A Study in Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is any piece or written work created from inspiration and with direct ties to a piece of published work. The piece can be of any length and the writer can be of any skill level. And that's truly the beauty of it. You can find something created that is as good as if not better than the source material. Or you can find (what you consider) complete trash. It is a mix bag of wonderful pieces of writing.

Fan fiction is something I came to enjoy at a very young age. I remember going up to my mother and saying 'They're writing stories on the internet! For free! And they [the author/s] just let them [the writers]!' I learned later that sometimes this isn't the case - there are occasionally authors who jealously hoard their creative works or just people who discourage it. But by and large, the internet is a rich place to find creative works similar to what originally interested you. That canceled TV show has two, four, ten more seasons on the form of fan fiction. And it is all for free. Reading fan fiction, for me, is an exercise in learning (and enjoyment, of course), because these authors create something for themselves and then share it with others. No expectation of payment or exchange of goods. It is a freely created work. And for me, that's an amazing thing. There's something amazing about going online and finding so much creativity.

As a writer, fan fiction was how I first started writing. Truly, you could say that it was how I taught myself to write. I was raised in fan fiction writing, with my fan fiction family showing me how to create better writing. Fan fiction is something without restrictions. You aren't limited to what you can publish. You can explore unconventional tropes, styles of writing, and ideas that aren't even necessarily liked or enjoyed by yourself. It is freeing to write something without there being an audience. There is just you and the work and what you want to do with it.

Some of the first things I explored with fan fiction were fairly simple. First person or third person. Past tense or present tense. But then I started some other projects. Until recently, the longest written work I ever made was a collection of short stories, all fan fiction, that took place over a vast amount of time. I wanted to explore themes and prompts, and tell a story non-linearly. Some of those short stories weren't too bad, all things considered. My last finished fan fiction tried to explore the idea of telling a story from any point of view I happened to find interesting at the time, to progress the plot rather than develop any particular character. Fan fiction is also a lesson of done is better than perfect. None of my fan fictions are perfect. A majority of them are finished, nearly all of them really, but I never made a large attempt to make them perfect. None of them were ever really lengthily proofread and I didn't make an effort to go back and fix plot holes most of the time. Which was something I could do. When writing a fan fiction, you don't have to worry that it won't 'sell well' you just write it as well as you want it to be. You set the standards. It means you work out how to handle your motivations, your deadlines, and how much editing is good enough. It has meant that I look back at my fan fiction writing and know that they weren't perfect and a lot of things could be done a whole lot better with experience.

But it was a stone on the path to being a better writer.

Fan fiction offers a place to explore the unexplored. You don't have to worry about the development of characters (unless you want to), or of the world (unless you want to), or a lot of the components of the story. You choose what to change and what to keep the same. And that makes the whole experience a delightful playground for your own writing growth.

I encourage anyone with half a mind to write fan fiction to do so. It can be highly motivating, particularly when you usually have a pre-set of people eager to see more of what you have to offer.

Until later!