Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Eh, I think fanfic is arguably fiction, although admittedly not one you can or should profit from.
I think it equals reading - and as a side bar itself, I know a there are a growing number of print authors who started with fanfic.  I know this because I know *counts on fingers* 6, and that’s just within my circle of internet acquaintance.

The appeal of fanfic?  Too narrow a question imo.  Do you mean as a reader or a writer?
Fanfic means many things to many people.  Don’t tell me you’ve never put down a book going “Argh! No! It can’t end like that!” and gone about fixing it in your head?  Some people want to know more about side characters.  What about this unanswered question? What happened next?  What if you changed x element? Some people just want to know more.  Sometimes, there are elements crying out to be corrected in the plot and fan fic is the reader response to that.  Some people just like smut with an easy character ‘hook’ and familiar element.
Writers of fan fic can have those and many other reasons.  It’s a good field for learners and a way for them to get validation and readership.  It’s free for the price of an internet connection. 
It’s many things to many people.  My 2p anyway.

But dude, at what point does fanfic start earning some modicum of respect?

When more men are doing it.  It will never earn respect as long as it is primarily a femal endeavor, IMO.

FEMALE endeavor, of course.

Sometimes I wish everyone would just the shut the hell up already. Especially all these doomsday experts when it comes to literacy and youth and the decline of civilization. Yeah, test scores are falling and all this other bad stuff—we know! It’s been pointed out to us! Stop regurtitating the available information and point out something we can do about it. Or better yet, go out there and do something yourself.

AND STOP BLAMING THE INTERNET FOR EVERYTHING.

And as for fan fiction; it’s harmless. If she loves to write, it might actually develop into something some day.

Of course fanfic is fiction.  The major problem with fanfic is that it’s not done with any permission from the original creator of the concept, because honestly, all those Star Wars books out there by a zillion different authors are really just fanfic that’s been condoned by the powers and that’s called fiction as well. 

I think one of the other problems with people seeing fanfic as ‘real fiction’ is that it’s primarily done by younger people and, like anything else on the internet, it takes a whole lot of wading through the crap to find an of the good stuff.  There is so much bad fanfic out there because there’s no publishing process and sites like fanfiction.net are essentailly huge slush piles.

I agree with FD though, sometimes as a reader you dislike the ending or just want to read more about your favorite characters and fanfic gives you a chance to do that.  Plus I think it can really stimulate creativity, especially in kids who wouldn’t otherwise be writing.  It gives people a way to test themselves without getting that ego crushing rejection letter and insteaed focus on peer responses to help learn to write. 

Like any popular fiction, its all in good fun and, in my opinion, its a great way to get started.

I would have to agree with FD.  Fanfiction is a way to explore side stories, elaborate on scenes, see action from another point of view or try to get those two characters, you know the ones where they tip toe around each other, to finally get together.  The reasons why people write them and the readers who read them are varied, but they are the same as anyone who writes and reads any story in the first place.

Also, it provides a great way for a new writer to get dive in.  Writing is daunting, but if you can use a familiar world you really enjoy as a foundation, some of the pressure of “what the hell am I suppose to write about!” is released. 

It is amazing when you look at some of these works, kids and adults alike, have created complex and engaging pieces, some are novels length.  Anything that promotes that is a great thing in my book and deserves a bit more respect.

Why is it always internet or video games or some horrible new fangled technology to blame for the obvious failure of an education system no one wants to fund?

//Just saying

The appeal of fanfic?  Too narrow a question imo.  Do you mean as a reader or a writer?
Fanfic means many things to many people.  Don’t tell me you’ve never put down a book going “Argh! No! It can’t end like that!” and gone about fixing it in your head?  Some people want to know more about side characters.  What about this unanswered question? What happened next?  What if you changed x element? Some people just want to know more.  Sometimes, there are elements crying out to be corrected in the plot and fan fic is the reader response to that.  Some people just like smut with an easy character ‘hook’ and familiar element.

ABSOLUTELY! That’s it in a nutshell, for me—it’s taking a scene you hated and “fixing” it, or exploring how certain characters would interact together—oh, nevermind, just what FD said.

This isn’t worded very well, but: To me, fanfic basically takes what is dictated to me as a passive, nonreciprocal audience experience and makes it active and reciprocal—now instead of just sitting there watching a story unfold, I’m part of the storytelling. Writers and creators—and other readers and audiences, actually—who think that fanfic is trespassing and wrong seem to me to be saying that reading someone else’s story or watching soemone else’s show is a one-way street only, and the viewer/reader is only allowed to passively sit there and have a story and characters pressed on to them, in a way, but are not allowed to be a part of it, to be NOT passive—does that make any sense? I think fanfic is great. And “natural”—people naturally react to the things they see and hear, and are automatically a part of that storytelling process. They become a part of the story. Audiences are not passive, they are an active part of the relationship, and not all the lawsuits in the world will change that.

That’s what fiction and movies and all are to me: a dialogue between the writer and the reader. And fanfiction is a continuation of that dialogue, where the reader is now responding in a public forum, where before perhaps it had been private. It continues the conversation between show and audience. I love it.

Personally I’m ambivalent about fanfic—on the one hand, it can be a useful way for budding writers to find their creative voice, but on the other it can easily become a crutch for lazy writers who can’t be bothered to go through the whole process of world-building on their own.  I don’t write it myself; I find it far more rewarding to create my own characters and settings than to recycle someone else’s, but I can understand how the love of a particular fictional world could prompt a reader to continue a story that ends far sooner than (s)he would like it to, or to re-write an unsatisfying ending.

Copyright is an issue.  As long as you keep your fanfic to yourself and your friends (or write about a character who is in the public domain) and don’t attempt to profit off it, fine.  Some time ago, there was a discussion on another board I frequent regarding a woman who wrote an unlicensed Star Trek novel, self-published it and put it up for sale on Amazon.  I’m sure the majority of fanfic writers know enough not to go that far, but I know that some published writers, such as Jim Butcher, have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding fanfic in order to forestall any nasty legal wrangling.

Fanfic has been around a lot longer than the Internet;  WM Thackeray hated the end of Ivanhoe so much that he wrote an alternate ending in which Ivanhoe dumped Rowena and married Rebecca.  As to when it becomes respectable, it’s hard to say.  I should think that being licensed (as with Star Trek fiction) and published confers plenty of respectability.  Alan Gordon’s Fool’s Guild series of mystery novels, which I love, are essentially Shakespeare fanfic; and Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell novels have won awards, I believe.  However, I don’t know at what point those books cease to be fanfic and become something else—a “re-imagining”, perhaps.

I’ve ran into some really crappy fanfic but it was written by adults who just weren’t good writers.  I don’t look for it or actively read it, but I do know about communities who critique it—sometimes brutally.  So it may result in writers who learn to sharpen their narrative skills and who have a thicker skin. 

Fortunately, lagiarism seems to be roundly excoriated.  Accusations have followed at least one YA from fan fic into her professional writing.

I think the difference between fanfic and franchise novels is that the franchise novels (should) go through a tougher editorial process.  The franchise novels are written by professional writers with track records.

In the old mimeograph and snail mail days some authors with a professional career tended to keep their fanfic activities under wraps for fear of harming their career.  .

Well…a lot of fanfiction is arguably insane—pairings of characters who would never go together (Snape and Lupin, for example), as well as some pretty inane situations. Some of this can be fun to read and amusing, especially when someone really works at making a Mary Sue super-cool and awesome.

And then you get someone who genuinely wants to continue the story or explore a situation, and they do their damnedest to make a worthy contribution to the world of the story and a lasting impression on the readers.

I think the main thing I wonder about is whether it’s a different sort of literacy: not better, or worse, just different.
My eldest daughter would, if she’s in, spend her evenings having conversations with several of her friends over MSN as she watches TV.
The way she uses language in those written exchanges is just different from any way I ever use language. Very informal, minimal capitalisation or punctuation, lots of in-jokes, much abbreviation. She can write ‘correctly’ easily - so it’s not that she’s unaware of the conventions - just that those conventions don’t apply to that medium.
So if you tested for literacy, you’d have to test using a different standard because: “i know!!! *winks*” might be perfectly correct English in that setting.
(I always wonder whether there will be a sudden shift in what’s acceptable to reflect that generation’s usage - if twenty years down the road, they’ll be teaching the correct use of ‘*——*’ in schools.)

As for fanfiction, I don’t read a lot, but the good stuff is as good as published fiction. I’d guess as you get more and more really good writers coming out of fanfiction to write their own stuff, their success will earn fanfic more respect.

Hell, I *still* write fanfic, though admittedly not as much as I’d like since publishable writing takes a lot of my time.  For me, fanfic is about fun, period.  It’s easy (the characters and settings and minor players are already there and everyone knows who they are) and though I write the much-maligned RPF (real person fic), there’s still a lot less work to be done than when writing an original story.  Which makes it relaxing for me and something to do when I want to write but want something a bit easier, something comfortable and familiar.

Fanfic can be a great tool for a young writer.  Like story-telling with training wheels.  It’s not the same as writing original fic, but it’s a good start, I think.  And if a fanfic writer wants to branch out and is looking to write for a career, well, they probably are already aware that fanfic does not equal the much more difficult to write original fiction.

I love it.  I’ll probably always write it.  I don’t tend to share it online anymore, it’s purely for my own entertainment and that of a few close friends who will, for whatever reason lol, read a grocery list if I wrote it.  All I know is when I’ve had a long day of edits, promotion, working my ass off to create a 3D, alive world and inhabitants in my current WIP, there’s little I like more than putting aside the professional side of writing and indulging in the easy comfort of writing a PWP with a friend.  :)

In response to EW’s assertion that fanfic can be a crutch for lazy writers, I think that this claim makes some invalid assumptions about the reasons that people write fanfic and participate in fan communities.  Many fanfic writers have little-to-no aspirations towards being professional writers.  They enjoy telling stories.  They enjoy participating actively in fan communities.  They write for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with honing any kind of craft, save perhaps the craft of fanfic writing.

There is a growing community of scholars interrogating fanfic and fan cultures in an attempt to move the field past Henry Jenkins and his Textual Poachers (which, while still useful, is in many ways a very dated work at this point).  The approaches range from critiques of individual texts and bodies of work within fandoms, to ethnographies of fan interactions through the medium of fanfic, to discussions about copyright laws and issues of what constitutes a “transformative work”, particularly from the perspective that fanfic writers are not economically profiting from their works.

One of the most interesting developments to come out of fandom recently is the creation of the OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works), which seeks to provide an open and safe forum for fan activities as well as a venue for academic fans.  The inaugural edition of their peer-reviewed academic journal is coming out in September 2008.  People who are interested can find out more here: http://www.transformativeworks.org/

I think my one reservation about FanFic is the obvious one: no one’s editing it, so its educational value is somewhat diminished because, as many others mention, it’s written by young people and it’s ridiculous to try and wade through all the crap. I would argue that FanFic alone—that is, if the “whippersnapper” is not reading much else—would be a terrible model to enhance or reinforce English writing & reading skills. However, you can’t argue against the creativity side of the coin.

I say this, by the way, as a good writer myself who spent much of her 13th year writing and reading—brace yourselves—Horatio Hornblower FanFic on the A&E;message boards. (Didn’t know it exists? Oh. My. God. Yes. Scary.) So while my creative life was flourishing, I couldn’t have gotten so much out of it if I wasn’t an otherwise avid reader, and an educated, discerning one, to be able to look at most of what I was reading and understand that it was (and why it was) crap.

The “doomsday” prophesies about reading are, to me, not nearly as scary as the observable fact that no one can bloody WRITE in this country. Of course, the two are intertwined like… I dunno, [insert some romance cliche here].

*I should have added that not all FanFic is written by young people (of course) and that even if it was, not all young people are bad writers (of course). And the lack of fluent, capable writers is not limited to FanFic or unpublished stuff (of course).

Defensive, nervous disclaimer over.

The only way to learn to write well is to keep writing. Fanfic provides an excellent workshop environment if the writer is willing to take advantage of it, which is often not the case. A lot of writers, of various levels of experience, can’t be bothered to even learn how to construct a sentence and it’s very discouraging to those of us who take language seriously.

As for myself, I’ve been writing fanfic since 1996 (earlier offline—I was making up stories about Star Wars when it first came out) and as of last year I’m published. I know, despite years of writing for myself and for creative writing classes, that without the experience of writing for an audience I would not be the writer I am now.

The original fiction gets the lion’s share of my energy now but I still write fanfic. It’s like stretching before going for a run.

As for its continuing allure, I agree with those who said it’s a way for the audience to participate. We’re storytellers by nature, and we want to contribute to the story and participate in it, not just be fed it passively. And you know you’ve touched somebody when they want to be a part of your creation, not just an observer.

Oddly enough fanfic is a lot older than people realize. In the 70’s and 80’s the best stuff was put into fanzines. My friend Jackie Kramer edited a StarTrek one (after the series but before the Motionless Picture) that was very impressive.

Copyright aside (a VERY big aside) Fanfic is a kind of authorial immortality. If the story world you create is so vivid, so engrossing, that fans want to not only live there but make it their own, congratulations you are the proud parent of Literature.

I think as a writer I might get a lot of good feedback from it; although to avoid plagiarism I would make someone else read it for me. One author I can think of, could have discovered her hero-heroine thing was an abusive relationship about 3 books earlier in the series.

As people have pointed out above, there are a lot of reasons why fanfic. Ask fifty fans, you get fifty different answers. Yes, it is about “fixing” source material we have problems with, but that’s not the only thing fic does. It’s also about continuing to have adventures in a world we enjoy—have you ever had book grief? That feeling you get when you finish a novel and you’re just sad you can’t hang out with these cool characters anymore? That’s when I go to the internet and start trawling for fic.

But that’s not the only reason for fic, either. There have been reams written on this subject already (there are approximately a billion fans in academia who have analyzed this to death), but here are a few of my thoughts. I lot of the appeal of genre fiction in general, not just fanfic, is the repetition of certain well-loved story tropes. What fanfic allows is many authors to take those tropes and try them on different characters from different source material. Heck, I’ve read hundreds of stories with the same trope and the same source material—if it’s a story that you love, reading different authors’ takes on it can be very enjoyable.

Fanfic is a largley romance-driven genre. What this also means is that when I start a story, rather than having to be convinced by the author to like the characters, as in an original novel, I already like them. Since they come from a source that fanfic authors try, with varying levels of success, to be faithful too, these characters have an established dynamic between each other that I’m already familiar with. That means that if I’m looking for a romance story with characters who have been friends for a long time and are beginning to fall in love, or if I’m looking for a story where they’re rivals and sparks are flying, I know exactly where to go to find it. If I was looking for the same in an original novel, I’d have to sift through a lot of back cover copy and reviews and hope that they accurately reflect the book.

So, for readers of fanfic like me, who know exactly the types of story we want, fanfic can be a really effective way of reliably finding stories we’ll like.

There’s also the aspect of community, as some have pointed out. In a fanfic community, I can have a dialog directly with the author of a story as a peer, which is usually not possible with professional writers. I can also see a dialog between writers, as certain ideas are taken and changed and reinterpreted. (There’s actually a standard challenge called the “remix” where one author reinterprets another author’s story, with that person’s permission.) I’ve heard people at sci fi conventions talk about how in the golden age of sci fi magazine publishing, this same dialog of ideas was happening, but that’s pretty much died out with the modern book publishing model, as novels get longer and the so does the time it takes to write them.

I write fanfic as well as professionally. If I write a fic, I usually hear from a dozen fans within a day of posting what they think. For my professional writing, I have gotten feedback….oh, never. True, I got paid, but sometimes it’s nice to hear that people actually are reading what you’re putting out there.

I’d also like to point out that many fanfic writers don’t want it to be widely acknowledged as legitimate. The feeling is—we have a lot of fun playing in our little playground, we don’t need the approval of the rest of the world, and too much outside attention might mess it up. As someone else mentioned above, a lot of fanfic writers aren’t trying to be professional writers. Fanfic is an end unto itself.

Also to address the argument that most fanfic is crap—absolutely true. But most published fiction is crap, too. Most of everything is crap. And like romance novels have communities and blogs like this one that can point readers toward the good stuff, fanfic has communities that function in the same way. I’ve managed to effectively tailor the communities I watch so that I read fanfic I enjoy 90% of the time, which is a far better rate than I get by picking up books in the bookstore.

I got my start writing fanfiction.  I still dabble in it.  And a lot of now famous NYC authors got their start writing it (Sue Krinard, for one.)

Yes, you have to dig through a lot of junk to find the jewels (in terms of good writing and decent stories), but IMHO, anything that catches a child’s fancy and hooks them into reading can’t be all bad.

I think fanfic is the fundamental storytelling impulse.  1000 years ago, people didn’t sit around the campfire making up brand-new stories with original characters every time; they told stories about Robin Hood, or King Arthur’s knights, taking elements of the familiar—the legend everyone knew—and adding twists and characters and elements of their own.  If those additions caught the imagination of enough people, they became embroidered into the legend too. 

The idea that the only correct outlet for storytelling is pursuing publication, and that anybody who does not aspire to write professionally has no business telling stories, is both recent and wrongheaded, IMHO.  It’s capitalism trying to commodify a human impulse.  Fanfic—on the border of legality, done for the pure love of community experience, derided because it doesn’t fit onto a balance sheet—is an expression of that impulse.  People want to tell stories, and they are drawing upon the familiar because that’s something storytellers do. 

So why reading and writing it on a computer doesn’t count as literacy, while reading a Sweet Dreams paperback from the 1980s would, makes no sense to me.

I had the pleasure of studying fanfic as literacy in a class when I was working on my BA.  A great resource for reading fanfiction as literature is The Democratic Genre: Fanfiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh.  It explores some of the motivations behind fanfiction, particularly as a community-based pastime for women and… argh, it’s been an age since I’ve read it.  But it’s a really fascinating book if you want to take a deeper look at the phenomenon.

I’ve been writing and reading fanfic for about ten years now, and I think that aside from being fun, it’s also a great writing exercise.

Contrary to the seemingly popular opinion, fanfic readers and writers aren’t limited to young people of the female gender. I know of quite a few mature aged women and men who are active fanfic writers, with work that is as good, if not better than some of the published stuff.

I don’t know why fanfic isn’t considered good enough to be classified as proper reading or writing. I agree that there is some truly terrible fanfic out there but there’s also a lot of extremely good fanfic, just like with books, there’s the crap shit, and the good stuff. You just have to look for it.

And as to what is so alluring about fanfic? Well, it’s fun, anyone can try to write it (whether they’re good or not is another matter altogether, but there’s always room for improvement with fanfic) and it’s also because of a love of the fandom. At least those are my reasons.

The only way to learn to write well is to keep writing. Fanfic provides an excellent workshop environment if the writer is willing to take advantage of it, which is often not the case. A lot of writers, of various levels of experience, can’t be bothered to even learn how to construct a sentence and it’s very discouraging to those of us who take language seriously.

I like to read some fanfic, so I’m glad to those that write it.  That being said, I don’t think that it works as a great tool to sharpen new writers’ talent.  I have found that most of them throw a hissy fit if you try to offer honest constructive criticism.  They say it’s fiction and not a real book so people shouldn’t be critical.  Then they trow in the “why don’t you try writing it” argument.  Forgive me for for suspending my disbelief when they have a character have a c-section and a few minutes later she’s just fine hanging out in the hospital nursery.

Anyways, my point is that I would respect it more as a tool for people who crave to write or who want to fix something that they hated about a book if they would actually throw a little reality into it.  That includes not making slash fan fiction with characters who were never presented in that light.  Ugh… pet peeve.

I absolutely agree with Antonia. Not everyone wants to become professional authors, and that’s not at all a bad thing. Fanfic is a great way to interact with fans you might not otherwise talk to, extend the universe of the creation in question or examine side characters (my main motivation for writing the stuff), and generally to explore stuff that the author of the book/movie/TV show/videogame/etc. didn’t have enough time to include.

I’m in the middle of working on my first (serious) novel right now, and without having practised my skills as a writer for nearly a decade on fanfiction, it would be a lot harder going than it is right now. (Not to say I’m finding it easy, but….)

It’s easy (the characters and settings and minor players are already there and everyone knows who they are) and though I write the much-maligned RPF (real person fic), there’s still a lot less work to be done than when writing an original story.

I’d have to respectfully disagree that writing fanfiction is easy. On one hand, yes, it is, in some ways—you have an entire world handed to you on a silver platter. All you might want to do is make minor adjustments, but aside from that, all the major work is done. On the other, you have to be damned good at understanding the motivations and reactions of a character you didn’t create to write well. For someone as anal as me, that involves spending a long time analysing speech patterns, dissecting motivations from actions (and when you write for a videogame or TV fandom, that means you usually don’t have an inner monlogue to help out), and figuring out relationship dynamics (“While Character A acts like this when Character B is around, what happens when you throw Character C into the mix?”).

Admittedly, not everyone is as obsessive about this as I am, but some of us are. We get headaches out of love for the creation. Or something.

I think my one reservation about FanFic is the obvious one: no one’s editing it, so its educational value is somewhat diminished because, as many others mention, it’s written by young people and it’s ridiculous to try and wade through all the crap.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. A sizable minority of fanfic authors, at least in my current fandom (Doctor Who), use what are called “beta readers.” Basically, they’ll find someone who is demonstrably proficient with the language in which they’re writing and ask them to edit their fanfic before posting it for general consumption. I both beta and, on occasion, make use of a beta myself, so there’s an educational opportunity right there. It’s simply peer-taught, rather than educator-taught, so while there’s a greater chance for error, there are still educational opportunities.

Long time lurker/reader, rarely commenting, but I must leap in here because fascinating article and interesting discussion. A little background (hopefully to show my years of interest in the topic not just flaunt my aca-credentials, though I know it’s hard to walk the line between those two).  I’m glad to see more discussion of how media literacies/digital literacies are being discussed in academia.

I’ve been an sf fan all my life, and am an academic (my areas are creative writing, critical theory, new media).  I can remember in my childhood and undergraduate days that sf was dismissed as trash (romance novels are still dismissed as trash by many academics!).  So being contrary and loving sf, I devoted ten years of scholarship to feminist sf. I came back into fandom (online Lord of the Rings) in 2003 and am happily writing fanfiction as well as scholarship on fan fiction.

My friends and colleagues in composition are fascinated with the structures fans create for themselves (including beta readers, awards, challenges, and other community standards for writing—is a lot of fanic badly written?  Sure, Sturgeon’s law applies—a lot of popularly published fiction is badly written, ditto a lot of popular film and television, bad writing!).  One reason I so enjoyed coming back into fandom was that people write! For love of writing! And anybody who has ever taught first year composition knows how resistant people can be to assigned writing, so the question of what fandom can teach composition teachers is one that fascinates me.

The debates over fanfic often break down about whether it’s good or bad, although there are other ways to debate it (popular vs. elite cultures, active vs. passive reading/viewing). There are some new scholars in some academic spaces who draw on new theories of rhetoric and ethnography to explore fandom (as well as many other cultural groups) for the literacies that are important within those groups (as opposed to the limited set of literacy skills that the academy/academic disciplines focus on—and literary in academic bilogy is different from literacy in academic literary studies!).  One of my colleagues is working on prison literacies.

What a lot of people ignore is that “literacy” has always been defined as different sets of skills at different times (for example, in the early Middle Ages, one was not a literate individual unless one could read and write Latin—literacy in English did not count!). In industrialized cultures nowadays, computer and electronic literacies are increasingly important (and rarely “taught” in public education, or at least not in the areas I’m aware of which are largely rural—I’m in rural Texas).  Putting a computer or two in a classroom or even a lab in a school is not teaching digital/media literacies.

A lot of new scholarship in composition studies (not my area, but I work with friends in it) is trying to break away from the literate/illiterate binary to focus on different types of literacies, while acknowleding that in some institutional settings (educational, but also legal, medical, etc.) certain literacies are valued over others. 

Young people’s literacies/literatures have historically been dismissed by the establishment; women’s literacies/literatures, ditto.  Any social group whose members are marginalized and excluded from centers of power will experience their literacies/literatures as being dismissed (and this carries over into other cultural creations—jazz is now fairly respected, but go back a century and it was dismissed as low-class, vulgar, inciting crime, and restricted to juke joints, not played in symphony halls).

SF fans are not of course equivalent to those groups (sf fans historically included a number of white males although internet fandom is a lot more diverse than I remember my corner of Trek fandom being during the 1970s), but their cultural productions have been studied for some years, and Henry Jenkins, the best known scholar, is involved in major work at MIT coordinating with K-12 education to incorporate media and digital literacies into education. His argument in his latest work, Convergence Culture is that the literacies of fans (early adopters of a lot of the technologies) are not specific to fandom but are useful for everyone in a digital age and need to be taught!

The internet is one of the technologies that has made all this possible because although the internet is not accessible to everyone (still huge questions of privilege, economics, involved in access), it’s allowed publication of work (textual and visual) that could not have happened before.

I think it definitely counts.  I’ve got like, four published novels out right now in a respectably popular vampire series… and I learned how to write from fan fiction.  I started sharing my fanfic in a community with other fans online when I was about fourteen, and two ladies would always volunteer to edit it.  Is the stuff I was writing perfect?  Heck no, but it was a learning process, and it introduced me to the mechanics of crafting a good story.

Today, I still write fanfic and post it under a pen name on fanfiction.net.  And I recently got an email from someone saying they wrote fanfic for MY series.  It was the ultimate ego boost, because I know how much I care about the fanfic I write, and the time I put into it.  Also, because I know that if this kid is writing fanfic, they might someday wind up with some published original fiction, supporting themselves with their “hobby”.  That’s a very nice position to be in.

When I initially read this I kept thinking of the Lee Goldberg vs Fanfiction entries on Fandom Wank (and the awesomeness of his brother Tod)
I’ve been reading and writing fanfiction for going on thirteen years. My first years of writing were complete and utter mutilations of grammar that now would make me cry in a corner of grammatic shame.
  I slowly got better through reading and the continuation of writing throughout my teenage and into my early adult years. I think having been into writing fanfiction this long definately helped my writing skills in college. My advisor often praised my writing skills.
  I know males in their early to late 30s who write fanfiction. One of my good friends who I met through fanfiction circles is in his early thirties and writes a lot of Harry Potter satire fics.
  I’ve made a lot of good friends through fanfiction which in turn led me in ways to end up on staff for Otakon (largest anime/manga/Japanese culture convention on East Coast, second largest in US) which I love doing and can’t wait to go to next weekend.
  Should fanfiction authors be paid for their work? No.
But is fanfiction fiction? Yes it is, fiction written by fans of series/fandoms they like.
  I know Anne Rice hates and has forbidden any fanfiction of her works, but other authors actually are okay with it. I believe JK Rowling, despite the current legal issues over the HP Lexicon, has been perfectly okay with fanfiction of her work (as long as people don’t try to make money off it)
  Then there’s Alternate Universe fics, which really is just you’re using the characters’ names/physical traits/ and MAYBE retain their personalities but throw them in a world of your own creation. Sailor Moon fanfiction has this as a common norm.
  I kind of see for me, fanfiction is way to practice and hone writing skills and learn to execute a plot and finish it out. It’s like a test of your skills, and sometimes I get pissed at my writing when I feel it isn’t flowing well or I’m straying too much, BUT these things help me grow.

People write fanfic for many, many, many reasons.  Even one person might write for many different reasons.  I could probably list a couple of dozen that are true just for me.

There is bad fanfic, and good fanfic.  Because there is a lot of it, there is a lot of bad writing, but also a lot of good.

Because people write for so many different reasons, your definitions of bad and good might well not match up with someone else’s.  That used to make me cranky.  Now I just take a deep breath and tell myself that other people are not like you, and that’s okay.

Some people find that writing original fiction is harder than writing fanfic.  Some people find that writing fanfic is harder than writing original fic.  (No, seriously.)

Some people treat fanfiction as a stepping stone to writing original fiction.  Some people enjoy it purely for its own sake.  Some people do both at different times.  Some people are already pro writers, and still write fanfic as a hobby.

Some people who look on fanfiction as a hobby take still it very seriously indeed, and spend a lot of time and effort on making it as good as possible and improving their craft.  Some people who look on fanfiction as a hobby don’t take it seriously at all, and don’t have any ambitions to improve as writers.  I don’t believe that either of these approaches makes you a better human being.

Some writers welcome all concrit. Some people welcome concrit from sources they trust.  Some writers don’t want any at all.  And there’s really no reason why they should.

Generalisations about fanfic, or fanfic writers, are mostly useless, and usually result in people arguing at cross purposes for a very long time.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. A sizable minority of fanfic authors, at least in my current fandom (Doctor Who), use what are called “beta readers.” Basically, they’ll find someone who is demonstrably proficient with the language in which they’re writing and ask them to edit their fanfic before posting it for general consumption. I both beta and, on occasion, make use of a beta myself, so there’s an educational opportunity right there. It’s simply peer-taught, rather than educator-taught, so while there’s a greater chance for error, there are still educational opportunities.

I have to agree with you.

I am actually an admin on the forum side of a fanfiction site that has very stringent posting rules for fanfiction. All works must be beta’d and if there are still to many errors, the submission will be rejected and the reasons stated as to why and how they can be fixed.

I also know of one Livejournal community that was set up specifically to help fanfiction writers with their grammar questions.

I have found that most of them throw a hissy fit if you try to offer honest constructive criticism.

That’s true of published writers as well. There have been some terrifyingly amusing wanks about authors having bad reviews of their books deleted from Amazon, or writing their own under sock puppets. Some people don’t want their precious creations criticized by the plebeian masses whether they get paid for it or not.

They say it’s fiction and not a real book so people shouldn’t be critical.

I hate that argument with a burning passion. Why should I give something a pass just because it’s free? A badly written free story is still a badly written story.

That includes not making slash fan fiction with characters who were never presented in that light.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree with you there. Slashing characters is a lot of fun. (Of course, my current main fandom has canon slash, which is wonderful and cute as kittens.) It’s also part of the experimentation that comes with fanfic: of putting characters into a situation that you would not see them in normally and making it work. Done well, it’s as much a joy to read as any other well-written genre of fanfic.

CATCHPA: high79. My standards are high, in the 79th percentile :D.

That includes not making slash fan fiction with characters who were never presented in that light.  Ugh… pet peeve.

Please don’t tar all of us slash writers with the same brush. I’m going to make the assumption (perhaps incorrect) that you’ve run into a lot of the seme/uke stereotypical slash. Yes, some people do destroy characterisation in order to write slash, but some of us do our damndest to preserve it.

Bisexuality is an option, too, so while the author may have never presented characters in “that” light in canon, it’s possible to argue that s/he never had the time to show that, hey, Joe not only likes Samantha but Samuel as well.

I know a lot of people write slash because it’s hot, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, some people (like me) write it because, while things have improved greatly in recent years, non-straight people are still very much underrepresented in mainstream media (and are still sometimes presented in stereotypical ways). It’s great to be able to write about a kickass person who just so happen to like people of the same gender (or both genders, or neither gender, or don’t like romance at all), even if that’s not what canon has given you.

Oops, forgot to finish that thought: Of course, my current main fandom has canon slash which is wonderful and cute as kittens, and it makes me very happy to have that basis for my fic.

It’s great to be able to write about a kickass person who just so happen to like people of the same gender (or both genders, or neither gender, or don’t like romance at all), even if that’s not what canon has given you.

Yeah, I guess it would be great if there were more homosexual characters in film/fiction/television.  I can even see the argument for some slash pairings that were never explicitly in canon (Xander and Spike on BTVS, for example, or Harry and Bob in the Dresden Files TVverse, where there is very little characterization that would back up a strong aversion to a homosexual relationship on either side of the pairing).  But sometimes in slash you’ve got people pairing up characters who were very obviously ramrod straight in canon (Picard, for example, got so much pussy on STNG that I can’t imagine why anyone would think they had a viable argument for slashing him with anyone—he very obviously loved the company of women) or characters who would never, ever be even remotely interested in each other in canon (I can’t see Raoul and Erik forgetting all about Christine and making donkey music together).  That’s how slash as a genre has gotten a bad name.  No matter how an author justifies a bad slash pairing, there are just some that don’t work, and there are some fanfic writers out there who will cram characters together like they were two barbie dolls being forced to kiss.  The motivation for the pairing isn’t there, the author doesn’t take time to explain it, you’re supposed to just go with the flow while Riker and Wesley get it on, so you might as well be reading a story about completely original characters, because you certainly can’t recognized the characters as they are in canon.

Wow… tangent, thy name is Jen.

I’m going to attempt to wade in here…

Though I’ve never written fanfic, I’ve always enjoyed writing.  Writing comes easily to me, and I attribute this to my massive reading addiction.  When you are continuously exposed to narrative and grammatical structure, you cannot help but be influenced.  A reader turned writer has a real sense of when a sentence sounds wrong, even if they can’t pin down exactly what the grammatical problem is.  They understand how a narrative should be structured without ever having to be taught that structure.  Readers also gain critical judgement; the more they read, the more they can differentiate between good and bad writing.

I am an English teacher (though new to the profession), and have no problem with fanfic.  When I read the article that started this debate, it didn’t surprise me that the girl featured in the story read nothing but fanfics.  What is somewhat worrisome is the number of errors to be found in those fanfics.  The article quotes a typical sentence from the girl’s favorite story:

“Just then I notice (Like finally) something sharp right in front of me,” Aries writes. “I gladly took it just like that until something terrible happen ....”

I do worry a little bit if this is the only exposure this girl has to writing.  Fanfic is great, but I think it needs to be balanced with published works that have (supposedly) gone through the hands of editors paid to correct these mistakes.  It sounds like that is the experience of everyone who has posted here; they read and write fanfics, but they also read published books.  I’m not saying published books are better than fanfics, but they are certainly a more finished product.

There are multiple forms of literacy in today’s society, and Internet literacy is certainly legitimate.  But teens today need to be biliterate: fluent in both the Internet and Standard English.  The problem is that, as their exposure to the Internet increases, their fluency in Standard English decreases.  I don’t think this is an epidemic yet, but I am on the front lines in the classroom, and I see it with increasing frequency.

But sometimes in slash you’ve got people pairing up characters who were very obviously ramrod straight in canon (Picard, for example, got so much pussy on STNG that I can’t imagine why anyone would think they had a viable argument for slashing him with anyone—he very obviously loved the company of women) ....

I think inevitably we’re going to disagree here. Personally, I see anyone as having slashable potential no matter how many women a guy’s shown interest in, because, well, bisexuality doesn’t mean you have to like men and women equally—you could like twenty women for every one man. I acknowledge not everyone shares this view, though, and that’s just fine. Diversity makes the world go ‘round and all.

...or characters who would never, ever be even remotely interested in each other in canon (I can’t see Raoul and Erik forgetting all about Christine and making donkey music together).

See, I just think of that as bad writing, not necessarily a problem inherent in slash. I agree that it’s highly unlikely those two would get together in the period of canon, but there are all sorts of ways to realistically justify an unlikely pairing (AUs, pre-/post-canon explorations, etc). It just takes more work, that’s all.

Hi.  Semi-prolific fanfic writer here.

  My fandom, it is huge.  The characters, there are thousands.  My favourites, they are often minor.  I want to see then go on adventures, canon’s not going to give it to me, so why not write my own?

  I’m also one of the ones who uses writing fanfic as practice - I’ve got two beta readers on my current story who know I’m not going to whine at them if they tell me I did something wrong - from misplacing a comma to having a gaping plothole.  And fanfic has a built-in audience - I can get immediate feedback from the readers telling me what went wrong or what went right.  And I find it fun to work within a created universe, trying to fit within the framework of the canon.  It’s a different kind of challenge than world-building.

  And fanfic’s a way to be interactive, to enter the universe as an active participant instead of just an observer.

  Also, it’s fun.  My other hobby is toy collecting, and I’m still ( pick one ) young at heart/immature enough to play with them.  Fanfic is a way to collect stories and characters and play with them.

  Yes, I can world-build.  Got my own little scifi universe I plan on writing some day when I’ve finished sorting it out and I’m a good enough writer to do it justice.  Until then, fanfic.

Please don’t tar all of us slash writers with the same brush. I’m going to make the assumption (perhaps incorrect) that you’ve run into a lot of the seme/uke stereotypical slash. Yes, some people do destroy characterisation in order to write slash, but some of us do our damndest to preserve it.

I don’t have a problem with slash writers, some of it I enjoy.  However, I don’t enjoy having a character that was represented as straight suddenly turn bi or gay.  That’s just personal preference, you know? 

I love reading about relationships no matter what floats their boat, but most of the slash I have read has just come across as a bastardized version of the actual character that was created.

seme/uke stereotypical slash

What does that term mean?

Anyways, my dislike of slash has nothing to do with the fact that the couple is same sex.  I want the fanfic (once again, personal preference) to be an extension of the world already created, or to add some resolution to a relationship in a story that the author seems to want to beat to death (I’m looking at you JE!). 

I don’t enjoy reading about a doppelganger that just has the same name and face without keeping the same base character. (that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy seeing them grow as a person which might change their previously portrayed character a little.)

However, I don’t enjoy having a character that was represented as straight suddenly turn bi or gay.  That’s just personal preference, you know?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think the point we’re disagreeing on is our way of interpreting character sexuality. Most people tend to extrapolate from what they’ve seen in the show/book/whatever; I’m just a bit stubborn in that I need the creator to explicitly state “This character is 100% straight” for me to accept it (and then I’ll just write AU fic where s/he’s not… *cough*).

Seme/uke is a style of writing, usually for male/male relationships, wherein one character is “the man” and one character is “the woman.” Basically, it involves all the active male, passive female stereotypes that writers wouldn’t be able to get away with using on an opposite sex couple without fandom coming down on their heads with the wrath of Zeus. I hate it for both that reason and because more often than not it totally destroys the very characterisation that led me to enjoy the pairing between the guys in question in the first place. Of course, if that’s the way the couple acts in canon, there’s not a whole lot I can say about it….

In high school and college, one of my favorite authors was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I devoured her Darkover novels.  When she and DAW decided to publish anthologies of Darkover short stories by other writers, I was thrilled.  Those books were essentially authorized and published fanfiction, I suppose, and there must have been many stories written that didn’t make the cut.  If we had the internet back, then, I’m sure they would have been posted on a web site; as it was, they probably made it into various fanzines.  I remember MZB writing in the introductions how much she enjoyed inviting other writers to come “play in my world.”  (As opposed to gamers, who she did not welcome, as she believed role-playing games were for people who were too lazy to write structured stories.  Never could change her mind on that.)

My teenage daughter writes a lot of fiction (fan and other), and she is constantly sending me links to interesting things she reads on line, both fiction and non.  She reads satire, current events, debates and discussions about all manner of social and scientific controversies.  And, BTW, she knows all about different literacies and the expectations of language usage in different forums.  I’m just glad she reads, and thinks.

Obviously a lot of the growth of fanfiction is the wider audience available on the internet.  I think video games play a role too, at least among my daughter’s friends—they are used to being able to interact with their stories, and to some extent affect the shape of the plot. 

While my girl still reads actual paper books (and I think she wants an e-reader for Christmas), she spends a lot less time on that than I did at her age.  I’m just glad she is reading on line rather than sitting in front of the TV!

I love reading about relationships no matter what floats their boat, but most of the slash I have read has just come across as a bastardized version of the actual character that was created.

I agree on this… it’s like some writers think, “I am going to slash these characters.  They are gay now.  And because they are gay now, it is not important for them to retain any of their recognizable personality traits.”  I’m sorry, this doesn’t fly for me, which is why I rarely read slash pairings that don’t make sense to me, and why I full stop do not read AU (with the notable exception of the Buffyverse, because they have their own AUs in canon, so I say it’s open season).

I mean, really, even if, say, Worf and Riker started doing it and I saw this as something totally believable, I would not, under any circumstances, find it totally believable for Worf to call Riker “baby,” or for them to openly discuss their relationship troubles on the bridge in front of God and Picard and everybody.  Slash all you want, but the pairing has to make some sense, you have to make it make sense, and you have to make it make sense without totally destroying the characters.

. . . you have to make it make sense, and you have to make it make sense without totally destroying the characters.

That’s a good rule of thumb for all fic everywhere.

I guess I could see the well-written and well-edited fanfic as having literary merits…maybe...but not the stuff written by 15 y/o HS students in sk8r punk txt msg lingo. ZOMFG, thats gotta drive tchrs like totally kra-z, u kno?

But I dunno…on the other hand, I don’t see how Harry Potter fanfic resembles enriching literature any more than the Harry Potter movies resemble enriching educational TV.

I love reading about relationships no matter what floats their boat, but most of the slash I have read has just come across as a bastardized version of the actual character that was created.

Dude, I LOVE that stuff! Like when Mulder suddenly starts crying at the drop of a hat and Krycek cuddles him all night long and little cartoon hearts and flowers slowly fill the air and stars shimmer in their beautiful, beautiful eyes?

Or when Draco and Harry get married at the mall and Hermione is their happy bridesmaid and rainbows sparkle throughout the ceremony while Snape looks fondly and proudly on?

LOVE IT! The more ridiculous and out of character, the better. Slash or gen or het, I don’t care, I eat it with a spoon. It’s just so FUN!

Herodotus thought civilization was declining. And maybe he was right. But still, here we are, still alive and thinking we are civilized (well, I am, but I don’t know about you! :P), etc., despite that. It seems every now and then throughout history there are cries about entrophy, whether physical or intellectual.

As for is that literacy? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it wasn’t that long ago that literacy was defined as being “well read”, not just being able to read, and by that criteria, the girl into fanfic may not be “literate.” But that is not the common definition of it these days - if you subscribe to the descriptive school of thought on word meaning, that is, what people in general think, rather than the what the “experts” think - today literacy is just being able to read. To what level, I don’t know. Enough to get through the TV guide and fill out a job application? :P

All of this comes back, in my opinion, to who is deciding what is literature, etc. That well-read literate person of the past - what were they reading? Who decides what’s important and valuable to read? Is it a collection of texts in Latin in Greek, or Classical Chinese? Is it Proust? Jane Austen?

I’ve read the Austen. I’ve never read any fanfic. But then… Hey! Is there any Jane Austen fanfic out there…?

Word verification: english97

Perhaps this is the literacy minimum? :D

But still, here we are, still alive and thinking we are civilized (well, I am, but I don’t know about you! :P), etc., despite that.

Actually, I take that back, I am not remotely civilized.

I did not realize until today that fanfic went outside of the sf/f genre - for some reason I thought it was the product of geeky, squeeing Dune or Tolkein fan-boys, and had stayed there. Shows what I know!

I’ve read the Austen. I’ve never read any fanfic. But then… Hey! Is there any Jane Austen fanfic out there…?

Not only is there Austen fanfic out there on the internets, but there’s tons of PUBLISHED Austin fanfic. And for those of you who are wondering if there’s fanfic for something - the answer is probably YES. There’s an annual small fandoms ficathon every year at christmas, Yuletide, which has had Austenfic in the past as well as fic in pretty much any other small fandom you could possibly think of, and some you wish you had never found out about. (Hello, Calvin and Hobbes slash.) http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/

I think once the definition of fanfiction as a form of, say, reimagining or homage or retelling, is fully understood, the argument that fanfiction isn’t a legitimate form of fiction will cease. Or if not cease, then at least be seen by more people as the stupid argument that it is. There have been so many critically acclaimed works that would fall under the purview of fanfiction if they’d been published by a dude on the internet, including some of my favourite novels ever. Hello, Mary Renault! The Persian Boy and its subsequent sequels (and the prequel, for that matter) are totally a Classical RPS (real person slash) series. Even Joyce’s Ulysses could be seen as an Odyssey AU.

LOVE IT! The more ridiculous and out of character, the better. Slash or gen or het, I don’t care, I eat it with a spoon. It’s just so FUN!

HEE. Some of this I read when I’m really depressed about something, just to be like, “Yeah, but it could be worse - you could be writing stuff like this and think it’s good.” And then I smile lots and lots.

I read fanfic because I’m interested in what hasn’t been explored in the source material. Some authors do a better job than others of pleasing me.

As for Star Wars fanfiction, the published legitimate variety, the key is that George Lucas profits from it. He owns the trademark on Star Wars and most, if not all (I think so but without my books I can’t look), are published by a division of Lucas Films. The authors certainly make money off them but they’ve sold their souls to George Lucas to do so. If all authors and owners of the source material could figure out a way to profit from it I bet they’d be more willing to allow fanfiction.

I used to write fanfic, had several published in a fanzine for the fandom as well as the fansite. The show never had a section on Fanfiction.net. I always..always…always used a beta reader, a good friend at work. I welcomed critiques as long as they were not a bash or anything…and the only one I ever had a problem with was when I did a Lord of the Rings fic…and in fact, my major characters were not canon, but some canon characters were in it. I had a lengthy nasty review calling me a Legolas fangirl, which was so far from the truth…I couldn’t stand Orlando Bloom until the pirates movies AND he was not the focus of the story. I ignored it and went on….but I ended up having some fangirls of my own. And honestly, if there were a fandom right now that I really cared about, I would go back to my fanfic.

I have a weird thing where I almost exclusively read fanfic from video games.  I often enjoy the idea of a video game plot, but I don’t really want it to clutter up the game too much.  I like to go to the fanfiction to get the gooey innards of what the characters are feeling, after I’m done having fun with the zombie shooting and stuff-blowing-up.

Mostly I find in other media that what’s there in the canon is fine; I don’t really feel the need to go back for more.  There have been exceptions, when I’m missing, I guess the feel that the book gave me (I could get all pretentious here and go on about lack and fulfillment and other stuff I half remember from my A-Level in Film Studies, but that was four years ago and I can’t remember any of the theorists’ names.)

I wrote some terrible fanfiction when I was too young to know better, but thankfully I didn’t discover that there were people on the internet who would read the stuff until I’d wised up a bit.  I did write terrible poetry and put it up on fanfiction.net (back when they had a poetry section) because getting good reviews gave me kicks, and even then I knew that someone on there would give a good review to almost ANYTHING.

I don’t think reading fanfiction as a teenager (and I inhaled the stuff sometimes, it’s depressing) did me any lasting grammatical harm.  Well, I hope not!

I host a dedicated fanfic board through my website (Krysia’s Web), called “JewelTones’ Liason FanFiction Forum” (http://www.jtlff.net), and its author is one of the most talented writers I’ve come across in a long time.

I loved her gift of story-telling so much that I bugged her forever, and now I’m honored to have ePublished 2 of her (non-fanfic) novels through Krysia’s Web Books.

I’ve also found that her fanfic board is a great way to have those who might not otherwise learn of her books (because I’m a *miniscule*, one-person who edits, publishes, writes, graphic designs, formats, and sells the eBooks available through my website) become familiar with her writing, as well as get the opportunity to learn (and buy) her eBooks (thus gaining “VIP” status on her board, which gives access to an exclusive area of the board). She has over 1400 members who come to the board to read and re-read her stories.

There’s another fanfic writer on the ‘net, “Dandesun”, who is also a fabulous story-teller.

Fanfic is an excellent way to flex your writing prowess, develop plotlines, character development, and so forth, while having an instant soundboard (the fellow fans) to bounce your material off of.

I used to write fanfiction, starting somewhere around 1975. Then the professional writing took over and I have no more time. I miss the instant gratification of feedback.

As for crackfic pairings? I’ve done a few. One of my published pieces is very thinly disguised Han Solo/Bagoas.

re: content
There are 9 and 60 ways of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.

Fanfiction is reading and writing. How is sitting up late with a new zine any different that sitting up late with a new Harry Potter? The only difference between writing Ruvane Delkroy and writing Han Solo is that on the first, I make the money, on the second I only get applause. 

I see no difference when my daughter watches The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and writes a story where Penelope consoles the queen and when she writes a (highly derivative) original fantasy story.

I would not consider myself a fanfic fan, except that I have read several published works which could be considered fanfic like the books which continue the Darcy/Bennett romance from Pride & Prejudice.  There seems to be more than a few authors who have published sequels to Jane Austen.  These are all fanfic to me. 

I will admit that some fanfic does bother me.  Some of the pairings, slash or not, just don’t make sense to me, and I feel like it’s not part of the original story anymore.  The few fanfic I have read and enjoyed felt like the original author’s voice and they were believable.

Fan Fiction has been around forever both in print form and on the computer.  So would reading print fan fiction or “fanzines” be more acceptable than reading it online? 

While there is certainly a ton of slush online when it comes to reading and content, so many “traditional” authors these days are turning to the web to build readerships, offer sample chapters on their personal websites, given sneak peeks at excerpts, and utilize all the best the web has to offer to build a bigger, broader readership.  So obviously readers are online.  The judgment (or stigma) of “is this worthy of reading” has just transfered from one place to another with the advent of cyberspace.

Literary vs. Commercial.  Single-title vs. Series.  Romance vs. Erotica.  There’s always arguing and fighting going on in the writing world about which one has more worth, literary value or “respect” than the other.  Fan Fic is no different.  There’s always been a stigma attached to the validity of fan fic vs. “real writing”, but when it comes to reading?  Yeah, I do think people who read at all should be encouraged to do so.  Book sales are dropping.  Literacy is at a low.  Drop out rates in school are climbing….  Who cares what someone is reading as long as they’re reading?!  Add in the fact that way too many adults don’t even read a single book in a year and it’s not just kids we should be worrying about when it comes to literacy.

Arguing over what you read is like arguing over which is more legit—music produced on a piano or music produced on an electric guitar.

But anyway, on to the questions.

What is it about fan fiction that is so alluring to so many people?
From a reader standpoint I think it’s the ability to get endless stories based around characters you love.  Where a writer (or tv show) can only turn out just so many stories so fast, fan fic writers can product a flurry of short stories, full length novels, etc., and make them available much, much quicker.  You get a fix of your story sometimes every day (one chapter at a time posted each day) and—if you’ve ever written a fan fic like I have, and yes, I do write them for General Hospital’s Jason Morgan & Elizabeth Webber aka “Liason”—you can even take them “interactive” with readers getting to choose their own chapter endings, etc. 

We always hear about businesses trying to make their product interactive, so why would readers be any different?  They get to read, interact with other readers, guess where the story is going, even interact and talk to the author. It takes the solitary “task” of reading and makes it a group experience.  And with some of the fic out there… the reader reaction, participation, anticipation, etc., is astounding!

Is it the critique and instant feedback from readers?
For the writer?  Absolutely.  As someone who counts herself among the previously mentioned “authors who started out by writing fan fic”, I find that feedback invaluable.  I get to see what works, what doesn’t, what keeps the reader turning the page, what they did and didn’t like, what they would have liked to see more of… and I get to practice the art and craft of storytelling in a pre-set environment with characters the reader already loves and has accepted, so I get to focus my attention on building the story, exploring themes, trying out plot ideas, etc.  It’s probably why I’m teasingly called “The Queen of Alternate Universe Fan Fiction.”  Plus I get to interact with so many great readers, ask them questions about stories they did and didn’t like, build a readership that will - hopefully - follow me into print.  It’s a total win-win for me.

But dude, at what point does fanfic start earning some modicum of respect? Because gee whiz, the girl is reading and writing fiction, actively creating, you know, words and stuff, and that’s not quantifiable literacy? Damn. 

It totally depends on the audience.  I think the readers respect good quality fan fic writers a lot.  It’s why they hold fan fic writing awards, establish “Fan First” #s to display in their user profiles and message board signatures to custom signature banners for their favorite stories to YouTube videos “inspired by” these fics.  It’s amazing!  But there will always be a group of people who believe a writer or story doesn’t hold any merit until it is printed and bound and sold as a traditional book in a bookstore.

I think fan fic is, essentially, a broad romance market.  I know that’s what I focus on.  And maybe that’s part of the problem too.  Romance as a genre suffers a reputation of its own, and don’t even get me started on how it’s apparently not a “respectable” genre when compared to the others.  We all know how that goes. 

Are there fan fics out there that are poorly written, full of typos, and suffering some really bad writing habits?  Absolutely.  But there are some fantastic and amazing writers out there who, should they produce a manuscript and seek an editor, would be published.  Does being online make that talent any less legitimate or make the person who reads it someone wasting their time on “junk”?  I totally don’t think so.

Online reading is just like any other reading.  Some good.  Some bad.  If you’re lucky you’ll find the excellent and be entertained.  And isn’t that what reading is supposed to do?

What is it about fan fiction that is so alluring to so many people? Is it the community of active writers who are still involved in the narrative? Is it the participation in a group world that’s evolving and changing with each new text? Is it the critique and instant feedback from readers?

All of the above.  I know that Brokeback Mountain fanfic centers largely on frustrated fans’ desire to see Jack and Ennis live on as part of each other’s world or, better yet, realize their HEA.  Some people simply (or not so simply) become so devoted to a story and its characters that they can’t let ‘em go.  The “frustrated writer” mindset is certainly part of it, too.

Writing and reading are never, far as I’m concerned, bad things.  But what bugs me about fanfic are a.) its fundamental “herd mentality” and lack of originality, and b.) its general crappiness.  Fanfic is probably a good tooth-cutter for aspiring teenaged authors, but when peeps beyond their mid-twenties engage in it, I’m tempted to say, “Sheesh, get a life.”

What is it about fanfic that is so alluring to so many people?  It’s the fact that there is something out there for everyone.  I’ve been a reader of fanfic for several years now, and I’m still astonished at the range and variety and creativity of fanfic writers.  And definitely some of the fanfic I’ve read is significantly better than many published works. (Recently tried to read a published Buffy novel which was painful drivel.)

The beauty of it all is that there is an amazing degree of freedom and seemingly limitless variety for both writers and readers.  Yes, there is absolutely tons of stuff out there which is either crap writing or on topics, characters, squicks and pet-peeves that I won’t touch.  But that’s OK.  Because there are other “consumers” out there who are very happy to read it.  (Who am I to say that it’s not OK to write or read this or that?) As I reader I can pick and choose what appeals to me and ignore the rest. Likewise, writers can pretty much write whatever the hell they want.  Their major constraints have mostly to do with the expectations and protocols of communities that they might post to. 

One aspect of fanfiction which does fascinate me is the dynamics of fanfic communities, and how collectives of writers and readers create bodies of work which evolve over time, sometimes quite dramatically.  I’ve been in a couple fandoms long enough to see significant changes in writing styles and composition as well as evolutions in character personalities and relationships.  In a sense, these communities develop their own canon, which relates to, but is not constrained by the original source materials.

my two cents without reading all 56 comments above, so it’s likely redundant: most fanfic is poorly written. It’s shite. Bad grammar, poor sentence structure, spellcheck substituting the wrong spelling of a word. Half formed ideas and plots that are not finished or simply don’t make sense.

I’ve read a lot, I’ve written some, I’ve betaed some lengthy stories. Most of what is written by teens is terrible. HOWEVER, practice makes passable. Fanfiction is not a good example for teens. They really should be reading something worthy of being published (and that said, I’ve purchased some crap books). FF is great for stimulating the imagination, but it’s not something a writer should strive to emulate.

That said, mine read it. Though, it seems the whole reason for being for ff is to bring unlikely characters together for PWP sex. Not the best reading material for young teens/tweens. Better they get that from a well crafted romance, imo.

Though, it seems the whole reason for being for ff is to bring unlikely characters together for PWP sex. Not the best reading material for young teens/tweens. Better they get that from a well crafted romance, imo.

Maybe if you’d read the comments above, you could have broadened your world view a little bit beyond your reductive and ridiculous view of fic. It’s not always about sex, and whether or not “most” of it is badly written, given how much fic is floating around out there, a whole hell of a lot of it is brilliantly well written.

I don’t see how Harry Potter fanfic resembles enriching literature any more than the Harry Potter movies resemble enriching educational TV.

Define “enriching literature.” Honestly, one of the best things about fanfiction is the fact that it can take risks that published fiction can’t. And with a good author (and there are many), some stories can be incredible. Enriching? Maybe. If it makes you think and feel in new ways. If the story haunts you in ways that even the source text doesn’t.

WM Thackeray hated the end of Ivanhoe so much that he wrote an alternate ending in which Ivanhoe dumped Rowena and married Rebecca.

Holy Toledo.  Where do I get a copy of this?

I’m serious.

My 2200 words on the subject (plus comment thread from others):

Some answers to the question ‘You’re such a good writer, why don’t you write for money?’

(Written a couple of years ago after a previous round of fanfic-bashing and subsequent angst.)

This is by and large a good conversation by people familiar with online fanfic. I think that is fabulous.

On the idea of unlikely pairings, there are sooooo many different *ships* in the Harry Potter fandom and some are done simply for humor. Two of my favorites are simply due to the names christened for those ships without me ever reading any fanfic depicting the couples.

One pairing was Snape/Dobby.  It was the H.M.S. Evil Socks.

The other pairing was McGonagall/Lupin and Cat on a Hot Thin Wolf.

I am a recovering HP fandom addict. I went online after reading the books (I entered the series midway - after publication of book 4) and encountered this thriving online community that was debating all kinds of minutiae and having grand theories of understanding character motivations and where future plotlines would go.

I followed someone’s signature to Fictionalley.org and discovered fanfic. After reading some, I decided to try my hand at it.

I had written several lengthy projects before, but had never tried writing a novel. I knew that many, many writers never complete their novels and used this as a test to see whether or not I had the talent and stamina to finish a novel.

I basically took some of my favorite wild assed theories from the Harry Potter for Grown Ups List Serv as some of my own wacky ideas and wrote a 5th year fic. It was finished and online a good seven months before J.K. Rowling’s Order of the Phoenix was published.

As others have said, the writing process included making online friends with people who served as beta readers and receiving feedback from others that many published authors never seem to generate. Last time I took the time to count the number of reviews I had over the three fansites my fic is published I had over 500 reviews. (Schnoogle.com, Portkey.org, Fanfiction.net)
Some were not much more than :thumb up: Good job! which doesn’t provide much information. Others were in-depth critiques which I appreciated much more.

I also participated in some of the fandom debates, some which became heated but it is a microcosm of how people conduct themselves over any controversial subject.  Overall it was a positive experience and I corresponded with many others in the fandom from all over the globe of which have turned into friendships.

All in all, not a bad thing at all.

Writing is a process of learning your craft, and fanfic is something that allows for publication (albeit unpaid), feedback and a sense of community.

L.C. McCabe AKA Athena or Pallas Athena in the HP fandom

Speaking as a long-time fanfiction reader and writer, the thing which is alluring to most young fanfic writers is the possibility of their self-insert getting to sex up their hot character of choice. Hence, the rise of the Mary Sue.

Personally, I’m iffy about a future where fanfiction is relied on to increase kids’ reading skills. Some of it is good, but most of it is not, and I’ve encountered fanbrats of twenty or thirty years who never read the good stuff, never get constructive criticism, and never ever improve in their tastes or their writing. It’s a pretty bleak image of the future, to be honest.

Personally, I’m iffy about a future where fanfiction is relied on toincrease kids’ reading skills.

I agree.  I think extremely well-written fanfic is a good choice of extracurricular reading material, but I can’t say it would do anything to improve literacy.  It has nothing to do with the internet issue.  For me it’s all about content.  Fanfic doesn’t promote literacy any more than Seventeen Magazine does.

Spending hours reading fanfic won’t improve a kid’s SAT scores or language skills any better than comic books or teen magazines.

I’d call most fanfic worse, actually. Visit the Godawful Fanfiction boards if you really want a sampling of the worst of the genre, but at least teen magazines don’t contain

WARNING DO NOT PROCEED FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR BRAIN

WARNING

WARNING

Lucius Malfoy drilling a hole in Draco’s skull and fucking his brain.

END OF WARNING. IT IS NOW SAFE TO PROCEED.

Verification word areas86 . . . yes. All sorts of areas I never wanted to think about in that context. Eurgh.

It seems like the point a lot of people are raising in this debate is not the devaluation of fanfic specifically but the devaluation of fanfic as a form of youth culture—the same way Seventeen magazine is, as JenB pointed out. And that’s a totally different debate.

For the young reader in the article, there’s clearly something in the fanfic that they’re getting that’s not in the mainstream, adult approved literature. That thing is probably a level of self-indulgence and immaturity that is generally poo-pooed. But, at that age, that’s exactly what she’s looking for.

Most of the arguments I’m seeing against fanfic here are less about fanfic as derivative works and more about fanfic as youth-generated content, with all the foibles that go along with it. So what we’re really arguing about is how teens talk and relate to each other and how that’s not how adults wish they’d talk to each other. That’s an argument that is far beyond the scope of just fanfic.

As others have pointed out, fanfic is often discounted because it is mainly female written and read and it is mainly romance. Two strikes. Then add that it is largely written and read by teenagers and to most people that’s three strikes you’re out. But if you get hung up on those features, you miss a lot of amazing writing.

True. But in my opinion, the biggest strike against fanfic is not any of that—it’s that there’s a complete lack of quality control.

Elitist, I know. But even a terrible book has to go through editors and copyeditors, get rewritten, and finally goes to print after dozens of changes have been made. Fanfiction is, for the most part, completely free: you write it, you stick it somewhere, you wait for the praise to come pouring in. Romance, female-written, and teenage prosody or fantasy are fine, but a lot of fanfic is horribly substandard—spelling, grammar, plot, content, everything.

It’s good that the girl in this article is getting more out of it than that. Kudos to her. But that can’t discount the fact that there’s a lot of really horrible writing out there, freely available, to anybody who wants to wander around fanfiction.net. Parents can take away a book from their kids if they discover it contains skullfucking (am I allowed to say that, btw?), but they’re less likely to track down the substandard ideas of writing that their kids are absorbing.

Double-posted to apologize if I’m getting obnoxious over this issue. Mea culpa.

Also true. As I said above, though anyone can put anything up on the web, there are a lot of fanfic recommendation communities out there. Most of the fanfic readers I know do not just look at ff.net (“the pit of voles”) if they want to find a story—they look at a rec community. It’s its own sort of an establishment, I guess. I haven’t read anything not recommended to me in a long while. If I want to find something to read that I haven’t seen a rec for, I just prepare myself to wade through a ton of crap.

Now, speaking as one of the establishment (I work for a trade publishing company), yes the books we put out are required to go through a lot of editing. But they are also weeded out due to a lot of things that have nothing to do with editorial content—marketability, basically. I’ve read quite a few novels that were amazing and completely unpublishable. So I like that there is a culture out there of publishing on the internet stuff that wouldn’t get to be seen otherwise. I think my point is that with the editorial stringency of main stream publishing comes a lot of other restrictions. So I like that there’s room for both material vetted and published by companies and stuff that would never get published but nonetheless can be shared and enjoyed.

And you’re not getting annoying. I love debating this stuff. :)

It seems like the point a lot of people are raising in this debate is notthe devaluation of fanfic specifically but the devaluation of fanfic as aform of youth culture—the same way Seventeen magazine is, as JenB pointedout. And that’s a totally different debate.

Hmm, not quite sure where you got that.  I was simply saying that fanfic is no more “literary” than magazines.  I just referenced Seventeen because it was the one I remember reading as a teen.  The fact that I don’t consider fanfic literary enrichment has nothing to do with the fact that it’s written by teens or is available on the internet (I’ve actually never read fanfic written by teens…I’ve only read the adult stuff).  I was addressing content, not origin or medium.

My point is that I can’t see fanfic helping a kid do better on his/her SAT tests or improving overall literacy any better than magazines would.  Probably less, in fact, because at least magazines are edited and regulated better than most fanfic.

I enjoy fanfic.  I think it’s a great hobby.  But would I rather my child read fanfic all day instead of going to the library or reading his/her homework books?  Heck no.  I would approve of it as extracurricular reading only.

Seventeen is written by mostly adults, by the way.

A Black Dagger Brotherhood fandom.  Think of the possibilities…..  A drabble where Wrath gets a bigger chair.  An AU where Phury and Cormia get a love story.  Maybe some smoking Butch/Vishous slash.  If only J.R. Ward would give the boys up.

Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of science fiction is crap, but then ninety percent of everything is crap”.

The same applies to fanfic. Much of it is crap. And yes, much of it is self-indulgent crap written by, shock horror, teenagers. “Much” is not the same as “all”, there is plenty of good material out there, and it’s not that difficult to find if you know where to look. Some of it is quite thoroughly literary.

Nowadays there are edited archives with quality standards, and there are rec communities where you can find recommendations for the good stuff (and the guilty sticky pleasures you know are bad but enjoy anyway). In the old days there were zines with editors who knew how to edit, and an incentive to do so—zines cost money to print, and thus money to buy, and if you printed nothing but crap you’d soon find that people wouldn’t buy your next zine.

Jules - Would you call the entire genre “literary” based on the small percentage of high-quality material available within the fanfic community?  I don’t think I’d feel comfortable encouraging it as anything but a good recreational activity.  I certainly wouldn’t rely on fanfic for my own kids’ educational enrichment.

Of course I wouldn’t call the entire genre literary, if for no other reason that it’s rather hard to find any genre where you can say that. But nor would I insist that the entire genre is the equivalent of “Just Seventeen”, or that children should read nothing but “proper” literary material. Getting them reading and writing at all is a good thing—if fanfic is what turns them on to reading, let them read fanfic, and encourage them in the direction of the good stuff. And then point out that there’s more where that came from in the library…

I’ve been following the conversation here and I have to ask.  Set aside the kids for a minute.  How many *adults* read only “literary” works?  Because I’m looking at where we are (no offense Smart Bitches!) and thinking… I see this same (and I’m going to use this word because I can’t think of any other) elitist attitudes chucked at the Romance industry every day.  It’s nothing more than “porn”.  Badly written.  Fluff.  No value.  Nothing but “candy” and it makes me, as a romance writer, cringe.  Most adults readers don’t sit around reading Beowolf and Shakespeare.  When was the last time we curled up on the couch with a thick volumen of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories or Jane Austin?  In fact, most of us probably recall when we were forced to read those things in high school and recoil now with visible shudders.

When did reading turn into a hobby for the elite?  When bookstores got coffee shops and cappuccino machines?  You should read what you want to read because you want to read it, enjoy it, take pleasure from it and are entertained now because someone tells you to or to appear “smarter” in some way.

As a writer, this ongoing insistence among writers and readers to shove books and genres/subgenres into categories of worth vs. unworthy is extremely troubling, especially when it’s a do as I say not as I do type of situation.  I take no shame in having everything from Shakespeare and Conan Doyle to Carl Hiaasen, Donald Westlake, the newest Harlequin Blaze, and even printed copies of my favorite fan fiction on my bookshelves.  Zero.

If adults are going to shake a stick at children for reading fan fic or non-literary works… shouldn’t they be look at what they’re reading and judging themselves accordingly?

There is a lot of bad fan fic out there.  I’m the first to admit it.  But I’m also the first to defend the practice and say you can’t paint the entire field with a brush of “it’s crap” anymore than you can any regularly published genre out there when you hit a poorly written, plotted, characterized (or whatever) novel on the bookshelves.  Just because the story is found between the covers of a print book doesn’t make it more legit or literary than something of an electronic media.  And geez, after finding a lot of typos in a lot of print books, grammar issues, punction these days, I’m not about to start throwing stones at fan fic/online stories.  Print stories are making just as many errors and the same types of errors… and I’m paying $26 for them if they’re in a hardback.

Ack!  Typos gallore in the above post!  Sorry!  LOL.  My browser had a wonky hiccup and posted before I could proof.  Sorry!

JT

I’m somewhat troubled by the arguments that want to compare the value of writing/reading fanfic to writing/reading published or “literary” fiction.  One of the things that gives me joy about fanfic is that is it community-oriented and not professionalized.  If we were talking about art or dance or sports, there would not be any question that drawing, performing in the local community production of The Nutcracker, or playing on their local little league team is a good and worthwhile activity for kids to be involved in, whether or not it leads to a career.  Nobody expects your kid’s local ballet school or little league team to be performing at pro levels.  Even adults have venues for these kinds of hobbyist activies, and people don’t usually question their legitimacy.  Why does fanfic get singled out for criticism in a way that these other activities don’t?  Why are some people reluctant to see the value in writing/reading fanfic for its own sake (even badfic)?

When I was 12, I picked up my first romance novel (because there was nothing interesting on Spanish TV).  The book was Jude Devereaux’s The Black Lion.  It opened up an entire new world for me.  Despite many remarks from adults like “wouldn’t you rather go out and play instead of reading that trash?”, I continued reading—becoming a more and more voracious reader as I went along.  My reading and writing scores in middle school shot through the roof, and by the time I was in 8th grade I was scoring second year college level. 

Because I fell in love with the writen word through these “trashy” books, I went on to read the more accepted “literary” stuff.  Some I liked, some I hated, but I appreciated it all because of my start in reading romance.  A well crafted sentence that produces viscerally profound imagery can be found many places.

Anyway, my love of writing transformed to a love of storytelling, and I started writing fanfic.  It was purely a hobby—one that introduced me to a community of other writers/hobbyists and earned me some fantastically talented beta readers. 

I now write pro fic as well as fanfic.  Those beta readers are still with me and beta my original work as well.  And they do a hella good job at it.  My editor has told me on several occasions that I send in some of the cleanest copy she’s ever read. 

With all this being said, do I consider fanfic literary?  I think it depends on the definition of what constitutes literary.  Will fanfic ever achieve that status with the established literati?  Probably not.  Romance hasn’t to date.  Most genre fiction in general hasn’t.  In the end, does it matter?  This girl is participating in the craft of writing and doing it for fun.  How marvelous is that?  If her medium is fanfiction, then fanfic has my respect because it was a catalyst for a young woman to sit down and exercise her brain in something more challenging than flopping down in front of the TV to watch a reality show.

Will what she reads or writes be crap?  Maybe, but Sturgeon’s Law is alive and well in all creative medium.  I’ve lost count of the number of published books by professional, bestselling authors with high-powered editors that have been nothing more than a waste of a perfectly good tree.

As for the commenter who said she’s tempted to tell older fanficcers to get a life—-please.  Generalizations much?

With all this being said, do I consider fanfic literary?  I think it depends on the definition of what constitutes literary.  Will fanfic ever achieve that status with the established literati?  Probably not.  Romance hasn’t to date.  Most genre fiction in general hasn’t.  In the end, does it matter?  This girl is participating in the craft of writing and doing it for fun.  How marvelous is that?  If her medium is fanfiction, then fanfic has my respect because it was a catalyst for a young woman to sit down and exercise her brain in something more challenging than flopping down in front of the TV to watch a reality show.

Will what she reads or writes be crap?  Maybe, but Sturgeon’s Law is alive and well in all creative medium.  I’ve lost count of the number of published books by professional, bestselling authors with high-powered editors that have been nothing more than a waste of a perfectly good tree.
~ Grace

Bravo!!!!!!!!  ::applause::

JT

I agree with Snarkhunter, JewelTones, Alyc, Grace and hopefully I didn’t miss anyone.

This judging fanfic based on whether most of it is trash or not is troubling to me, and seems like just whate every other literary genre does to one another.

How many times has someone in the SF community said something mean-spirited and hateful about Romance, about how it’s trash, it has no literary value, and people who enjoy it are stupid? All the while complaining that SF gets no respect and SF fans are unfairly depicted as friendless losers who live in their parents’ basement and have no life? God, so tiresome! So old!

Why do people continuously try to denigrate an entire medium based on the small section of work from it that they’ve seen and not liked? It gets really old.

Most mediums—all mediums?—have a range from crap to high art, and nobody’s saying that, say, the visual arts are all crap.  There’s low art, high art, and all the art in between—although this seems to be heard about less and less as time goes on.

If we were talking about art or dance or sports, there would not be any question that drawing, performing in the local community production of The Nutcracker, or playing on their local little league team is a good and worthwhile activity for kids to be involved in, whether or not it leads to a career.  Nobody expects your kid’s local ballet school or little league team to be performing at pro levels.

I was going to keep writing, but this paragraph pretty much says it all.

When was the last time we curled up on the couch with a thick volumen of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories or Jane Austin?

Just last year. I have to wait until I’ve forgotten some of it before I can read them again. But I also read a ton of “fluff.”