I will admit that I am fairly new to fanfiction. Not that I had never heard the term before, but it wasn't something I ever delved into myself. I heard about it in passing and thought that could be interesting for some but never had the desire to try and write fanfiction. I had enough ideas and characters of my own and that was where I started with my writing. Not that I had anything against those who wrote fanficiton, it just wasn't for me. But I have now tried a tiny bit of fanfiction and while I still prefer my own stories, I did have fun.
Fanfiction can have helpful writing qualities too. Not every story written needs to be done in the name of publication. Since writing is a craft and requires sets of skills that can be developed forever and writing different stories can help with just. I know if I plan to continue writing this one fanfiction story based off Monochrome Factor, it will help me work on writing fight scenes because let's face it, that story requires lots of fighting. And fights are something I am not good at because I rarely write them.
Some stories garner more fanfiction than others. I know Harry Potter fanfiction was rather popular, along with Twilight, Hunger Games, Dr Who, Star Trek and many others. And some even use the opportunity of opening their story world to the readers by going with a creative commons license and straight out inviting others to write stories in the world they created. There are also web sites dedicated entirely to fanfiction.
However, I don't read much fanfiction. The few that I've read have often been for tv shows or books that I know nothing about, which helps in that I can accept whatever the writer has done with the story but on the other hand I don't have the basic knowledge of the world or the characters they didn't create. The ones I have read and did know suffered in quality, especially compared to the book it had gotten the story idea from, which ended up making things worse. And that's a hard part about putting out fanfiction for others to see, having it compared to the original source.
Then there is the whole should fanfiction be published (as in sold for profit type of published), especially after the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey but I won't go into that much. Do a google search on the book title and fanfiction and you'll see a number of people's opinions on that topic.
It's an interesting topic and one I may research more about in the future.
What do you think of Fanfiction?
Do you write Fanfiction or read it?
2 comments:
I've never read ANY fan fiction, but I do think it's cool when people are so inspired by another book that they don't want to let the story die. As an author that would be the ultimate compliment.
Kate - Thanks for commenting on the post. You're right, it would be a fun compliment to get to that stage. That and I kind of want people to dress up as my character for like an anime convention, that would be awesome. But I think I would have to write an anime for that to happen, sadly.
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