I was in a really irritated mood today because a fellow author from Chuangshi called out my book, Martial Ancestor, on the Dragon-Sky Forum for plagiarism. His reasoning was that every plot point I wrote could be found in the original work; the setting, cheat abilities, and plot had all remained unchanged. Therefore, what I wrote was not fan fiction at all, but outright plagiarism of the original under the guise of fan fiction. I was a plagiarism dog.
I did not accept what he said.
As an author, I understood the importance of originality. There was no way I would do something as stupid as directly or indirectly plagiarizing the original work.
There were two ways to write fan fiction. One was to radically alter the original, borrowing only its setting and worldview while overturning and rewriting all the plotlines, working out the story yourself.
The other was to stick close to the original: keep the major plotlines unchanged while altering the minor ones, letting those constant small changes trigger a domino effect that ultimately changed the entire direction of the story later on.
I knew I was rather stupid, so I chose the second method.
My previous Battle Through the Heavens fan fiction had actually been written the same way. It seemed to follow the original, but its core had been completely replaced, and the further it went, the greater the changes became.
You had all read the story, and everyone said the changes were pretty good.
When writing fan fiction, the point was to make up for the original's regrets, then patch up some bugs or loopholes left behind by the original author, so readers could feel more satisfied.
You could say I did not know how to work out a plot and could only follow the