Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!
I have a confession to make: I haven’t written anything besides blog posts for a few weeks now. I’ve been in a serious writing slump. I want to write, I really do, and I feel so guilty for not having written, but every time I sit down to write…nothing comes out. No inspiration, writer’s block, whatever you want to call it–it’s just so hard to get the words out onto the page.
But! Today, just before sitting down to write this post, I opened up my document for a Harry Potter fanfiction I had been working on a while ago. Suddenly, the words just…flowed. It was the oddest thing.
That inspired me, so today I’ll be sharing with you some benefits of writing fanfiction that you may or may not have seen before. Let’s go!
1. there’s no pressure to publish
Most fanfiction can’t be formally published because of copyright laws. (There are a few exceptions to this, such as books that have gone out of copyright or certain video games, like Minecraft.) One of the traps I consistently fall into with my original writing is thinking I have to make everything perfect so I can publish and market my books. I know it’s an unhealthy mentality.
Fanfiction helps me with that because I know that legally I can’t publish it and claim the characters or settings as my own. I might share a few chapters of my fanfiction online or with my friends, but there’s no way I can make money off of it as a printed book, because I’ll get arrested. There’s no pressure at all with this, and I really love that. It’s freeing.
2. there’s no pressure to create
The great thing with fanfiction is it can be as canon-compliant as you want (for those who don’t speak fanfiction: that means that it can be as close to what actually happens in the book as you want or don’t want).
For example, my main character in my Harry Potter fanfiction is Draco Malfoy’s twin sister. In the books, Draco obviously doesn’t have a sister, let alone a twin, but I thought it would be interesting to explore what a girl living in Draco Malfoy’s shadow would think and feel. Everything else is pretty much the same: the story is set during the first book, so the events of the actual series are followed in my story.
With fanfiction, you can use the setting or the characters or the plot or a combination thereof to create anything you want. There’s no pressure to make your own characters or make the plot as original as possible. You can quite literally do anything your heart desires.
3. you can stretch your writing muscles
This one kind of goes with the above points. When you don’t feel any pressure to publish or to create your own original story, you can try things you wouldn’t normally. Write in a different genre or style. Write a character that’s outside of your usual. Write whatever you want!
Fanfiction is a great way to practice so that when you’re actually writing something of your own creation, you can use the skills you’ve gathered from writing for fun. It’s also a good way to start writing if you’re new; you’ll be able to dip your toes in, so to speak, without getting too wet, and decide if writing is for you or not.
4. you can find a community
A while back, I had a Minecraft fanfiction that I loved to write. It was a snippet series that I posted on my writing community, the Young Writer’s Workshop, and I had quite the fanbase. Every time I posted a new snippet, my friends would comment and get into arguments over the story (cough cough hi Mia cough cough). It was one of the best things that has ever happened to my writing.
I really found a lot of great friends with that little fanfiction. Everyone who read it loved Minecraft and would not only talk about the story, but Minecraft itself and the mechanics. That was the best part: meeting people who liked what I liked and were willing to read about it. The community is one of the greatest things about writing fanfiction. You’ll find friends where you least expect them.
I hope that now you’ll be inspired to pick your favorite book series or TV show and write something based off of it! If you do (or if you already have a fanfiction you’re proud of), I’d love it if you sent it to me so I could read it. Just use the contact form in that little menu at the top of this post.
Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!
Quote, Unquote 