249: From Fanfiction to Just Fiction

[Vanessa Cohen]

From Fanfiction to Just Fiction

It's a well-known fact that fanfiction lets you play with the raw materials of your favorite videogame or TV series. But did you know it can also provide excellent practice for aspiring fiction authors? Vanessa Cohen details how fanfiction made her a better writer.

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[Onyx Oblivion]

I recall when I first discovered the existence of fanfiction. It was indeed one of those truly appalling pieces you mentioned at the end...But I saw the potential right away!

Indeed, practice is practice, even if it is fanfiction. They can start out horrid, and evolve into something good as the writer gains experience.

 

[Yvl9921]

I just really wish my one friend would get this already. She's written dozens of actually decent fanfics but refuses to go into actual professional writing because she doesn't think she can do it.

 

[Delock]

I actually do the potential in fanfiction. It's a great starting point for most writers, since it forces the writer to work with several different personalities that are already set (atleast good writers will do this. Sometimes you just get people that decide that all they want is the body of that character and throw away the mind/soul of them making them just a name in the story). If they want to fit a character in there, they have to somehow create a background that fits with the story, and then have to have the character accept them in a realistic manner (and this method will vary from character to character and from world to world, meaning you do have to still be flexible). It's great to see it when it comes out right (I really can't ever discount the genre because two of my favorite webcomics, Last Days of FOXHOUND and Bob and George, were technically fanfictions, and good examples of both trying to fill in the gaps before waiting for the sequel, putting your own spin on characters who didn't get fleshed out, adding original characters, and creating an entirely new story).

However, all that being said, some fanfiction just doesn't need to be. I understand that worlds created in mediums such as books, movies, and games are fun places to get caught up in, and I myself have though up stories in those places when the real story ends, but a lot of them I know enough to realize that they just don't work or that the story ended properly and it doesn't need anything else (I'm also against very unnecessary sequels *cough*Dawn of the New World*cough*). My point here is just like with regular stories, work with the idea for a bit to see if anything good comes of it before you decide that it is entirely worthy of being added to the every growing library of the internet, because if you work to only create one good work rather than 12 quick ones that you thought up instantly and didn't even really flesh out, you'll gain more from it.

 

[DreadfulSorry]

Haha, my own FF VIII fanfic has also spawned a completely original work! Though it changed media (from prose to comic-form) I'm still taking a lot of my ideas from the fanfic I created and building from there.

 

[Tehlanna TPX]

I had a Phantasy Star 4 fanfic when I was in 5th grade. Indeed, what you wrote about your FF fanfic brings back memories....but oh god I can't even look at that old story. It burns the eyes, with it's trite, juvenile romance and terrible, shallow characters .

A great article, though. We should never be ashamed at what kick starts our imagination. A muse is a muse... is a muse .

 

[RJ Dalton]

Haha, my own FF VIII fanfic has also spawned a completely original work!

Same here. Well, not exactly. And it wasn't Final Fantasy. I made a habit of never writing fanfiction for anything I liked, instead writing for fandoms I hated, but saw interesting ideas in. I wrote two fanfics for Pokemon and one for an obscure comic called The Witch Girls (I'd stumbled across a website that featured character bios a long time ago and thought they were interesting, bought the comic and found it to be the biggest letdown I've ever experienced and it's jaded me for life).
I won't say they were the best things I ever wrote, because I was in high school and I didn't know how to write back then, but I learned a lot from those experiences.

And some of the characters were interesting enough that I later incorporated them into other stories. In fact, some of the major elements of my story multiverse came out of these fics.

 

[Tidenburg]

That was a really great article.

On the whole negative attitudes against fan-fiction, I find that when the author creates entirely new characters, but still sets them in the same universe, they will get a lot more respect for their work.

I find that fictions about already-established characters tend to recycle and over-use their funny traits and over-emphasise key parts of their personality to the point that they devolve back into flat gag-despensers because the writer forgets to focus on the little nuances that made them great in the first place.

 

[LoorTheDarkElf]

Fanfiction turly is a portal into the original world, for those who wish to tread that path. When I first started fanfiction, it was in Jak and Daxter (My Inuyasha fic before that doesn't count. I only wrote it cause a friend told me to, and fanfiction forgot it the second I deleted it) and my whole reason for writing was to disprove the Mary Sue in a romance story. Granted it was a nearly impossible task and my my SI OC Loor essentially useless, but it was a great amount of fun and let me get into writing personalities and playing with interaction. My mother, who had played some of Jak and Daxter and read each chapter as I finished it, actually came to me after a particular set and asked just how much diologue was taken from the game in that particular chapter. Turns out, none of it! I had just managed writing Daxter well enough that it sounded like it could have been canon.

Learning characters is a huge advantage when it comes to creating your own. When you've already played with a fully fleshed out creature, it's easier to create. But currently, I'm noting a problem with fanfiction that is forcing me into original work.

I have a thing for SI fanfiction. The OC Loor is in every one of my stories, and since she's based off of me I've seen no reason to change her name fic to fic. As I left Jak and Daxter and entered the terrifying world of Naruto (And it is terrifying. I never even watched the whole serise, and dear GOD they're all plot nazis.) my work grew more and more original. As Loor and her sister-sidekick Fury entered the world, several peices grew tweaked and changed as I re-wrote them into my brain's lines of understanding. A grand total of 3 reviwers are still following the story, loving each fresh and new turn of events, down from the 20 some I started with.

But the problem is I just can't work within some of the combines of the Naruto world, or should I say the lack there of? Some events within the story just blew my mind when I actually examined them, realizing none of it made any sense what so ever. When I changed things to make them sit with some proper sense, I lost readers. As I changed the world to obey simple laws of logic and physics (Oh god, physics) I could almost hear the shouts of dishelved fans telling me that's just not how it worked. Now, nearing the end of my fanfic and likely my entier fanfic career, I've come to realize I can only work in a world of my own making if I want things to make any bloody sense.

But of course, I think that's a jounry quite a few authors have made in fanfiction. I've lost so many fans to my originality, and you know what? I'm okay with it.

Hopefully now the original story I attempted to write at 13 will blow them all away after 5 years of practice.

 

[EnigmaHarper]

As a wanna-be writer myself (yeah, I know) I have written a few fanfictions in my time. The weird thing was I could never finish a story before I wrote my first fanfic. They just kept going on and on and on and never ending. Then I ventured into fanfic and found it so easy to write. I didn't have to worry about characters, other than the one I inserted into the premade environment, and the story practically wrote itself. After awhile I just found it so much easier to finish my own stories.

If you are interested in reading my fic (shameless plug) I'm on fanfiction.net. Search for EnigmaHarper. I have 2 stories published.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I had a Phantasy Star 4 fanfic when I was in 5th grade. Indeed, what you wrote about your FF fanfic brings back memories....but oh god I can't even look at that old story. It burns the eyes, with it's trite, juvenile romance and terrible, shallow characters .

A great article, though. We should never be ashamed at what kick starts our imagination. A muse is a muse... is a muse .

That is one of my all time favorite RPGs.
I'm surprised I didn't write any fanfic for it myself at that age. It was very engrossing.

I can see some merit in the practice department but one of the most entertaining things about writing fiction is making up realistic and believable characters. This can also be quite a challenge, so while it might be good practice in one regard it is writing with a crutch in regards to development of characters and/or setting.

 

[Tehlanna TPX]

I had a Phantasy Star 4 fanfic when I was in 5th grade. Indeed, what you wrote about your FF fanfic brings back memories....but oh god I can't even look at that old story. It burns the eyes, with it's trite, juvenile romance and terrible, shallow characters .

A great article, though. We should never be ashamed at what kick starts our imagination. A muse is a muse... is a muse .

That is one of my all time favorite RPGs.
I'm surprised I didn't write any fanfic for it myself at that age. It was very engrossing.

I can see some merit in the practice department but one of the most entertaining things about writing fiction is making up realistic and believable characters. This can also be quite a challenge, so while it might be good practice in one regard it is writing with a crutch in regards to development of characters and/or setting.

Yes! It is a very great practice tool. I still employ it, at times, when I'm stuck on a certain aspect of my writing. I think it'd be great in, like, Jr High or High School English as well. Get the kids involved by employing stuff they like!

 

[GonzoGamer]

I had a Phantasy Star 4 fanfic when I was in 5th grade. Indeed, what you wrote about your FF fanfic brings back memories....but oh god I can't even look at that old story. It burns the eyes, with it's trite, juvenile romance and terrible, shallow characters .

A great article, though. We should never be ashamed at what kick starts our imagination. A muse is a muse... is a muse .

That is one of my all time favorite RPGs.
I'm surprised I didn't write any fanfic for it myself at that age. It was very engrossing.

I can see some merit in the practice department but one of the most entertaining things about writing fiction is making up realistic and believable characters. This can also be quite a challenge, so while it might be good practice in one regard it is writing with a crutch in regards to development of characters and/or setting.

Yes! It is a very great practice tool. I still employ it, at times, when I'm stuck on a certain aspect of my writing. I think it'd be great in, like, Jr High or High School English as well. Get the kids involved by employing stuff they like!

Right. It's just that this practice needs to be supplemented with role-play (paper and pen RPGs are good) or some other character development practice.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

Finally...I began writing from fanfiction!

I learn so much from plot or how to make a character think, is that I began to really get serious about it.

 

[secretshadow90]

This article is so true. I started writing fanfiction in high school for Yu-Gi-Oh! because, well, I had read the manga and watched all the anime and wanted to reconcile the differences/fix the stupid (ie drop two of the seasons). Then I started adding OCs. I'm still working on the OCs and my own additions to the universe to this day. It practically is it's own original work, and will be with some more expansion. It's fun to go back to them during little lulls in my college schedule. Being a Literature major mean research papers, not creative writing as I had hoped, so taking a break from the soul-crushing assignments to my own little fantasy land is such a relief. These characters have even inspired other completely unrelated characters and stories. I've noticed a increase in skill of my creative writing as well as my imagination, which definitely helps when I roleplay with my friends. And to think it all started with a fanfiction.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

I've had similar experiences. Fan fiction is one of the ways I started to develop my writing skills and find my own voice. That's probably why I still hold onto some of those old stories. Not because they're good - most of them are pretty crap. But they were the cradle from which my style emerged, and I wouldn't be where I am now without them.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

As someone interested in wanting to try his hand in fan fiction precisely for the purpose of using it as a springboard to writing real fiction, I would like to thank you for this article. It was both very helpful and informative.

However, I sometimes wonder if writers (and people in general) bother themselves too much with the notion of "Mary Sue/Marty Stu" characters. I mean, how people perceive fiction is entirely subjective. What is incredible and deep for one is a pathetic excuse of a story for another. Likewise, one may perceive a certain character as a "Mary Sue" character while another may not. Even tests that are made to determine "Mary Sue" characters are entirely subjective in their premise.

This is not to say that people should intentionally write characters as flawless and whatnot. But real life people start as blank slates and only gain qualities and flaws as they grow. If this holds true for characters as well, is it really worth creating characters in a certain way for the sake of avoiding what others may think makes a bad character? Doesn't one run the risk of alienating the character from the rest of the plot by doing so?

 

[WinceAndRepeat]

I have a great idea for an original work. Howbout a group of mages who are like JEDI mages right? One is like the "serious" guy, the other guy is the "funny" guy (maybe southern accent?) and there is this girl right and she's like the leader girl but you don't want to giver any discernible personality traits. Let's stick to 1 dimensional archetypes. Different accents is more than enough to add depth

. At some point, before you know anything about this character, she sacrifices herself so the other guy goes "NOOOO" so that makes the reader feel sad right? So then there's this renegade jedi mage, and she has FIRE powers and has a snappy zinger to rebut every line every character has because she puts them in their place because she's one step ahead of everyone! Her flaw (i notice you think flaws are important) is that she's just too cool for everyone. (maybe her name can start with the same letter as yours and she can physically resemble you a lot too)

Oh yeah you should definitely have these Jedi(ish) guys introduced in a scene and conflict that has nothing to do with the main plot so they can vogue with their weapons for a while. They should never be in any real danger nor should any tension be built until the girl sacrifices herself (again, very important that we know nothing about her when this happens.)

Oh right. Almost forgot. You should play Bioshock and then get the very original idea to get a huge fangirl boner for it and completely rip it off in tone and style (but done poorly of course. a HUGE, shallow contrivance is a must)

It's so good to know you stay AWAY from Mary-Sues and understand the gamut of human emotions and interactions so well. I'm sure you're a productive, contributing member of society who gets out plenty and can afford to buy yourself all the video games you play. You're an inspiration to us all.

 

[Shjade]

Ah, fanfiction. I remember trying to write fanfiction a couple of times, but I couldn't really get into it. I enjoyed planning out the story, but when it actually came to writing it...I'm not very comfortable writing other people's characters as opposed to ones I've created myself. I don't know what it is, but it makes me squirm a bit.

The one instance where I actually got something on paper came after listing various ideas for "what if" scenarios, which is the kind of fanfiction that actually appeals to me to write. Specifically, it was for Cowboy Bebop, the what if being, "What if Faye had never met Spike in that casino?" I went down a brief outline of chapters to parallel the actual series and tried to brainstorm how the circumstances would be altered if the boys had been on their own and Faye had been doing her own thing without the Bebop around to bail her out, complete with Faye meeting the Feng Shui girl (whose name I've forgotten) and having a bit of a runaround with her as the girl can tell Faye isn't meant to be there - the story's not what it was supposed to be - and she wanted to know why.

Only wrote the first chapter of it, but it was fun just trying to figure out how the story might have progressed if it had been two divergent paths rather than one combined group. Interesting exercise even if it bore no fruit.