Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.
I’ve been there. And, for me, I had to make myself keep writing until I finished the book. Then I had to rewrite those boring parts into something interesting. And it was very hard work. But I learned and became a better writer because of it.
But that isn’t always the best answer for every writer at every time. This was a very young writer. And I sensed that this young man was extremely discouraged. And I didn’t want him to get burned out and quit just yet. Yes, writing is really hard work! But it should also be fun. And sometimes young people put way too much pressure on themselves to be perfect before they’ve been terrible. And we all have to start out at terrible so we have somewhere to grow from.
So I suggested he try writing some fan fiction. He hadn’t heard of fan fiction, so I had to explain it. But I hoped that fan fiction might be a little less daunting for him to tackle at his age and that it might get him excited about writing.
Fan fiction is huge. I’ve never written it. But there are tons of fan fiction communities out there for just about any famous story. These are places where people can go and read stories written by fans or post their own stories that they’ve written in their favorite author’s storyworld and have them read by fan fiction, well, fans.
For example, click here to visit HarryPotterFanFiction.com. This site has over 35,000 authors writing Harry Potter fan fiction. That’s a lot of authors. Is it legal? Sure. You can’t publish and sell your book. That’s illegal. But fan fiction sites are just for fun. Now, there have been authors out there who started in fan fiction, wrote complete novels, then changed them so that they were unique and sold them to traditional publishers. Cassandra Clare did that with her City of Ashes story. Other authors have dabbled in fan fiction. Meg Cabot wrote fan fiction as a teen. And author R.J. Anderson posts her fan fiction stories on her website!
Why do people do this?
1. It’s fun.
2. Fan fiction has an established cast and storyworld. You don’t have to explain everything to the readers because everyone already knows how the world works. They already know the characters and love them. All you have to do is write.
3. There are readers out there already. You don’t have to convince readers to be interested in your subject matter. That work has already been done. You can just write and readers will read.
How can fan fiction help you improve your writing craft?
1. It gets your creativity going. You already love these characters. You already love the world they live in. All you have to do is send them on another adventure. You can come up with your own episodes. Think about some of the minor characters in the series, bring them back and start new plot threads. The possibilities are endless.
2. It lets you write the story the way YOU wished it would have gone. This makes you a stronger writer as you analyze plot holes and character behaviors that didn’t seem believable and come up with a way to fix them.
3. There are huge fan fiction communities out there with very honest readers who will give you feedback on your writing. This can hurt. But it also can be invaluable to helping you see where your writing needs improvement.
One thing to keep in mind.
If your dream is to be a published author, don’t get lost in fan fiction forever. Come back to us. Come back to your original ideas and do the hard work of creating your own completely unique story. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll have readers writing fan fiction about your characters.
Have you ever written fan fiction? If so, tell us about it. How did it help you grow as a writer? And if you’ve never written fan fiction, what storyworld would you write in if you had the time? I think I’d write about Doctor Who.