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Fan Fiction

Eduardo Ficaria

Troubadour
Personally, I haven't read any fan fiction yet (or, if I did I don't remember it at all). I wasn't really aware of it until some years ago, and nowadays there's just so much content out there already... Still, I find it interesting and once I even wrote a short story based in the Lord of the Rings saga.

With interesting, I mean it from a writer's point of view. Writing for an already stablished saga gives you the great advantage of having the worldbuilding already done for you. You just have to learn it properly, something that should be easy if you're really into it. Essentially, you have the framework to just worry about writing whatever story you might imagine within that universe: you can focus much more in the characters and developing the drama.

When writing fan fiction you have to be also aware that there's already a fandom community out there. If you want your stories be noticed, you'll have to invest some time to see how those communities fare and where that fandom is going. This means obvious things like reading some of the fan fiction already done, the rules applied to the content in their forums (like keeping the content family friendly or PG-13) ... And a very particular thing. You'll have to determine if the fandom (or the community you joined about a particular franchise/saga/series) is open to accept your ideas: maybe they're just interested in role playing the same kind of stories and characters over and over again, or maybe they are only interested in stories too juvenile for your taste.

There's also the important question of the opinion of the original creator of any saga, or the interests of a franchise's owner. Some writers don't like their creations being used by others, and media companies worry a lot about the image of their IPs. This might not limit you as a writer, in the sense of creativity and how far you want to go with your fan fiction story, but it'll surely limit where you can publish it and the number of people it might be able to reach.

Next, I'll leave here a list of links you might like to check out:
Be aware that in Wattpad, Inkspired and in The Jedi Council you'll find limitations on what you can publish there: mainly on what franchises or sagas you're allowed to work on, but also limitations on the language (insults, profanities) you can use and about keeping your contents family friendly (or PG-13).
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
My writing team is of the opinion that fanfic is a valid creative expression and should be encouraged, especially among newer writers. In other words, it's an amazing gateway drug. We don't write it ourselves, but we fully support those who do. If you are interested in fanfic, go for it!
 

ChazAngel

Dreamer
I used to love creating Fanfic, was great fun and I do believe that it can help you in the long run to become a better writer.
 
If I loved reading a story world, I would generally start to day dream I was in the world, (adventures exploring etc.). From there, one day I wrote the day dream down and a friend and I started to talk about the stories and built onto it. My writing grew from there, learning tricks on how to make it not sound cheap and so forth. I didn't even realize it was "fan fiction" until later. That was my intro into writing. It started with that day dream, escapism, fan fiction. Don't care what people think too much, just do it.
 

Meep

Acolyte
Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own (AO3) are absolutely not related. AO3 is part of a bigger nonprofit, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) that advocates for the legality of fanfiction, among other things. (They also run Fanlore, a wiki history of fandom, and an academic journal dedicated to fan works and fan cultures.) AO3 is the biggest of the fanfiction archives and also has the fewest content restrictions; whether that's a pro or con is up to you, and is currently the subject of a raging debate.

I don't read/write much fanfic these days, but I used to. I've written papers about it, too; my favorite was the one on Harry Potter self-insert characters.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I thought I had already replied to this, but I must not have finished the post.

I'm writing a fanfiction over on Archive of Our Own. It's helped me learn how to dive heavily into the characters' heads and has improved my writing immensely. It also helps to put my mind a lot more on readers because I publish it one chapter at a time, so I am constantly thinking about how readers will react. Finally, since it's not my "precious baby" I feel really comfortable experimenting with it, and I find myself doing unusual things all the way down to the rules of grammar. Here's a quick line as an example, a line of dialogue from a character who wasn't where she was needed:

“It’s horrible that you had to go through that,” and alone, Marinette said.

That little and alone makes for a fun experiment, inserting the characters' unspoken thoughts even before the dialogue tag. I'm so comfortable with the characters and not stressed about the story that it's easy to try and do fun things like that. And I find that not only is my actual writing growing, but my writing attitude is improving a lot, and all of that has carried over into my WIP.
 
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