Fanfiction - Your thoughts

[SonofaJohannes]

I like fanfiction. You get a fun and interesting story, but with characters you already know and love! Sure, some are pretty badly written, but quite a few aren't. I even tried writing my own, but I'm pretty sure it falls under the "pretty badly written" category. I used to read fanfiction quite a lot in my youth, but lately I haven't read it at all as I have moved over to doujins. Still, love the concept, think it's great writing practice.

 

[Angie7F]

I enjoy them.
I like to see that people share the same ideas for a spin off.
Also, anime like Maoyu are originally fan fiction. So I think everyone should be given a shot at trying to write fan fiction.

 

[viking97]

Basically the same as any other fiction, only a little easier because a setting and some characters are already there for you. I've written some in my time, (never did anything with it, just wrote it to write it) and read some in my time as well. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. All that I can really say.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

I will say It simply.

95% is complete worthless crap stupid or just plain weird.
2% is pandering that everyone will praise.
and only about 3% of it is actually good.

I hope I'm in that 3%...or at least I was back in the day. I've had a LOT of extended universe fare written based on my work.

I think fanfiction can actually be useful for people who want to explore their creative side by working with something they are comfortable and familiar with. Heck...I never really liked writing in high school and college (and I have the C average in my English classes to prove it), but when I learned about fanfiction I suddenly developed a love of writing. I was actually considering sending in an idea to use fanfiction as a means to get kids to love writing and thus cut down on the illiteracy rate by giving them something they want to write about.

Just my two cents on the matter.

 

[Latinidiot]

I dislike most of it. I understand how it makes people better writers by giving them something existing to work with, but I will never seek it out, I am not a moulder of young minds.

 

[FoxKitsune]

I spent far too many years of my life writing fanfiction, and sometime in the next few months I hope to release my first original eBook. Honestly, that's my only problem with fanfiction- that too many talented writers I know (including me, obviously ;-) ) spend their time on energy on that rather than something they can call truly theirs.

That said, I've read some fantastic fanfiction. Disliking the medium/ genre because there can be some bad examples of it is like disliking all movies based on some of the worst ones you have ever seen. Sure, we have to put up with more and more Saws, and Fast and furious' (OBJECTIVE OPINION SHIELD), but we occasionally get a Scott Pilgrim versus the world- and that, right there, that makes fanfiction worthwhile.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There're too many good books around for me to waste my time with fucking fanfiction.