Well hello there, Reader!
A few weeks back I saw a post on Reddit where a guy asked:
“AITA for making fun of my girlfriend for writing Fanfiction and claiming it’s actual writing?”
He seemed to think he wasn’t (the asshole). Oh boy, did the community have news for him. 😬
Now this dude is far from the only one out there who thinks this way, but he couldn’t be more wrong. And I’ll prove it with 5 ways that writing fanfic not only makes you a better storyteller, it can even become a legit job.
5 Ways Fanfiction is “Real Writing”
1) Helps You Develop Your Skills
Maybe you just want to practice scene construction, or dialogue, or non-verbal characterization without doing all the heavy lifting of designing a story world or creating bespoke characters.
Maybe you need more practice writing women characters that don’t feel like talking furniture.
Then grabbing a prompt and writing a short fanfic can be hugely beneficial. Especially if you’re doing it as a daily or weekly story writing exercise.
Some film, game, and musical groups have even been known to host writing challenges as promotions and allow aspiring storytellers to use their IP.
2) Alternative Universe Bonus
Sometimes it’s fun to snatch up a few characters from a creative work (or even your own) and plop them down in a new setting or situation outside the original plot.
Fantasy or apocalyptic manga set in an ordinary high school. Holiday specials that are completely divorced from the plot. Reimagined fairytales with… Wait what?
You might not realize it at first, but reimagined stories are essentially AU fanfics of the originals.
Looking for a great example of AU in action? Then check out the Marvel/Disney+ animated series What If…?
3) Media Adaptation
I’m not talking about a simple one-for-one book-to-film adaptation like The Hunger Games. I’m talking about something like Howl’s Moving Castle. If you’ve read the book and watched Miyazaki’s film, you know they are in no way the same story.
Or Seven Samurai by legendary film director Akira Kurosawa vs the anime Samurai 7 by Gonzo. Or how ENNEAD by Mojito is totally not the Egyptian mythology you learned in middle school.
4) Ghostwriting & Writing FOR Media
Now when it comes to fanfiction, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Plagiarism is baaad… However, mimicking the style and voice of another person isn’t as easy as it seems. This is why there’s a whole job for it.
So if it happens to be in your toolset, a career in ghostwriting or working for a production company might be for you. This is because when it comes to writing for TV, the characters’ personalities can only vary within a small tolerance from episode to episode.
(Fresh out of college, I did the illustration equivalent of this as an in-house artist for a children’s product company. We had licenses with everyone from Disney to DC to Nickelodeon. My job was to color and/or touch up the art assets I received from the art department and make sure they still matched our very strict character spec sheets.)
5) Licensed Works
It can literally pay to write fanfic. I’m talking about licensed works. There’s the simple kind—novelizations of films you see cropping up in bookstores and Targets right before the movie releases.
Then there’s the often overlooked kinds of books that fill shelves in every department from picture books to New Adult. Side story spin-offs, storyverse extra adventures, backstory epics—you name it. And every one of them is fanfiction.
Back in 2017/18, I was contracted by Amazon Publishing through their Kindle Worlds imprint to write a licensed work. In my case, it was a standard-length young adult novel (65K words). I was paid an advance and earned monthly royalties from sales.
When Amazon shut down Kindle Worlds in July 2018, the rights to the work were returned to me. And after a lot of editing (I had to remove all the copyrighted IP after all), that out-of-print novel became Predestined.
The point is, Reader, don’t let someone tell you that your fanfic writing isn’t “real” writing. Or that you’re wasting your time. Because those skills you’ve developed writing side quest adventures for your favorite characters might just turn into a career.
Well until next time, Reader, this is your friendly neighborhood storytelling Kat wishing you a wonderfully creative week.
Your cohort in storytelling,
Kat Vancil
🐱
PS 👉 My favorite fanfiction example of all time is Bungo Stray Dogs written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. Each character is named after an influential author throughout history, and their powers are based on said author’s books.
That’s like writing a fanfic about every author on your bookshelf while simultaneously giving them superpowers.
Also, fun fact: any works in the public domain are 100% fair game when it comes to fanfiction.
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First off, they have good taste.
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Hi! I'm a Fantasy Sci-Fi Author With a Character Growth Focus!
I'm F.J. Blooding, a once USA Today bestselling author. I write urban fantasy, science fiction, epic fantasy, and epic urban fantasy with a character growth focus. I'm happiest when I'm growing people, which sounds really strange, but that's who I am and what I do. The people around me who aren't actively hiding from life, use what I do and what I give them to create amazing lives for themselves.
My stories have rich characters, as long as you can read the body language tags, who don't always make the right decisions. We don't make stupid decisions for the sake of plot twists, but they're still sometimes dumb with real consequences.
My earlier works were still a bit fumbly as I attempted to figure out what kind of writer I am, but my newest works deliver, and I'm hugely excited about them.
I write, primarily, in three universes:
Whiskey-verse where most of our urban fantasy and my one epic urban fantasy stories reside.
Dreamland where my epic urban fantasies live.
And, finally, Black Systems where our science fictions stories spawn.
Happy reading! |
