I don't really enjoy fanfiction. It's not something I read in my spare time, but I believe in the value of a varied media diet, and I enjoy seeing what my internet acquaintances are reading.
As someone with a more traditional literary education fanfiction is bizarre to read. It's like an entire mode of writing that completely missed the boat on narrative multivalence and complex figurative language, but has an absolutely scalpel-fucking-sharp hand at pacing.
I find that fascinating! Maybe it's just the things I've been exposed to, but I feel like theres a pattern. I've found that even lackluster fanfiction prose tends to be delivered with a fairly advanced understanding of narrative pacing.
I don't know much about the broader culture of fan authors, but if I had to hazard a guess, it probably comes from a culture of discussions around what could make an existing story better. That would be an excellent trial-by-fire for getting a sense of when the important beats should happen.
You can tell that a lot of FF authors have never really studied poetry, or done close readings of other literature. Authors often seem entirely unaware of or uninterested in cultivating a symbolic language. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's leaving a lot on the table.
Set dressing, objects, even actions, are given comparatively little attention. They're almost suggestions, with the vast majority of the narrative legwork placed on dialogue and blocking. The effect is that fanfiction in my mind reads less like literature, or short stories, and more like a film or stage script. It's strikingly theatrical.
I think that's a lot of my displeasure with fanfiction. To my ear, it reads like someone trying to cram a one act play into a short story shaped hole.
I love this post. No seriously, I do. Long post/essay incoming!
Like OP, I also have extensive traditional training in literature (as well as a fair bit of linguistics and history). This is also not a dig at OP in any way, shape, or form, just my personal take on the matter. I write this with no ill intent and purely because I Love Thinking And Talking About Literature/Writing So Much and also fic.
To me, contemporary fan fiction reads like its own genre, and I agree on the pattern you’re seeing - to an extent. I also think that fan fiction’s unique points (which you classify as a lack of world-building detail and fast/well understood pacing) are becoming more and more stark as time goes on and fic literacy amongst its audiences grows. Finally, as @moorishflower points out in their tags, there is still a massive difference between certain fandoms and certain authors or fics, and I have some speculation as to why that is.
Before I undress these points, however, I want to point out one major factor I think is important to always keep in mind when we discuss fic: Fan fiction does not go through the same rigorous vetting and editing processes as traditionally published literature. Few published authors manage to get their first work(s) published, and I think it would be fair to say no one publishes without extensive editing. Fan fiction on the other hand is entirely self-published, and thus delivers a far larger qualitative variety. (I will touch on this point again later).
1. Genre. First and foremost, fan fiction is evidently its own genre, its own mode of writing (with its own goals that frequently differ from traditional publishing), and that means it has its own literary cues. However, in terms of traditional literature, besides potentially reading like a script (I can definitely see similarities between fic and works like Look Back In Anger), it is also reminiscent of postmodernist dressed-down writing (Don Delillo comes to mind). Some styles work particularly well for some people, other styles less so (I dislike Victorian literature with a passion).
Consequently, I’m not sure if I want to jump to the conclusion that authors haven’t studied poetry or done close readings of literature. Yes, this is probably true for part of the writers and readers, but I also know people with advanced degrees in literature who write this style of fic. I think it is a matter of what each author deems fitting for the genre and fandom.
Additionally, readers become more adept at reading the genre, which brings me to #2.
2. Fan fiction literacy & purpose. OP, I assume that, like me, you have been trained to read to read symbolic language of a specific type (or perhaps several types) and associate that with certain meanings: this is a form of media literacy. Symbolism in literature isn’t a one-size fits all, however, and it isn’t necessarily what makes a work of literature great (although I admit it often plays a big role). When I began reading medieval literature, I had to learn almost from scratch what its metaphors and tropes meant because it is not the same way we approach metaphors currently. Parts were boring because I didn’t understand, and, again, other parts downright bizarre.
In any case: fic has its own degree of literacy, which - as with any mode of literature - develops over time. There are certain formulas to fic across the board. This is true for the overarching plots/tropes used (think the fast pacing, but also the traditional formula for established AUs: bakery, coffeeshop, high school/college), but also on a sentence level: anyone who has done their time reading will recognize “Oh. Oh.” or the smutty “Two, three thrusts and he came.” (I’d love to conduct more extensive research on this type of “formulaic” writing). While personally I grow tired of these tropes/phrases when they are overused, I know people who can’t get enough of them because it means they can read the story without having to think too hard about what it means - and frankly, popular tropes have a tendency to reach a point of saturation at some point, although when that is depends on individual readers.
Alongside the fic-specific literacy, there is also fandom-specific literacy. A fic set in a TV series’ canon universe will not spend thousands of words on the world building. Why not? Because it would be superfluous. An occasional reader might be okay with seeing how an author describes the series they enjoy, but someone who binges fic on the regular will not be happy with this - it would be akin having to sit through every single play of a not particularly interesting title sequence of a 100-part series you’re binging on Netflix. The same is true for trope-specific fic: the premise is known, people are interested in reading about the pairing, so fic very effectively cuts out the parts people are not interested in reading again and again and again. In other words: while in some cases the author might simply not be interested in world/scene building, generally speaking, this type of sparsity has a very specific function. The dressing, after all, is already there. AUs that stray from the beaten path (particularly historical and fantasy AUs) tend to include a lot more of the story-building elements from traditional literature.
The fics I personally find lackluster are those that repeat the same fic-specific tropes without making the interactions unique to the pairing I am reading, and without breaking from the mold at any point. They are the fics I have read a thousand times across many different fandoms, and where I feel like I can replace the names with any pairing in existence minor a few fandom-specific morsels thrown in.
Moreover: you are right in stating that broadly speaking, fic is not as intellectually challenging as the more ambitious literature out there. Again, there are many factors for this.
One: Most fic has no desire to be intellectually challenging. Fic wants to be escapism, and part of the escapism it offers, is an escape from the demands of daily life. This is not new: people have always gravitated towards that type of writing - Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was meant for a private audience and intended to amuse; Shakespeare’s comedies are full of dick jokes and honestly aren’t that deep - the notion that these are prestigious authors is a construct thrust upon them post-hoc by white male scholars that wanted to feel special. More recently, you’ll see it in harlequin/romance novels (a genre to which fic undoubtedly owes a huge debt).
Two: Fic is written for the masses, not for literary scholars. This means that the entry level required to understand fic is far lower than it is to understand, say, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which makes it accessible to many more people. This includes people with less education, people with less exposure to traditional literature, and people whose first language is not English (for whom reading fic in a second language might be rather challenging to begin with). The overall lack of flowery language/purple prose makes it a lot easier to follow the stories. When I was 15 and learning English, I was reading fic without much of a problem but when I first touched The Picture of Dorian Gray, holy fuck, all the new words baffled me. Aside from understanding how metaphors in a specific context work, they are only really effective when you understand the nuance of the language you’re reading. Otherwise the reader will think they are missing something/making a mistake reading the plot, or they lose the plot entirely.
Three: This does tie in to what you’re saying about people not consuming a lot of/any other literature. Some fandoms do have a hostile position towards non-fic or non-mlm stories (I don’t know if the same is true for het or wlw ships because I’m not active in those circles). Of course this does condense the general tendency of fics in relation to tropes on all levels without bringing in refreshing input as the genre is becoming more and more established. The establishment is also being picked up on by publishers, with some YA books now resembling fics, especially the mlm written by young women - think Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On or Casey McQuinston’s Red White and Royal Blue.
3. Differences between fandoms/authors/fics. This one is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same way some people think of fan fic meaning a certain style of writing or a certain type of plot and thus reproduce it (or these fics becoming the most read/commented on and thus most rewarding to write in terms of community engagement), certain fandoms produce certain types of fic, which interests specific audiences who then write more of that type of fic.
For example: One Direction was (is?) not only a fandom with a lot of young fans (i.e. a large number of people without traditional literary training and the global phenomenon also meant a large number of people without a solid grasp on English). Besides that, the narrative presented by the media and their music was also simple and intended for easy consumption. Of course this is going to create a fandom where the majority of fic is intended for easy and escapist reading. The easy/escapist approach is somewhat true for Supernatural, because it’s frequently campy and also very formulaic in nature, although the medium allows for a far easier incorporation of fantastical elements/different world building. I have read 200+k fantasy works for that fandom that felt far more like a traditional novel than like fic (Angelhawke by Almaasi comes to mind).
However, there are plenty of fandoms that produce fics that are less “traditional”. These fandoms often have authors that are well-read outside of fic, and this brings an originality to the stories that borrows heavily from elsewhere. Two fandoms I can think of, off the top of my head, are BBC’S Merlin and the Sandman. In the case of Merlin, authors frequently engaged with the traditional mythology of the story - again, this is almost built into the series’ own narrative. In the case of the Sandman, something similar is happening - I know some authors have or are working on PhDs in medieval history/literature. In both fandoms, the nature of the series’ play a part but the early fics draw audiences with overlapping interests, and as is the nature in fandom, part of this audience also begins to write - often while also relying on historical/literary research/knowledge because that is why they stuck around in the first place. In some cases, this means people who had no prior knowledge now reading source material from the 14th century because they now know it exists at all thanks to the fandom.
Of course, most fandoms fall somewhere in between, and many fandoms’ readers don’t reward non-traditional fan fiction the same way they reward traditional fan fiction, thus discouraging writers from further exploration. Meanwhile, popular fics (which doesn’t necessarily equate “better” - whatever better means to the individual) are emulated and their concepts frequently recycled - first within the fandom and then elsewhere as people move on to greener pastures, thus helping to shape fic as a developing and ever-changing genre.
Conclusion. Fan fiction is fascinating and so are the trends in different communities and I spend a lot of time thinking about it. Basically, I think fan fic ought to be considered its own literary genre with its own rules. Those rules exist for very specific reasons, whether those reasons are ever explicitly considered by its writers/readers or not. Yes, to some degree this includes a lack of exposure to other literature, but that lack of exposure can be due to different factors, i.e. age, level/quality of education, etc. It also links to accessibility, which is partially linked to exposure but also to language barriers and the amount of energy people have to engage with any text. Then there is the reason people read which also stylistically affects fic: additions to the source material mean that world building in canon is generally more sparse, escapism is important and people want to get to the “good stuff” right away (i.e. the pairing), and some people study literature and still enjoy reading certain forms of fic because precisely because it doesn’t require deep thought.
And if you read all of this? I salute you. You’re a trooper. Thank you, lol
INCREDIBLE analysis and meta. Nate knows what he's talking back on a variety of levels that I can only aspire to. Yes, you're going to get wildly different fics depending on the sort of media those fics are based on, because different media attracts different people. Also, for television remakes of literature you're going to get different levels of textual analysis and symbolism, because television remakes are typically designed to be consumed by a wider audience. The best example of this is probably Lord of the Rings; fic that's tagged exclusively with the tag for the novels is often wildly different than fic tagged exclusively for the movies.
Fanfiction is, like Nate says, sort of its own literary genre, and like any other genre it's going to have specific beats it hits almost every time in addition to the beats of its secondary genre (in the way that something can be both "horror" and "science fiction" for example, fanfic is just another genre layered on top of everything else).
I'll always recommend Henry Jenkins' "Textual Poachers" and "Convergence Culture" as good books to start with for people interested in the academic study of fandom. Jenkins is a fan himself, has written fic, and has been studying fan culture and transformative works for decades. He was one of the first self-proclaimed "acafans" who very specifically identified himself AS a fan, and not just a person with an academic interest in the phenomenon. (Side note, Textual Poachers was written in 1992 and engages with fandom through the lens of a white cis male academic, so take some of it with a grain of salt; his views have become more nuanced and have evolved with the times, but it's still an invaluable look into what fandom looked like at the time, especially to someone who had a sort of dual function as both insider and outsider).
