A while back, I mentioned that I got my fiction-writing start via Twilight fanfiction. Which is, okay, a little embarrassing for two reasons: one, it’s Twilight, and two…it’s Twilight. I went back and tried to re-read the first one last year and I just…ugh…gah. What I remembered as being a moody, dreamy, slightly dumb love story was actually just a lot of rambling and moaning on.
But you know what? I stand by the terribad fanfictions that I wrote for that rambly, moaning-on-y YA series. They were an invaluable teaching tool that shaped me into the writer I am today, and I still sometimes write fics when I need a break from creating my own stuff. Fanfics are a ton of fun to write, and they’re great practice.
I think that every writer should write fanfiction, especially if they’re struggling to write.
Hey, now, don’t roll your eyes. I’m serious. Just hear me out.
I know that fanfiction has a reputation for being the exclusive pastime of sad weeaboo fangirls with a limited grasp on English grammar and no storytelling skills who need an outlet for their self-insert One Direction fantasies that will eventually become crummy BDSM bestsellers that everyone hates. (Did I get all the negative stereotypes in one sentence?)
Before you dismiss it (and teenage me) as being all of that, let me just say three things:
- While all of those things exist separately, I have never personally seen every single one of them present in the same fic. N E V E R. Not even in “My Immortal,” aka the greatest work of Harry Potter fanfiction ever.
- I have, however, lost a lot of sleep while reading the most incredible fanfictions—ones with beautiful prose, impeccable pacing, spot-on characters, and a sadistic writer whose Tumblr inbox is probably full of people screaming and raging incoherently because of all the pain they’ve been put in. You know, the same things your favorite books have. I’m firmly of the opinion that if you hate fanfiction, it’s because you haven’t found the right one.
- Fanfiction, for me, was basically writerly training wheels*. I used it to learn about dialogue, plot, pacing, and my own writing style. After a few years of writing fanfics, I felt confident enough to take the training wheels off and start creating my own worlds and characters. If you want to start writing but are totally intimidated by how much work it is, fanfiction can be a great place to start.
(*Disclaimer: When I say that fanfiction functioned like training wheels for me, I’m not saying that it’s easy to do, or that it’s only for kids, or that it’s something that you have to outgrow if you want to be considered serious. I’m saying that writing is hard, and fanfiction was how I learned to do it. That’s all.)
Here’s why you should write fanfiction:
- You don’t have to write smut. Seriously, don’t avoid trying your hand at fanfiction because you don’t want to write smut. This is a diverse medium and you can write whatever you want. I never wrote smut and I turned out fine.
- You already know everything you need to. If you’re writing a fanfic, odds are you love the source material more than you’ll ever love your future children. (Kidding! Sort of.) You know the characters. You know the world. You’ve already got a million ideas for stories. All that’s left to do is start typing.
- Fanfiction is chill. Want to write one scene and call it a whole story? That’s called a oneshot, and it’s fair game. Want to write a 200,000-word epic where it takes 57 chapters for the main character to hold hands with the love interest? That’s called slow burn, and, much like actually being slowly burned, it hurts like crazy. But you can totally do it if you want. All that matters is that you put your ideas on the page.
- Everything is ready to go. The world, with all of its rules and quirks, is set up for you. The characters, with all of their complexities and nuances and supernatural abilities, are ready-made. The supporting cast is all set to go. The villain(s) are in place. Just add a plot, stir, and bake at 350 degrees for twenty to thirty minutes.
- It’s not necessarily easy. Just like you still have to learn to pedal, steer, and brake while riding a bike with training wheels, you still have to learn to use pacing, dialogue, descriptions, and plot while writing a fanfiction. Just because the world comes pre-made doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work to produce a good story.
- You can learn a lot about your own writing style. Here are just a few of the things that I learned while writing fanfiction:
- Romance isn’t really my thing. I gave it an honest try—how can you write a Twilight fanfic without including some kissing and angst?—but it’s just not for me. I might include a romantic subplot now and again, but overall, I’m happy to go without.
- I like to infuse dry humor evenly across my work. In-your-face funny is really difficult for me. I can do it, but I’m most comfortable when I’m writing drier, subtler humor and throwing it around like old toast crumbs. (I was going to say confetti, but toast crumbs are dry, just like my sense of humor.)
- I’m a pantser-planner hybrid. Just letting a story ramble on means that I’ll never come to a satisfying conclusion, but sticking to a script doesn’t really work for me, either. Knowing that about myself has made it 1000% easier for me to plan novels.
- I’m good at dialogue, okay at descriptions, and the literal worst at action scenes…but I can write them all. In other words, I learned a bit of self-confidence.
- You can share if you want! If you’d rather keep it all to yourself, you can, but I seriously encourage you to share your work on sites like Archive of Our Own (aka AO3), FanFiction, and Wattpad. The communities are enthusiastic and the feedback is typically very positive. They’re not good places to get serious criticism, but they’re the best places to meet like-minded people and swap heartfelt compliments.
Creating whole worlds and a cast of characters to inhabit them is hard. Building a clever, fluid plot is hard. Nailing down your writing voice, figuring out what to keep and what to chop, minding your grammar and punctuation—doing all that at once, plus plotting, plus characters, plus agonizing about originality (which you really shouldn’t do), can make writing anything seem like an impossible challenge.
Fanfiction takes that challenge, makes it smaller, and hands it back to you with the compliments of the worlds and characters that you already love. Try fanfiction today.
Have you ever written fanfiction? Has it helped you improve as a writer?
I love your article because I had the same experience (I started with HP but you know what I mean).
Thank you
I tried so, so hard to write Harry Potter fanfiction but I just couldn’t make my writing as good as JK Rowling’s so I gave up 🤣 As if not being as good as JK Rowling is a reason to give up!! If she was the standard which we all had to meet I don’t think very many people would be writing. Fanfiction is a great way to cut your teeth…plus, it lets you spend more time in the worlds you love. It’s really quite amazing when you think about it.
OMG THANK YOU! So many people automatically roll their eyes when they learn that I write fanfiction, assuming it’s all smut and terribad melodramatic romance. There are some seriously amazing fanfiction stories out there, and a few of my favorite literary fictions are fanfics. I stayed out of the Harry Potter genre, choosing instead to happily drown within the Legend of Zelda realm.
I’ve only been writing for a year or so, but I have learned so much through writing fanfiction. Everything you said is so spot on. The community is (largely) supportive and helpful, and the feedback is so helpful for hobbyists like myself, who need the push to keep going, even when life grows three extra arms and starts swearing at you in German. I likely wouldn’t have even started writing if not for fanfiction, truth be told.
“When life grows three extra arms and starts swearing at you in German” I love it
I honestly think that anybody who just dismisses fanfiction out of hand doesn’t really understand it–not as a teaching tool, not as a hobby, and definitely not as a source of fun. (Okay sometimes that “fun” looks an awful lot like soul-crushing agony but you know.) Unfortunately it’s the bad stuff that gains notoriety and garners vitriol from the uninformed masses 🙁 I’m so glad to hear that you’ve learned a lot from writing fanfiction–it really is the most amazing teaching tool! Like you, I probably never would have started writing if it weren’t for fanfiction. I’m glad I gave it a try, though…I learned a lot and the community is so friendly.
(Well except for that one person who told me that I was debasing myself by writing Twilight fics but whatever. They just didn’t understand the ways of the glitter vampire.)
It’s good to see someone else has the same thoughts on Fanfiction writing as I do. The stuff can be writers boot camp if approached correctly. It’s particularly good in the arena of tackling the places you know your writing is weak.
Seriously, lets be honest with ourselves, if you know your writing can be crumby in certain areas, say, suspense or combat moments, you tend to skirt around them in your work. The train of thought is your our original projects are too important to be messed up, but more often than not, dodging things just pulls your story down in different ways.
Fanfiction is a zero pressure zone where you can work out all those kinks.
I’ve been writing for years, have numerous stories, characters and worlds of my own, but I always loop back to the fanfiction when I need a bit of brushing up.
And completely aside from that, it’s just fun, and builds up writing momentum like nobody’s business.
I’m glad that you wrote this, it’s refreshing to see someone else has the same thoughts on Fanfiction writing as I do. The stuff can be writers boot camp if approached correctly. It’s particularly good in the arena of tackling the places you know your writing is weak.
Seriously, lets be honest with ourselves, if you know your writing can be crumby in certain areas, say, suspense or combat moments, you tend to skirt around them in your work. The train of thought is your our original projects are too important to be messed up, but more often than not, dodging things just pulls your story down in different ways.
Fanfiction is a zero pressure zone where you can work out all those kinks.
I’ve been writing for years, have numerous stories, characters and worlds of my own, but I always loop back to the fanfiction when I need a bit of brushing up.
And completely aside from that, it’s just fun, and builds up writing momentum like nobody’s business.
I’m glad you wrote this, it’s refreshing to hear that somebody else has the same thoughts on fan fiction. The stuff can be writers boot camp if approached correctly. It’s particularly valuable in the areas you know your writing is weak.
Let’s face it, when you know some aspect of your writing is crumby, say, writing suspenseful moments or dialogue, you tend to edge around that sort of thing in your work.
The reasoning is your original projects mean too much to you to mess up, but more often than not, dodging around your weak points just brings down your writing anyways.
Fan fiction is a pressure free zone where you can work out all your rough edges, without ever having to worry about messing stuff up.
I’ve been writing for years, have numerous stories, characters, and worlds of my own, but I always loop back to fan fiction when I need a bit of extra practice.
And completely aside from all it’s benefits, it’s just a blast to work with, and builds up writing momentum like few other things do.
Oh, my gosh, you’re totally right. I never even thought to use fanfiction as a zero-pressure environment in which to work on my weak points as a writer. I just…avoided my weak points as much as possible 🤣 In retrospect, that was a bad choice…I mean, my biggest weak point is romance and I was writing Twilight fics! But I suppose my other weak points as a writer were things like dialogue, and plot construction, and…um…writing.
I’m better at writing in general now so it might be time to start pointedly using fanfiction as a targeted boot camp. Because, let’s face it, avoiding romance hasn’t made me better at writing it 😜 What fandoms do you write for?
I love this page! For me, fan fiction is freeing because the characters aren’t mine. I just find different directions to take the characters in. I find fan fiction characters easier to work with as I already know them.
My specialty is POIROT fan fiction, based on the ITV series. I love David Suchet in the role and the screenwriters have, in the estimations of more than a few readers, done more to flesh out the characters than the original author ever thought to. Kinda sad when you think about it. But what Poirot’s apathetic author didn’t take time for has become my playground and I am LOVING it!
And…well… in truth, I utterly ABHOR agatha chrisite! She treated Poirot like the child she thought she wanted but then treated like an unwelcome guest; referring to him as DETESTABLE and a “conceited creep”. I will NOT have a christie novel of any sort in my home because an author who will NOT support their characters deserves ZERO respect from readers. Period.
Where christie couldn’t be bothered to give Poirot a love story, I will give him a tragic love story that will be part of his back story. Kinda like Eric Segal’s Love Story, only the female character is a LOT kinder than the woman in Segal’s version. For his final story, he will get a DECENT FUNERAL, with full Scotland Yard honors, and his killer will be brought to swift and deserved justice. It may sound a bit sadistic of me to say, but I’m very much looking forward to handing out that justice! If you’re familiar with the series at all, the villain will be someone Poirot long thought to be a friend, and bears a strong ‘creative’ resemblance to the author who hates him.
For the creative end of fan-fiction writing, I’m not sure if it makes writers more ambitious or lazy. I guess we have to take the training wheels off sometime, and go it on our own, but the “TEMPLE OF OUR FAMILIAR” (Alice Walker) can get too cozy to leave.
Lol yeah we’ve all had those moments where we realise that our favourite characters haven’t been given the proper treatment. I think a fair bit of fanfiction is just yelling “WHY MUST I DO EVERYTHING MYSELF SOMEONE GET ME A PEN I’M FIXING THIS” 😂🤣 Sounds like you’ve put a lot of time and effort into giving Poirot the love he deserves!