Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Confessions of a Former Fanfic Writer

I wish I could say that the defining moment that made me a writer came when I was a child. That I kept notebooks with stories written in pencil, or that I wrote in my diary every night or led the poetry club at school. But it didn’t happen that way. It took a television show to inspire me.

I didn’t even watch the show during its network run. My daughter was little then and I spent most evenings with her. If we watched television it was Nickelodeon, Disney or the Cartoon Network. Late one night I happened to catch the show in its syndication run. I liked the characters, and thought the writing was okay. And there was one particular actor on the show who well, “rang my bell.” Tall, blond, gorgeous, misunderstood, he was the true anti-hero. I was hooked.

During one boring lunch hour at work, I typed the name of the show into Google. I found a bunch of websites devoted to the show. I browsed most of them, some were good, some not, but most had sections devoted to something called “Fan Fiction” or “Fanfic”. I didn’t know what that was so I skipped that section.

Then one afternoon, I was on one very good site and accidentally clicked on the “Fan Fiction” section. It was organized by author and most authors had several titles underneath their name. I clicked on one of the titles and started to read and was amazed. This was something I never would have thought of in a million years. The authors (fans) of the show write stories using the main characters and creating different situations for them to play out. I read and read and read. Some of it was truly awful, some of it was good, and a lot of it was really erotic. There were stories that were much better than the ones written by the writers of the show! It took the characters beyond the bounds of a twenty-two minute sitcom. I just loved it.

As I read I discovered that there were sub- genres of fan fiction, particularly alternate universe and crossovers. Alternate universe fanfics take the main characters and place them in other worlds or times. Like the old west, or the roaring twenties. Crossovers combine the characters or situation from one series or movie with the characters or situations from another. Lots of imagination here. As I continued to read, I realized that these folks were having fun. So I joined the Yahoo group that published the fan fiction.

Every few days a new story would start, usually in chapter format, like a soap opera. What would happen next? Then one day I decided to try my hand at it, and started my first story. I posted it to the group, and got almost immediate feedback, that was the best. Everyone gushed, and a couple of folks gave me some very good advice. I was hooked all over again. Bitten by the writing bug, I wrote story after story. I liked to write stories based on episodes of the show and change the ending to suit myself or expand on the story line. Soon I was collaborating with another author for joint stories. This was the most fun of all. I’d write a chapter, then she would. I’d have an idea where it was going but then it would change, so much fun.

I soon found that the characters in the show, while very dear to me, limited what I could say. I started to hear other characters speak to me. The difference here was that they were my characters with their own stories to tell. That’s when I stopped writing fanfics and started writing books.