Fanfiction: A Writer's Training Wheels

Orson Scott Card wrote, “Writers should not waste their time or talent trying to tell stories in someone else’s universe.”

I disagree.

Fanfiction has been on my mind a lot lately with the popularity of 50 Shades of Gray and Kindle Worlds (which I'll get to towards the end), as well as talking to a friend who primarily dabbles in it. I've never written fanfiction, myself. Any attempts quickly fizzled out after page one. I find it to be difficult to write and it goes nowhere on a professional level, like trying to walk up a down escalator.

Fanfiction also strips your skin off and kills children...wait I think I'm getting lost here.

Fanfiction is usually where a lot of writers these days get their start. Cassandra Clare, author of City of Bones, wrote Harry Potter and hilarious Lord of the Rings fanfiction before she was published. 50 Shades began life as a Twilight fanfiction. That doesn't make it any good, but that's not the point. The point is that fanfiction has a purpose.

Think of fanfiction as training wheels to writing. With fanfiction you don't have to stress about setting up an entire world or intricate backstories to characters because all of that already exists. All you have to do decide what happens. It's like fanart. You learn how to become good at drawing by sketching out other people's characters, eventually working your way up to your own original characters. Fanfiction lets you ease into and hone the craft of writing.

Sometimes, however, people never get brave enough to take those wheels off.

He may look like a child, but he's actually 38.

I've seen examples of people writing beautiful work yet are held back because it's fanfiction. You leave the training wheels on too long and people become dependent on them and scared of the thought of moving beyond that. They worry their writing won't be good enough if they wade out into the wide, open world of original publishing.

Here's a secret though: Nearly every book is, in a way, fanfiction.

Every epic journey with a group of characters is Lord of the Rings, every "magic school" is Harry Potter, every airhead "oh gee he's so dangerous but hawt" YA paranormal romance is Twilight. I don't make it a secret that Crystal's voice in Dusted is the lovechild of James Patterson's Maximum Ride and Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden.

The trick is, once you've got the art of writing down pat you just take everything you love about everything and piece it together to make it your own. The great thing about original fiction is that you're not playing by someone else's rules.

After a few fanfictions move on. If you keep writing them then, years later, you'll be exactly where you were before as a writer.

Kindle Worlds has been a recent invention of Amazon and, while it may look like a shining beacon to fanfiction writers, I believe it's damaging in the long run. By clutching onto already existing properties a writer misses out on an entire process of writing: the creation of characters and worlds.

If you find yourself writing nothing but fanfiction and craving to break out into original work start small. Consider just changing the names of the characters, or write a completely original story and put just one character from your favorite fandom in it. Change all the rules of the fandom, see what happens.

Sure, you might crash a couple of times (or a lot), but so have I. Dusted isn't perfect, nor will it ever be, but I can be proud in the fact that I can call it entirely my own.

Or, you know, as long as no one recognizes all the stuff I ripped off.