That's also the plot of the earlier Romeo and Juliet story. True, other segments are clearly inspired by Pyramus and Thisbe (and perhaps the earliest Italian source also used this, I don't know offhand). But it's got a much more important antecedent than, say, Othello, whose original story is shorter than the original, or Titus Andronicus, where it's arguable that Shakespeare's text is the earliest version.
Not only do I not decry scripted fanfiction, the bulk of my fanfic writing has been published under my usually assumed pseudonym of Hadrian McKeggan in script form. Most of these have been collaborative works, such as Star Trek: Renaissance.
I am going to do something very dishonest in replying to this criticism.
I am going to extend my response to include plays. I hope I will have justified this by the end. In essence, it's debateable whether many plays were intended to be performed at all - the tragedies of Seneca immediately come to mind, which may or may not have been performed by aristocrats as part of a party entertainment. Even intended for performance, plays have enjoyed a long currency as something to be read and examined in the West, as traditionally Western theatre is very dependent on its writing - as opposed to the more visually-oriented theatre of the Japanese forms. This is another appropriate comment - for centuries, the Japanese did not consider the texts of their plays worthy of seperate literary evaluation, until Western critics began to treat them as such. Personally, I love reading plays. Many of my favourite plays are plays I've never seen performed, or have even been less-than-enthused with the performances.
And, on a further stretch, there are dialogues. I read dialogues all the time - that is, the dialogues of Plato. They are very entertaining reads, like having a vigorous intelectual discussion between many learned people.
What am I getting at here?
Well; in terms of narrative my greatest strength is as a dialogue writer. I love writing conversations, especially conversations with long speeches. I've done a lot of debating, and engaged in lengthy arguments - stylistically, this has always been the one thing I am any good at. I write these not to be performed, but to be read, and unencumbered by prose they can be very easy reads indeed.
But beyond me, scripts have just as much capacity to be interesting reads. They can provide detail where needed and provide an easy and accessible narrative structure - one I am far more comfortable in than prose. I write plays for my own private amusement, and I write fan scripts on the same principle. I mentioned Platonic dialogues, because in my more serious scripts these are a major influence (the long speeches frequently being a point of irritation from my critics).
And, speaking entirely subjectively, I think many of James Sampson's scripts for Renaissance are the best fanfic I've read. I'm not trying to be chauvanistic here and I'm well aware there's a conflict of interest; I claim no credit for them (and often hotly critiqued them in private). But they're still pretty much the par for the course.
Well, as I said, a dishonest defense, but that's how I feel.
