Both of us have mentioned it at one time or another, but
that’s because it’s meant a lot to both of us.
Fan Fiction.
Most of you have probably heard of it, if you don’t write it
yourself. Let’s be honest here, online blog for teenage writers? Most of us probably
know about it. This fall I have been writing fan fiction for five years.
Margaret started writing it a few months before I did. It’s how we met. We were
both writing fan fiction for a website called Artemis Fowl Confidential.
You can see why I consider fan fiction one of the best
things that’s ever happened to me. That being said, I am not ignorant to the
ugly side of it. There is a lot of ugliness.
A lot.
Just in case you don’t know, fan fiction is a story that is
written by a fan of a book/movie/show ect. These fans come up with stories or
ideas about the characters or the world and write them. If you want a new
ending, you can write it. If you think of something that was mentioned in the
book that was never realized, you can write it or find it.
That of course opens the door to quite a bit of ugly. When
it comes to couples in the fandom (a mix of the word fan and kingdom, it’s the
collection of fans of a certain book/movie/show ect. and everything that they
do to show their love for it) things get really ugly. There are crazy shippers
(people who support certain people in a relation’ship’) who will attempt to murder
you if you try to tell them that their ship is wrong or not going to happen.
Not only that, but you’re sticking a bunch of (usually) inexperienced
writers in a situation where they can go crazy and write anything they want.
That leads to a LOT of bad writing. Probably only about half of the fics (the term applied to a fan fiction story) you
find on FanFiction.net (the main website for fan fiction) are legible, despite
the fact that they’re all typed. Bad grammar, poor sentence structure, horrible
characterization, cliché ideas, cliché characters that are basically their
attempts to stick themselves in the story… We’ve mentioned it before in the Non Cliché Protagonists Post. Mary Sues are the hated Queens of Fan Fiction-dom.
And that’s not even going into the PWP (porn without plot)/M (Mature rated) fics,
or how it’s a gateway into the worst parts of fandom.
All this being said, it’s probably done more for my writing
than anything else I’ve done.
First, most obviously, it’s practice. I mentioned in the
last post about consistency ( Consistency is the Goal to Meet Your Goal) that I’ve
written 2000+ words of a story pretty consistently every week for the past
three years. That’s a fan fic. If you start at the first chapter and make your
way all the way through to where I’m writing now, you can tell that there’s
been growth in my writing.
Just the simple act of writing constantly improves your
writing. And if you’re a dedicated fan of whatever it is you’re writing, you
will probably be writing pretty consistently (sometimes too consistently when
it interferes with writing your actual material).
Not only is it practice, but if you’re in the right
fandom/website, a lot of time there are other writers who are willing to give
you advice or tell you what you did right or did wrong. Especially when you’re
trying out a new style it’s a great place to try to out because you can tell
from the reviews whether the readers think that you pulled it off or not.
Which brings me to another valuable skill I’ve learned from
my years of writing fan fiction. Learning how to take constructive criticism. Not
everyone is going to be nice. In fact, depending on your skill level they often
will not be. But there is a difference between someone just being plain
rude/mean (flamers) and people who are offering constructive criticism which is
a fine line that you learn after enough reviews. Being able to tell the
difference and bending your pride enough to at least take someone’s advice is an
incredible useful skill.
In fact, it’s a skill that’s not only useful in writing,
when you’re getting rejections from agents or editors or either one is giving
you suggestions for what to do with your manuscript, but it’s just useful in
life.
You learn how to develop characters. The mistake almost
every new fan fiction writer makes is trying to write an OC (original
character) that turns into a Mary Sue or warps one of the characters so that
they’re completely OOC (off original character). I did it. My first major fan
fiction involved my OC, Amanda, making the main character, a character who is
not interested in romantic involvement at all, fall in love with her. She also
spoke eight languages, had over 200 IQ points, came from a poor family, was
beautiful… It didn’t help that the title of the story was “Amanda’s First
Adventure”.
You learn to not make those mistakes. Making a mistake like
that will (hopefully) keep you from getting a book picked up by any agent or
editor.
It’s also an introduction to all different sorts of formats and
styles. You can do drabbles, one shots, three shots, full length stories. You
can write stream of consciousness, traditional, interrupted, scene skipping,
flashbacks. Decide whether you like first person or third person. Try present
tense. Figure out how to pace a scene so that it’s not going too fast or
dragging on. Learn that you really do need to plan out what’s going to happen
in a story or face epic writers block (See Margaret’s post on the Brick Wall from Hell).
Maybe even make a best friend.
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