5 Things I Learned from Writing FanFiction
I spent most of my teens and early twenties holed up in my room writing fanfics. Not just writing stories, but reading it, making fanvideos, making fanart and graphics….my life was centered on seeing how much I could Sims-up my favorite TV shows and movies. Sometimes, that meant seeing my favorite characters suffer through countless deaths while other times, it meant I really just wanted two people to get it on.
Nowadays, nerdism and nerd culture is an acceptable form of displaying one’s individuality. You got your Whovians, Trekkies, Bronies, Potterheads, Sherlockhomies(?) and countless others. I’m sure there are still some kids still embarrassed about their fandoms or their addiction to it, but for me – I kept my fanfiction notebook nestled under my pillow lest everyone read about how many different characters I could pair Buffy with. If someone discovered my fics I would have been mortified.
I’ve accepted my dark fandom-laced past, though because fanfiction taught me to…
1. Understand the rules of Language.
Every language has its own set of rules and that extends to fanfiction as well. If I were to say I was about to read a fic that was an m/m Mpreg pwp AU a non-fanfiction reader would think I was spouting off gibberish. A fic reader may smile, give a knowing glance, or upturn their nose because that isn’ttheir kink. It may even squick you, or in non fanfiction terms, gross you out. Does that sound stupid? Well, it shouldn’t because the rules of language fit the fanfiction world perfectly. It has phonological connotations (how many of you can correctly pronounce the word ‘Meme’), it has semantic aspects (let’s insert ! in between an adjective and a character name, shall we?), syntactic, prosodic, and idiosyncratic implementations. Essentially, the fandom communities have their own little world and set of linguistic rules. A lot of thought for something that centers on the idea of two characters boning, eh?
We know that learning a second language increases intelligence, but I would hazard a guess that learning the constructs of sub-languages does so as well. Although, not all fanfic writers are destined Harvard graduates, understanding these sub-languages also helps one understand the constructs of the native tongue. For example, when I first started playing in other people’s worlds I was, without a doubt, a terrible writer. I couldn’t understand the difference between you and you’re, than and then, and god forbid I tell I you not to loose your head. The more I wrote the more I realized that I was not only breaking these ground rules, but my writing was suffering as a result. Of course, this was greatly aided by the fact that…
2. Feedback is Important.
Critique. And lots of it. You see, one thing you quickly learn by throwing yourself headlong into this world of character and world borrowing is that you realize that there are some revered authors and some….not so much. Of course, this echoes the actual writing world, but fanfiction generates feedback much more rapidly than begging people to read and review your very first book. One thing I quickly learned in my foray is that both fanfic readers and writers alike are all too happy to tell you exactly what they think. Sometimes, the feedback was so compelling you just had to take notice.
Some of the best feedback I received, other than pointing out my vast spelling and grammar flaws was in how I tackled character development, plot arc, and pacing. A lot of the critique I received I still draw back on. Although I was playing entirely in creations that weren’t my own, I was able to use these suggestions to further improve my own writing. I went from being some little kid bashing legos together to make a square house to being able to fully construct a building. In the fanfiction world, the feedback is what makes the popular authors popular and the great authors become actual authors. It separates the writers from people just smashing their tightly clutched fists onto the keyboard. Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without…
3. Building up a Community.
Feedback is great, but you know what’s even better? Validation. It’s the one thing that writers crave. The knowledge that these words, these wonderful, personal words actually mean something to someone else. Even better than that is to find the people in the world that are just like you. Growing up, I didn’t know a whole lot of people that liked the same weird stuff I do. There were some, but I found the internet to be a much wider pool to draw from. I still keep up with some of the people I’ve met through fandom communities, and it’s been years. Now that nerd!culture is so vast, it’s impossible not to find other people that love to watch unsubbed anime on Netflix. But, fanfiction and the fandom communities – it gave me those people. For a lot of kids, especially the creatives, it still gives off the sense of belonging that many people need.
For a writer that’s incredibly important. As I mentioned, you need the feedback in order to understand what works and what doesn’t. The best resource you can have, which you can quickly learn in the fandom community, is receiving feedback from your peers. The ones who gave me the best feedback were the ones that wrote in the same fandoms I did, with the same ships I did, and so on. Ask a Glee fan to review your Hannibal fic and you may not get the feedback you want. The same goes with asking a children’s book author to rate your new supernatural erotica. I’m not saying you should dismiss feedback from someone outside your genre; after all, a lot of writers dabble in more than one, but you need to be mindful of what your community is and learn from them. To illustrate the point, would a non horror author really understand all of the many horror tropes and let you know when you are overusing them? Probably not.
Find a community and then use it to connect with other people. Read their work, be susceptible to critiques on your own, get an insider look at the market you want to invest in, etc. Just be sure that you…
4. Set Realistic Goals and Deadlines.
One running joke with fanfiction is that you can sometimes get into a story, really get into it…then find out it hasn’t been updated in over five years. When you begin to write fanfiction, especially when you amass a small fanbase, you become very keen to reader expectations. Deliver well and you are rewarded with loyal subjects who will be devoted to every word you slap on your screen Don’t deliver at all, and you will break the hearts of everyone who has become invested into your vision of the fandom world.
When you become a writer, a real novelist whether you go indie or pro, you need to meet your deadlines. Period. If you are an indie author this is largely up to you, but you still need to be extremely mindful of time management. In fact, this may be worse because you will not have an editor or agent to remind you of a specific date coming up. Poor time management skills, at best, will result in your losing an all-important readership, but at worse it can cost you substantial time, energy, and sometimes even money if you are under a contractual obligation for fulfillment. Set a goal, i.e. 10,000 words for the week, set an end deadline when your chapter/short/blog post/whatever will be done and work to meet that goal. It not only makes you a better writer but it makes you less of a jerk. No matter what though, just remember to…
5. Let it Goooo……
You cannot hang on to your stories forever. Even while writing fanfiction, I kept a hard drive full of half finished scripts, novels, shorts, etc. It was fanfiction that helped me to finally go back to these pieces, and finish them. In fact, fanfiction helped me to let go in general, in several different ways.
First, It helped me to step outside my comfort zone. I went from being in a heavily religious background where Harry Potter and Pokemon were banned from the house to someone who wrote the craziest, most insane smutty/angsty/whatever fics on the planet. Why? I was exploring different genres and writing styles. It was completely liberating to dabble in horror in one vein and then smut on the other. I was broadening my horizons creatively and had I not done that through a well established world, which was kind of like a safety net for me, I don’t think that I could have done it all. Experimenting, whether you are writing or reading across genres, is the quickest way to improve your writing because you can draw from several different areas and create this hodgepodge of newness that then becomes your own.
Fanfiction also helped me let go in a very literal sense of the word. It helped me to finish my work so that my readers would have a completion to their story and I could have the pride of having accomplished something. Although, I didn’t always meet this goal, as I begun to mature in my writing I realized that this is one of the hardest traits to have – the ability to move on and call something finished. I got to a point where I wanted my fics complete, even if there was a good chance that they would ultimately be received poorly. As writers, we live in this weird world of perfection versus imperfection where we think something can be perfect if only we just….one more edit….one more…. And thatshould happen. Of course, you should edit your novel until your fingers fall off. Eventually, however, you need to reach a point where you need to let your baby go off to college, whether or not it might get into some drunken frat parties or fail out of school when you do.
Ultimately, many of us turn to fanfiction because it’s comforting. It’s like an old friend we can call up at 2 in the morning and ask to eat ice cream with us because we just got dumped. We know that they will already be on the way with our favorite in tow (It’s Pistachio).
However, as writers we can use this, our little weirdness of playing in other people’s words, to polish ourselves into the authors, and ultimately, the people, we want to be.
Author: Christina Escamilla
Category: Books
Keywords: books, fan fiction, fanfic, writing, writers, fiction