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S J Lee

Inkling
It's doable and legal, but you can't sell it. You can do a Harry Potter fanfic on Pottermore, but even if it is 100% brilliant, no publisher would ever touch it UNLESS you changed all the names and the "universe" . . . OR JK Rowling gave you permission, which she will not . . . unless she is creating a "franchise". . . eg, Fantastic Beasts etc, but writing fanfic is hardly the best way to go about it. Agent talking to agent would be better...?
 
It's doable and legal, but you can't sell it. You can do a Harry Potter fanfic on Pottermore, but even if it is 100% brilliant, no publisher would ever touch it UNLESS you changed all the names and the "universe" . . .
That was how Fifty Shades of Grey was written. The author originally wrote it as a Twilight fanfic, then she changed the names and the universe and made it a separate story.

Not that it's a good example - it's terrible on many levels - but fanfic becoming a work of its own has been done.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Not that it's a good example - it's terrible on many levels - but fanfic becoming a work of its own has been done.

In general, if you write fan fic, it's probably not going to lead anywhere financially. It can be fun. It can be used as a learning tool, but don't expect it to be anything more than a fun exercise. BUT there is one instance that I know of that it paid off. With the Stargate franchise, there are fanfic writers who had their work picked up for that franchise by the owners of the IP.
 

RavenLord

Dreamer
What kind of issue do you mean?

There's plenty of fan fiction all over the internet. It's obviously doable And legal.

Yeah I know, it is not a crime after all. What I mean is creating stories around the already established lore, something not being canon. Because it may be seen as something as unoriginal, working on something that has a place already.
 
There's plenty of fan fiction all over the internet. It's obviously doable And legal.
You want to be very careful with that statement. Though I'm not a lawyer or a legal expert. But just because Fanfiction is tolerated, it is not necessarily legal. You are working with the intellectual property of someone else and just because you don't make any money with it doesn't mean that it is not a copyright infringement or breaching trademark laws.

If you want to find out how not legal fanfiction is, publish a Harry Potter story with sexually explicit content in it and see how fast you get a friendly letter from Rowlings lawyers.

That said, most IP holders don't mind fanfiction and they will ignore it or tolerate it and just let people publish it as long as they don't make any money from it and it's within boundaries they consider acceptable (like the sexual Harry Potter stories). So have fun writing it, but always keep this in the back of your mind. And if you ever get a cease and desist letter you can either simply take it down or try your luck fighting a publisher with a lot more money and experience in these matters.
 
Yeah I know, it is not a crime after all. What I mean is creating stories around the already established lore, something not being canon. Because it may be seen as something as unoriginal, working on something that has a place already.
If the already established lore you mean is copyrighted, all you can do is write fan fiction. You can't publish it in any way that you'd make any money off of.

If you mean old folklore that's in the public domain, that's different. You can fracture a myth or fairy tale and make it your own story, and it would be fine to publish it as your own. That's been done plenty, too.
 
If the already established lore you mean is copyrighted, all you can do is write fan fiction. You can't publish it in any way that you'd make any money off of.
I did mean writing in an established universe. Using public domain stuff is generally not seen as fan fiction.

But I disagree with you. If you write van fiction using someone else's IP then that is a copyright violation. As long as you do it as fan fiction and don't make money off of it then it is generally tolerated. But that does not mean it is completely legal. And some authors and companies in the past have objected to it. Most don't, since it's free publicity from big fans. But if they do then you either have to take it down or face a court battle. Like I wrote, jk Rowling for instance has any fan fiction she finds with sexual content taken down. She couldn't do that if it was legal.
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
As someone who does a lot of fanfic, I can say a few different things here:
  • TONS of people write it and it never gets published anywhere. Most writers don't publish/share the majority of what they write,because it's not good, or complete, or they dropped the idea. So if you want to write your Harry Potter x Interview with a Vampire smutfic for your own fun, then go ahead. If no one knows you wrote it, then you're not going to get in trouble. ANYTHING you write is going to teach you things and make you a better writer, and that includes fanfics.
  • The legality of fan-derived works heavily depends on the country and the context of it. Lots of people made their own shirts with My Little Pony characters on them and Hasbro was okay with that. People also made their own plushies, and that was fine up until the point Hasbro started to make their own plushies, then those folx got C&D'd. Meanwhile, (usually) pornographic fan comics are a big industry in Japan...and it's how many mangaka get started in the industry. There are some authors/IP holders that are cool with you doing anything, and others that don't want you doing anything (Nintendo is a big example of this). But, generally, putting something on AO3 isn't going to get you in any legal trouble. It's when you start mass-producing and selling things where you're more likely to run into trouble.
  • "Public domain" is different in various countries and some rights holders are absolute douchebags about it. The majority of Disney movies are based on public IPs/folk tales that never had copyright, but then Disney made their own thing and copyrighted it. They keep increasing the copyright of things made by dead people, too, so Mickey Mouse will never be public domain. MOST of the Sherlock Holmes stories are public domain in the US but the last few are not. The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle likes to argue that the depictions used in projects they don't like are drawing from those stories and are therefore copyright infringement. That's why he's Sherlock Holmes in Japan but Herlock Sholmes in the west in The Great Ace Attorney. But they also go through specific stories (like the speckled band), while something like The Great Mouse Detective is only really skimming the top as to what Sherlock Holmes is.
  • People are hired to write for IPs all the time. Think of all those Star Wars novels (that Disney isn't paying the authors for anymore), the My Little Pony comics, etc etc. You are essentially writing fanfic, of dubious cannon-ness. So the skills you'll pick up from making fanfics can absolutely be used in your Serious Career. And if you ever want to work for a game company, tv show, or movie studio, you're going to be creating in someone else's world, so there's tons of instances you could be doing this.
  • "Filing off the serial numbers" is totally valid, that's what happened with 50 Shades. A ONE DIRECTION FANFIC from WATTPAD was even turned into a "real book" and a REAL MOVIE. Some people do a simple find/replace (like 50 Shades) and others do pretty big rewrites (like After). I strongly suggest you do the latter, because another pass of editing will only make your work stronger.
People violate copyright all the time, but no one's mom is going to jail for posting a Minion meme on Facebook. I am not going to jail because I said "Facebook" and not "Facebook™", nor are you for writing fanfic. If you are not making any sort of money off of the work, all they can really do is send you a C&D, and right now JKR is more worried about people tweeting that she's a TERF than someone making Harry and Draco bump uglies. It costs a lot of time and money for these rights holders to go after people, too, and only completely deranged people like Addison Cain will go after small-time writers. Mostly they're relying on the chilling effect of these takedown letters...but there's still a ton of fanfics out there of "forbidden" properties. There's still Pokemon fan games even though they always get taken down by Nintendo.

If you post your content on a site like AO3, they deal with all the takedowns, just like how a record company deals with YouTube to take down your AMV instead of you directly. The legality of fanfiction has not been fully proven in a court of law yet, as it is both derivative and transformative of the original work, and even if the matter is settled in one country, it won't automatically be in others. The vast majority of fanfiction makes 0 money, so the vast majority of rights holders don't care. But if you want to be super on the safe side, then you can write this stuff and just not post it online. The act of writing a story and finishing something is going to teach you things, and that's the really important thing. The more you write, the more you learn, and fun exercises will teach you more than busy work. Do what makes you happy, man. And make all of the Harry Potter characters trans while you're at it.
 

RavenLord

Dreamer
I can share the bit I have written then if that is alright. The bit is from World of Warcraft exactly, based on the recent cinematic that has been released in the game, but after watching it I felt there was something lacking, something that could link the events or make a bit more sense in general.
So if that is not a problem for people here I can do it either in this thread or create a different one for the sheer purpose of reviewing the writing skills and not to commercialize anything (Or in simpler words make money out of it)
 
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