Does fanfiction improve your writing?

[rainbowcascade]

I've heard different authors go back and forth on this. Does writing fanfiction help to improve your writing?

Reasons why it WOULD NOT improve your writing
- if you are writing on fanfic.net, chances are that the comments would mostly praise you instead of critically tearing your work apart
- the characters, setting, and conflicts are already established thanks to the original source. You don't have to do any work to describe the world nor did you take part in the world building


Reasons why it WOULD improve your writing
- if can help build dialogue and character development skills when you're writing a scene where two characters maintain their rapport.
- if can help you think critically when you're thinking about the original source and on how to expand on them, the meanings of certain things, themes, alternate interpretations, etc.

What do you guys think?

[SundownKid]

I think that's about right. It's an "easier" form of writing where some of the work is already done for you. It's not going to improve your writing skills as much as writing a story from scratch and being critiqued, but it's a legitimate way to improve your writing skills.

[Hazel-Bun]

I'm of the opinion that writing fan fiction no more improves your actual writing then, say, flash fiction or full length novels. What makes "good" (which is always subjective of course haha) fan fiction, is generally what makes any type of writing good: practice, patience and constructive critique.

It might improve your output speed seeing as, if you gain a dedicated following, they sort of pressure you to write more, and eventually (not always though) quality work. But, again, a good writing circle or just a simple dose of outside motivation can fuel that as well

*Now I'm leaving to read some fan fiction; this thread had perfect timing!*

[OokamiKasumi]

Fan-fiction can seem easier than original fiction because the world and characters have already been hammered out. However, to write good fan-fiction one must research everything thoroughly. Not merely the characters and their characteristic behavior, but what has already occurred in that world's history.

A good fan-fiction writer can take a single plot hole and weave an entirely different reason for why certain events occurred in the actual story line, create an entirely separate story that weaves seamlessly with the already existing material, or add an alternate ending that fits just as seamlessly to the original story as the canon ending.

In other words, writing good fan-fiction teaches the writer to research their material and create within extremely tight limits. These are invaluable lessons for anyone that wants to write seriously.

[LRH]

The wonderful thing about writing fanfiction is that it allows you to just write; the setting is established, the characters are established, and all you have to do is create the story structure itself.

Fanfiction is also character consistency 101, because if you get it wrong, fans of the original work will notice, and by far, the biggest criticism (ignoring spelling and grammar) I have about inexperienced writers is the whiplash effect their inability to write their own characters consistently causes. Practicing remaining faithful to the original writing of a character is invaluable for those who are terrible at characterization.

In my opinion, approached seriously, fanfiction is one of the greatest ways to learn the elementals of fiction writing. But I'm biased, that's where I started. I wrote tons and tons of Star Wars fanfiction in my younger years, and I still dabble in fan drabbles from time to time, just to keep in the habit of writing.

[Cith]

I came across an article a long time ago which, imo, gives the best advice about this sort of thing. It's a little bit outdated but the general advice is still sound, and it's really interesting so I'll quote it all (except for one piece concerning popularity which I think no longer applies):

Part One: Why You Shouldn't Write for Fanzines or the Web

There is a theory, much heard in science fiction fandom, that writing for fanzines is a great way to hone one's literary skills, develop an audience, and eventually reach the attention of Important People, and that therefore, if you want to be a writer, you should start off writing for fanzines.

There are also people who claim that putting your stories on the Web will attract readers, who will point them out to wandering editors, who will then buy them from you. This, webzine promoters will tell you, is The Wave of the Future.

'Tain't so, either way.

This is not to say that there haven't been fanzine writers who went on to fame and fortune as pros, because there have been a good many such. This was not, however, because they learned their art writing fan fiction--on the contrary, they only succeeded because they didn't let fan fiction hold them back!

This, at least, is my own conviction. Here's my reasoning:

Absolutely anybody who can put together a coherent sentence can get a story published in a fanzine. Even people who can't put together coherent sentences can get published if they're willing to put out their own 'zines (as many do) -- either paper fanzines or e-zines.

Therefore, getting published in a fanzine or e-zine doesn't prove that you have any talent for writing fiction. It simply isn't much of an accomplishment, in and of itself.

However, getting published in a fanzine does accomplish one thing: it gets you an audience. Not necessarily much of one, since fanzines and webzines generally have pretty small circulations, but an audience. Not only that, it's an extremely responsive, appreciative audience--if they weren't interested, they wouldn't get the 'zine. If you write something for a fanzine that is any good at all, or at all out of the ordinary or controversial, you'll probably get a reaction in the 'zine letter column. If you post anything halfway decent on the Web and provide a mailto link, you'll probably get e-mail.

This is called "egoboo." People notice you. You get a response to what you do. It's a lot of fun; it's invigorating.

However, it doesn't really tell you a damn thing about how good your writing is. The standards are different for fanzines. In a fanzine, readers are more concerned with whether you've got an amusing concept than with such trivia as style, characterization, clarity, etc.

And the reaction won't be to tell you anything useful about what you're doing wrong; it's more likely to be either, "Boy, that was a good story," or "Wow, that one really stank!"

This doesn't do anything to improve your writing.

(Bit chopped out here)

"But," you ask, "doesn't writing for fanzines provide necessary practice? Won't you see what you've been doing wrong, and improve?"

Well, yes, you just might--but because the feedback in almost all fanzines is virtually worthless, you won't get any more insight than you would if you wrote the stories and didn't send them to fanzines, but instead just showed them to friends, sent them to professional markets, and so forth. And you'll get much less feedback, and less valuable feedback, than if you joined a good writer's workshop, with at least one participating pro.

So fanzine publication, I say, is worthless--but it's relatively harmless, if you avoid one great danger.

Writing for fanzines is addictive.

It is, really, it is! Because you do get reactions, it does provide egoboo. And fanzine editors can never get enough good material to fill up those pages, so if you are a decent writer, once editors know where to find you, you're likely to have a steady stream of requests. People will send you 'zines, hoping for letters of comment. 'Zine editors will ask for articles or stories. And if you don't have iron self-control, you'll give in to them, and you'll spend hours writing LoCs and 'zine articles when you could be working on a novel, or a story for Analog, or even just a book review for the local newspaper--something for a professional market! Something that would probably be rejected, but, if accepted, would Pay Money.

I mean, when I wrote the original version of this I should have been working on the third novel in the Ethshar series, but instead I wrote this silly article for Low Orbit!

It's insidious. Consider a list of winners of the fan writer Hugo, compiled by a quick glance through the award winners up through 1975, and leaving out people I never heard of: Dick Lupoff, Robert and Juanita Coulson, George Scithers, Alexei Panshin, Ted White, Harry Warner, Jr. (twice), Bob Tucker, Richard Geis (twice), Terry Carr, and Susan Wood.

First off, you'll notice that most of these people did not go on to be big name pros. Several did make it as pros--except that that's deceiving, because Bob Tucker and Terry Carr and maybe Ted White (I'm not sure about him) were pros before they won their fan Hugos!

Furthermore, when was the last time Tucker or Carr or Panshin actually wrote professional fiction? I haven't read Panshin; Carr and Tucker wrote really top-rate fiction--but very little of it.

Maybe, if they hadn't been so involved with fandom, they'd have found the time to write more. It's too late for Terry Carr now; Bob Tucker and Alexei Panshin still could write more, but somehow, I doubt they will.

Because let's face it, even if you break into writing professionally, you aren't automatically rich and famous. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. has about twelve hundred members now, and there are plenty of writers (like Harlan Ellison or Piers Anthony) who are not SFWA members. When you sell a novel or two, you'll probably just be a face in the crowd, one more mid-list writer turning out space opera or elf-and-unicorn books. And writers don't make much money; last I heard, the annual average income for a published professional writer was $7,800.

But if you can write professional-quality stuff, it's easy to make a big splash in fandom, to be a Big Name Fan; egoboo is much easier to come by on the amateur level.

So it's awfully tempting to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in a big pond--especially when those fanzine editors keep asking you for articles and letters...

And the more time you spend on fanzines and fandom, the less you have for professional writing.

So if you're serious about writing professionally, then write stories, join workshops, read Writer's Digest and all the how-to books, take courses if you must--but don't waste your time on fanzines and webzines!

http://www.watt-evans.com/soyouwanttobeawriter1.html

[Caveat Lector]

While I do understand and agree with the reasons rainbowcascade listed about why fanfiction wouldn't necessarily improve your writing, I also find myself agreeing with the reasons writing fanfiction would improve your writing, mainly because I can attest to these reasons from personal experience.

I wrote fanfiction (still do, but it's more of an on-and-off thing now), and if nothing else, it did give me the basic experience of writing. It taught me the importance of beta readers, how to form a relationship with your audience, how to analyze the characters' reasons for doing something or not doing something, how to pay attention to the story's universe, and how to learn from writing mistakes.

[Asceai]

Yeah, I think that's a very good article, but I'm not certain it applies here. We're in a very different space and for most of us VN writing simply isn't commercial- and fanfiction writing and reviewing need not be so sycophantic nowadays. I believe it was a very different climate back then. So yeah, if you want to become a commercial novel author fanfiction may be unwise, but as a general rule I wouldn't say it's very applicable.

As an aside, I neither read nor write fanfiction; I've played a lot of fan VNs, though, which are arguably a form of fanfiction. Some of them are pretty good. I definitely think writing good VNs improves your ability to write good VNs. Also, the guy that wrote Hoshizora no Memoria wrote a Hatsune Miku VN, so...

[rainbowcascade]

Now I'm curious- are you guys brave enough to show your fanfiction to your fellow colleagues or fans alongside the VNs you guys made? Or is fanfiction something you would mostly keep to yourself just for fun?

[OokamiKasumi]

Now I'm curious- are you guys brave enough to show your fanfiction to your fellow colleagues or fans alongside the VNs you guys made? Or is fanfiction something you would mostly keep to yourself just for fun?

I have 13 FF stories posted on MediaMiner and on fanfiction.net under this name. I don't advertise them here because my FF writing has nothing to do with VNs or VN writing. Well, that and all but one story is R-18.

[LRH]

I'd have to do a bit of digging. I don't tend to keep my drabbles, or publish them anywhere, they're just writing practice and warm-up for me, pretty much disposable from the beginning. I think I have a couple of pieces of my early Star Wars fanfiction I could share, but I warn you now, I've had almost twenty years to improve on my craft since I wrote those pieces, and they involved only original characters, no canon characters. If I can find that early stuff, I'd be willing to post up some of my most recent work to compare it to as well, since it might prove inspirational for young writers just starting out.

[Caveat Lector]

Now I'm curious- are you guys brave enough to show your fanfiction to your fellow colleagues or fans alongside the VNs you guys made? Or is fanfiction something you would mostly keep to yourself just for fun?

Well...what if I've written fanfiction based off my colleagues' games? I have a lot of stories on ff.net, but I'm not quite ready to share my penname from there. For one thing, I've said some really embarrassing ignorant shit in connection with the username I used there on other sites, not quite as bad as in some cases, but still kinda...ick. If someone ever does put two and two together and figures out who I am and then publicly calls me out on it, I'd probably take the time to address it and then add "I've said some stupid shit before I knew any better and was desperate for approval, so I'm really sorry about that if you do find it, just take everything I said back then with a grain of salt". And while I feel my writing at, say, age 16 was much better than at age 12, at the same time, it's kind of lackluster and relies on some of the usual gimmicky stuff for the sake of creating more drama. If somebody were really, really curious, I might share it with them if they asked, but on the condition they keep it a secret.

As for the fanfiction based off my fellow LSF acquaintences' games...hmm, good question. No, I haven't actually published anything related to those games. It's mostly either outlines that I'm perfecting, basic ideas jotted down in case I do get the motivation to write them, or small-ish fics I'm still polishing. Though, I'd feel kind of nervous about sharing those because with my other past fanfics, I'd never been in a situation where I could directly interact with the original creators. It was just kind of like "Okay, I'll just do my thing while the creator does theirs, no biggie"; now, it's like "OMG OMG THE CREATOR MIGHT ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO READ THIS I CAN'T DO THIS!!!!". I can sort of understand the mindset of, say, Sherlock Holmes fans who forward their fanfics to the cast and crew of the various Sherlock-based shows, but it's one thing for Benedict Cumberbatch to get various links to over a hundred fanfics a week and probably not catch all of them or even interact with every single author of them, it's another for a user on here to be able to directly read and comment on it. That's the nervewrecking part.

[LRH]

Wow... I can't believe I actually found some of my old stuff! Here's the only fanfiction I posted online prior to 2010. It was written for a Star Wars gaming/writing club, from a prompt - the name of the target, and the operation name was One Shot One Kill. I know the upload date says 2002, but I actually wrote it in 1999 - I was 13 then. My apologies for the poor formatting, I always hated how ff.net handled copy and paste, I also spotted an error I didn't catch when I uploaded it - it should be Wookiee, not wookie. I can't find anything older, though I'm sure I wrote lots of fanfiction prior to falling in love with Star Wars.

Here's a more recent piece of fanfiction on a similar topic. It's incomplete, I got stuck because I didn't outline properly before I started.

[SimonLayton]

I'm super focused on a novel right now, but at the same time I'm finishing my WIP fanfic stories so I could move on completely. I'm Camp NaNo-ing this July as an excuse to focus on my novel instead of fanfics without getting messages from my readers asking when one story will update. But my answer is yes, it did help improve my writing, but I can't say for the others.

Many fanfiction writers nowadays are teenagers (as young as eleven-years-old), and many of them aspire to go professional. Many start out with a badly-written fanfic posted online (including me). It doesn't have to be bad plot-wise, etc.. Maybe the writing style is too bland, or too purple, or you haven't grasp your own. But fanfiction can make an impact on you, in some way or another, positive or negative. What's the real challenge for an aspiring professional author is moving on from fanfic writing. But some good fanfic writers do not wish to get published, and stick in their corner of the fandom.

Here's a short history on the fandom I'm currently bunking in (unrelated, but it might useful to you): pre-2010, my fandom, apparently, was chuck-full of bad fanfics; with bad plot, bad and Mary Sue protagonists. One fandom writer decides to put her foot down and flame on EVERY. SINGLE. BAD. FANFIC. Not constructive criticism. Downright flame. Then other fanfic authors joined and rallied with her, although some didn't like her method of "improving" the fandom, and went on their own way to help the fandom. But no matter, it made a huge impact (it was a small fandom, back then) it almost tore it apart. And while the crisis is over, the attitude can still be found in traces in the tumblr side of the fandom.

Of course, I wasn't there when it happened. I wasn't actively participating in the fandom yet, but I did research, and started posting my fanfic just when it was ending (so my fanfics got caught on getting constructive criticism (but no flame) but I sucked it up (I was very sensitive), thank them, and they helped define and polish my style).

As for sharing my fanfics to my colleagues in real life: only if they read or write fanfic too! But mostly, I only share my stories inside my fandom. Here's my FFN profile. These are what I've written since early 2011. I'm not willing to link the really old stuff I wrote, which was in 2009-2010, because they're just plain horrid and I don't want to keep slapping my face.

[papillon]

That posted essay is massively outdated. The world of fanfiction in 1988 is not even vaguely comparable to today's world, and there are plenty of fanfic authors who've gone on to become reasonably big deals. Heck, even back then there were people who went from fanfic to pro, but since fanfic was less well distributed it was much harder for the average person to notice!

But anyway, I've covered that subject before. Focusing in on 'does fanfic improve your writing':

How much you learn about quality writing from fanfic depends heavily on the quality of your audience and your interactions with them. This isn't fanfic-specific, either. The same warning applies to original fiction, or original VNs. If you have a small audience with limited literary skills and very specific desires, who cheers you on for pandering to their specific needs and never notices your flaws... how are you going to learn anything from them? There are fic authors who can't spell to save their lives who still have fanbases that defend them eagerly. Writing more for that crowd isn't making you a better writer.

And if you have an audience of people that aren't idiots but you can't interact well with them, they aren't much help to you. If you throw away all criticism, or if you change your mind about things every time a reader makes a suggestion, you're not improving.

Any practice is generally better than no practice. Getting into fanfic can help you get some quick feedback to motivate you on your goal to write regularly, and that will probably help to at least some extent. Just learning to finish things is something! However...

Don't forget your goal If what you really want is to write original fiction, then the time you spend on fan-projects is largely going to be time you can't spend on original ones. I say 'largely' because there are cases of people managing to file the numbers off a fanfic and turn it into a sellable work, but to some extent this only works if it wasn't very good fanfic in the first place! (By that I mean, if you did a great job researching the world and the characters and tied your story in to the existing setting, the result is not something you can remove the copyrighted material from without destroying it.)

I still read a lot of fanfiction but I don't have time to write any, I'm slow enough writing my own works as it is. Trying to complete my long-ago fanfic epic might make one or two people who still remember it happy, but the cost is too high.