Is Fanfiction a Popularity Contest?

Aearwen and I were having our weekly chat yesterday, and although we discussed mundane day-to-day stuff, toward the end of our hour we segued into a topic that led us to fan fiction, chapter length, and popularity. I throw some of these out to my general readers today for additional input from my other "friends of the pen".

I suspect most of us write with a keyboard, I know I do, but there's
something so elegant about a quill pen and an inkwell. 

I'll start with chapter length because that seemed to have started us on a rolling series of topics. Personally, I prefer chapters of similar length in a book. I don't think they have to be so similar as to be almost identical in length, but it does disturb me when I read a book with one chapter at 5000 words, the next at 8000 words and then a quick 2000 words spurt. Although Aearwen says she prefers chapters of 5000-8000 words, not being inclined to enjoy shorter chapters, I really seek uniformity. If, for example, we have a book of 225 pages consisting of 22 chapters plus an Epilogue, that would make each chapter approximately 9.7 pages in length. Pages tend to average (and this is a rough average at best) 500 words in most word processing programs, so an author would be producing 18-20 pages per chapter to make a published book with the specs listed above.

This Table of Contents is from "A Passion for Tarpon", a coffee table
book by Andy Mills. There's not many who would go to these lengths
to describe how to track and catch tarpon, but the chapters are
(mostly) uniform and seem a reasonable length. 

I started thinking about word length and chapter length because I had just finished a book where one of the protagonists is an author who pounds out a 65,000 word manuscript in ten days and calls it a novel. Using the calculations of the previous paragraph, a 65,000 word manuscript would equate to a book of 130 pages and to me - that's short. Really short. In fact, I wouldn't call it a novel at that point, I'd be calling it a novella.

There are many different ways to outline a novel. Why outline
at all? I find it helpful to keep my forward momentum as well
as to make sure that my characters don't get sidetracked too
badly but keep the end goal in mind. Outlines can get
quite convoluted, though. 

But what to write about? Well, that's the next question. I'm grappling with that now because I'm trying to play my NaNoWriMo for November so that if I need additional research, I get it finished long before November 1st. I've put two years into "A Face in the Window" and have approximately 110,000 words into it. But I'm a bit lost in it and I'm not sure it's going in the direction I want. If I do this one, I'll have to outline carefully so that I can continue with a firm road to walk on. I'm a bit overwhelmed that it is 110,000 words, but that only translates to 220 pages and I know I'm a ruthless editor, so it may not be hopeless. The other choice would be "Proud Flesh" which has a strong beginning but again, I'm losing it in the mid-range of the novel. This one I've only got 20,000 or so words into, so it's just a baby right now. Decisions...

These books by Andrew Lane are two of the four he has written
using the character of the young Sherlock Holmes and published
with the full permission of the Conan Doyle estate. There will
soon be a fifth book in the series. What is this? Well, this is
published fanfiction. 

Finally, Aearwen and I discussed fan fiction. What would drive a reader to sit down and create a story that had never been imagined by the original author? Why some fandoms and not others? Earlier works can have fan fiction published without fear of backlash or copyright issues. That seems to be the case for Sherlock Holmes where multitudes of books have been publishes with the core characters, but not originally written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is a strong character in an interesting framework with a large fan following and millions of words written. The unique thing is that so many have been able to be published, not just in cyberspace.

We've watched Harry Potter grow up through the pages of the books
as well as on the screen. His character and his cast of supporting
characters has inspired one of the largest outpourings of fan fiction.

BTW - Were you aware that JK Rowlings just posted a new Harry Potter
character on Pottermore - Celestina Warbuck, the Singing Sorceress.
She's got a 500 word bio, so a character with some depth for her fans. 

What about other popular books? There is a huge fan fiction following for Harry Potter with one of the largest secondary fiction writing libraries of any author. There is a large group who writes in the Tolkien fandom, of which I am one. But what about other very popular authors? You don't see a lot of Dickens fan fiction, or Bronte or Jane Austen, but they are extremely popular authors. So why don't you see more fan fiction for them? It is my belief that Dickens, Bronte, Austen, and others, were less character driven than socially driven in their work. Their characters served to display the inequities or realities of Victorian or Regency England. The characters were the framework, but the society was the meat.

It's hard to resist a good character as a jump start for a piece of fanfiction.
What is Thranduil thinking here? Maybe you'll be the one to write
his thoughts down for the rest of us to read. 

In Tolkien, Conan Doyle, and JK Rowling, you have authors who are character driven. Here, they place the characters front and center and it is their interactions with others that is the meat, with the society they live in providing the backdrop. It is my belief that fan fiction is character driven, and I'd be interested to know your opinions on this speculation.