did and my relatives and friends would scream with me to get off of it. Ghod knows they already have. The internet can be fun, but it can also be painful. Like all human interactions are. I think.

At any rate...I wish sometimes we could create, finish our work, and throw it out there. Without worrying while creating it what someone will think, if it's in the correct format, right style, sends the correct message, has characters they will identify with etc...
I wish sometimes writing was more like playing the trumpet or running a race. My writing used to be like that - until I interacted on the net, and became hyper-aware of all the rest.

Comments

[ann1962]

Sometimes I wish that the Supernatural writers would service the fans less. Especially since it seems it won't lead to those things anyway. Makes it seem more like I'm watching fanon and less like canon (whatever that might have been).

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that's true of every profession, not just writers. When I volunteered with the Obama campaign, they told us not to watch TV and especially not to look at polls. And as a teacher, I look at evaluations only quite a while after the term is over (though I have learned a few things that way, I really try to distance myself from both negative and positive reviews as much as possible). Probably GRRM has the best approach--learn, but don't engage.

[kathyh]

Making me wonder if fandom's interaction with the artist can be a detrimental thing?

I've often wondered that but artists have always had to deal with interaction with their audience. The white heat of the internet may mean that people react faster and are more invested but Shakespeare would have known pretty much instantly whether an audience liked his plays or not. I presume Elizabethan theatre goers expressed their disapproval even more raucously than the internet does, and he might have been on stage to hear it :) I don't know whether Victorian authors writing serial novels for magazines tweaked them because of reader response but I can see that they could have done.

I suspect the answer is that it depends on the temperament of the artist. Being aware of fan reaction to a point but not engaging in debate is probably the safest course. What I really require from an artist is that they tell the story that they want to tell, not what fans tell them they should or even if I disagree with the way it's gone. I think that's what Joss meant but I've always felt he could have phrased it better!

[elisi]

From The Writers Tale:

'Principally: it is not a democracy. Creating something is not a democracy. The people have no say. The artist does. It doesn't matter what the people witter on about; they and their response come after. They're not there for the creation.'

And re. internet criticism specifically:

'So it can mess up writers when they read that endlessly critical voice. It's completely, completely destructive. I cannot see one iota of it that's helpful, except maybe in the toughening up.'

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

How could a writer - or anyone - resist the internet though? It's hard to write something and then just cast it into the void. TV may be where the writer rules but even then the feedback is likely to be production notes and some praise or comments from co-workers. Matt Weiner is fortunate in that all of the episodes of Mad Men get reviewed by professional critics, but they all have other shows to cover and won't offer more than a fast analysis - no one is going to look at a writer's work more closely than a fan. To have someone produce long essays analyzing your themes and style, and work to catch in-jokes and foreshadowing must be like catnip. Unfortunately wading through everything else to find that destroys the soul. I imagine wise show runners get their assistants or friends to search out the good stuff but late at night right after an episode one was particularly proud of had aired it must be very hard not to open up the computer.