I personally think it's a fun project. If you like Star Wars but felt that Anakin should have, say, called himself Darth Xader instead of Darth Vader, you can write a funny AU where Darth Xader exists or whatever. But not for serious writing. EXAMPLE:I wrote a CHERUB Fanfiction where all of the criminals James' had caught figured out he was the spy and came after him while he was at university. It was fun doing all that and imagining what James would do, but it was silly and I don't regard it as real work.
Writing fanfic was fun, but I took the writing itself very seriously. I sweat bullets over every story to make it the best I could, including using crit groups and betas.
I have only wrote it once but I do take it seriously. I think a good fan fiction should do the original characters justice or else I just lose interest it.
I think it's fine for writing practice. If folks want to do it for fun, more power to them. Me, personally -- I've never seen the appeal. I like making my own characters.
a waste of aspiring writers' writing time and not worth wasting any of my reading time on it... if done just for a hobby, as the french say, 'chacun à son goût!'...
Have to disagree strongly with this. I know more than one now-published author who never would have written a word if it weren't for fanfic. It gives a safe environment to learn writing techniques, to try out things, to discover how one writes, to build one's confidence - it definitely does not have to be a waste of time.
If it is written in the First Person, fan fiction can be most amusing: "Granddad was a Punkah, working in Bombay. Mother was a water powered clockwork Egyptian cooler, and Dad was a steampunk device in London. I was the first in our family to be electrified. Oh, the stories I could tell, looking down from the high ceiling of this western saloon! Like the time Wyatt Earp shot off one of my paddles on a dare. . ."
I like fanfic, it's fun to read as long as the person who writes the characters well. It's also good practice for writing in general in terms of writing plot and pacing your story. I can't see myself writing it, seeing as I prefer playing with original characters I made rather than pre-existing ones :3
Some fanfiction is just for fun. But there are some serious stories out there that have as much merit as any short story. I mean if a fanfic can have the same emotional impact as any short story or novel, I honestly see no difference aside from having to follow character canon. There's no rule saying a fanfiction has to be full of bad grammar or reused garbage. If I wrote about Spider-Man saving a city and then my own created hero saving a city.. there's no difference except the character.
I only write fanfics to BREAK character canon. That's my only inspiration for putting the effort into it. "What if so and so wasn't a mousey coward, or Mr X wasn't the good guy." Makes things interesting.
Good (great, even) for practice, for those who write it. I can't make myself read fanfic, though, as I don't find it interesting at all as a reader.
Actually, I didn't read a lot of fanfic even in the fandom I wrote in, mainly because there were only a handful of authors who could actually write But I waited eagerly for their next story!
I started several requests that have been ongoing for like 3 years now, I just can't get myself to finish them and just want to quit... but then I feel bad b/c I promised to write them. Ugh lol
I think it's easy to be dismissive of it. A question often asked is where writers find their inspiration from. Creativity varies from individual to individual, and in my opinion anything that drives a person to put pen to paper is no bad thing. It's not uncommon for people who start out writing fan-fiction to realise that they lack the necessary skills to give form to their thoughts, and this in turn forces them to view what they have written in a more objective light and seek help. Even in classical music, it's not uncommon to to see one composer work within the constraints of another, providing the listener with variations to a theme. Many published authors dislike fan-fiction intensely. I can understand their position to a degree but another thought occurs to me. The reader has handed over their cash and in turn the characters and worlds have insinuated themselves into their being. Is it so wrong for them to take the ideas and run with them? It might not be creativity at its most basic level but I see still value in it, and for as long as they don't try and pass off the ideas, themes etc as their own creation, personally, I don't have a problem with that. I lifted my guitar this morning and sat down to play as I always do. I went through my scales and arpeggios, before randomly settling on playing Satie's Gnossiene No. 1. I played it the first time, note for note, the way the sheet music espouses. But, my attention started wondering as I looked out my window. It's a beautiful sunny day and the tone of of piece suddenly struck me as more sombre than my mental state allowed for, so I picked up the pace, tweaked it here and there, and settled into a rendition of my own choosing. I would like to think that Satie, were he alive to hear me, would be flattered not affronted to hear me play, knowing that his work inspired and moved me into finding my own expression within it.
Not my thing to write, but I don't see anything wrong with it as practice, and on the (rare, in my experience) times it's done well it can be entertaining to read. Having a world and characters pre-built lets you focus all your attention on plotting and consistency, which are important skills to learn. I think the best one I've read is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which as well as being a fun and occasionally piss-taking fanfic is also a primer on some fun stuff from psychology, economics and physics. You could do that in a completely original universe, but it's a lot easier when the audience has some prior familiarity with the world and the characters.
Aw, not very fond of it. Because I like to put some creative effort on it, like new characters and places, but the reader wants to read about the established characters. You know what's fun? Pokémon fanfics. Because you can set it in your own universe, but where Pokémon exists, and you can give each monster a different personality. You don't even have to use existing characters. I think it's very difficult to write fanfic because you need to be very knowledgeable about the author's works to write something believable. I completely understand why some authors hate fanfiction.
When I was a kid, me and my friend wrote Harry Potter fan-fics for each other as X-Mas presents. That's the only time I ever wrote fan-fic. Since one can practice writing with an original story as well, I haven't really felt an urge to continue the stories of my favorite TV shows, novels, or movies nowadays. I don't read any fan-fic either. That being said, I think it's cool that people write it. Writing is an awesome hobby, and I've heard it's also a fun way to socialize over the internet and meet like-minded people. Horses for courses and all that.
Heck, half the time when I write a fanfic, it's because I want to know what happens next and the author didn't tell me, or I want to know what would have happened if "This" happened, or if "that" character didn't do that certain thing. It's as much an exercise in the butterfly effect as anything else sometimes.
The first time I wrote fanfic I was about 10 and I'm not sure the term was even coined. I wrote a Star Wars story. I have one piece of fanfic on my desktop, its 'fun' writing for me, something I like doing and will never show to another living soul! But like KaTrian said, writing's a great hobby, and fanfic's just another way for people to write, to practice the skill and put it out there for review. It has its place like any other genre of writing, and it fun. It also has a community spirit, so I can see why people like it; writing can be very lonely.
I've written a little fanfic in my time (working on a great one right now) but I've only really read one that I thought was any good. Then again, I was like, eight, and the grammatical mistakes flew over my head, but the story was still excellent with compelling OCs, even if a bit over the top for the established universe/canon.
I think my publisher and many of the reviewers who have given my original novel 4 and 5 star reviews would beg to differ with you on that, as would I. I never wrote completed a single piece of original fiction before writing it - I went from 3 years of writing nothing but fanfic to penning Under The Knife, and more than one reviewer has mentioned great surprise that UTK was my debut novel. Likely that is because I was coming off of writing over 30 fanfics, some novella or novel length. It was anything but a waste of time for me, as I would have never become a published author without having had that experience. ETA: To clarify, I have written about half a chapter on around a dozen different plot bunnies but never progressed beyond that point.
I think it is a lazy way to write, as you have got all the base core elements from someone else. But considering some of the popular stories put out these days readers don't mind the laziness. Just an opinion.
It can be a learning experience, but you can get the same learning experience from spending three years writing original fiction as well.
I always found the idea of coming up with everything from scratch to be too overwhelming for me to produce anything more than a half a chapter of anything I started. By having many elements already in place - character names, descriptions, setting, backstory, etc. - it wasn't nearly as daunting a task. I refer to it as my "writing with training wheels" phase. I'm glad that there are a lot of people out there who can come up with everything they need to tell a story from their own brain, but I wasn't one of them originally. As I started to create my own OC's and deviate from show cannon more dramatically in my fanfic, I developed the skills needed to write a decent original novel worthy of publisher acceptance. It may not be the journey everyone should or will take, but I'd have never written my novel otherwise.
