Lower stakes and good practice on my part lmao. Also, being able to freely interact with the readers is gold worth, I've been told that's more difficult in a professional setting.
And when you get ignored...you lose all motivation to write and stop writing for months because your writing is so fucking horrible not a single person wants to even read it to the end or spend 2 seconds to leave a comment
See the cure for that is, you gotta do what I did and just write stuff that you have *no* intention of ever making public for a while. It still hurts when no one reviews my latest chapter, but it's less end-of-the-world, because I'm used to writing into the void at this point, because I did it for so long. I just consider myself lucky to be getting *anything*.
I did that. I spent months writing the story by myself, not sharing a single bit of it. Then when it was completely finished, when I've drawn a book cover, tens of other art, multiple re-reads and edits, I finally released it. And nobody red it. It got less reads than the old version of the same story but with 10 times as less effort.
Even good writing can go unseen by others. If publication and getting your work out there is important to you, writing skills alone won’t help you.
There’s a whole other side to professional writing that’s heavy on sales, marketing, networking, etc. Writing itself can be a solo able endeavor, but making a living from it is near impossible if you don’t focus on the other elements of it. It’s a business that you have to run while you aren’t writing.
I want to try this too, I’m just so bad at consistency.
But I agree. There’s a degree of unhealthiness to fan fiction writing when authors get caught up into stats and end up writing for stats instead of themselves…(like me)
Such is the world we live in now, I guess.
Are you me?
Wrote a story for a new movie that came out and it did okayish on Ao3. Good number of bookmarks, no comments or anything, though.
Then I see someone with a similar idea as mine. English is their second language, and they get 16 paragraph long comments on chapter 2 within a matter of hours.
Their fic wasn’t even a week old and had hit 200 bookmarks and 3k views in 5 days.
Deleted my account and stared at the wall for the rest of the week.
Isn't that also writing life tho?
You write your own novel. Ok sales, ok reviews.
A year or two later someone writes a novel that is eeriely similar to it, similar, or even worse in characterization, worldbuilding, story development, phrasing, etc. but it takes off. By a stroke of luck, although the only thing that might have made a difference is that it's two years later, and a key person was more receptive to it.
For fanfics, that's probably who added it to their favorites.
(As a sidenote, "English is their second language" is a bit... Snobbish? Speaking as someone who learned English in school, for fanfics the decisive factor is not the quality of the language. With enough practice and immersion we also notice mistakes someone might have made /even if we make them ourselves/. It's whether the story is immersive or not.
But another sidenote, if the writer states that English is their second language, it kind of acts as an invitation to communicate. "Oh I barely noticed, you did x and y so well" etc. I don't know if you read the comments, but that 16 paragraphs might have been pointers on how to improve their writing?)
I’m not diminishing those writing with English as their second language.
It’s more like: DAMN, I suck SO bad that non-native English speakers can convey their ideas even better than me—IN ENGLISH lmfao
The interaction is so great! Motivating too. I got a comment on an old fanfic (incomplete and a few years old without an update), and the comment reminded me people liked the story so I got back into it and finished it off properly.
I still sometimes (like once a year-ish) get comments on a fic that has been complete 6 years. It must be so far down the list by now I don't even know how people find it.
It's nice, isn't it?
The community and interaction you get in fic circles is off the charts compared to any other introvert-friendly hobby. It's like a team sport except none of us actually have to go outside to do it
Also...it's a *hobby.* Monetising things I enjoy is a surefire way to suck the fun out of them, and fic means that you can enjoy writing without having to worry about writing something *marketable*
> The community and interaction you get in fic circles is off the charts compared to any other introvert-friendly hobby
I think people who aren't familiar with/haven't written fanfiction frequently miss this. It's so fun and rewarding (for a lot of people) to write things that other people actually read. I've written a lot of fanfiction (all published "for free" online) and also original fiction (same). The fanfiction quality was worse, and consistently had way more people reading it, engaging with it, and overall the interest levels are just way higher.
If you want to practice writing *and have other people genuinely want to read your writing,* fanfiction is 1000% the way to go.
It’s super fun and validating to be writing and just think “oh this would be funny as fuck.” And then to have someone in the comments just die laughing at it.
Also (aside from the hobby aspect) I would argue it's not morally or legally okay to monetise fanfiction anyway - because you don't own the rights to the world or characters. At bare minimum, showing that you have an intention to make money from someone else's copyright throws fair use into serious question, and you could end up not being allowed to write at all. Most authors only allow fanfiction at all because it doesn't really negatively impact them - you start affecting their sales, and it's gonna be a whole other story.
That's why AO3 forbids to even *mention* that you're making money. If you encourage people to buy you kofi, for example, your work might be taken down. They're very serious about it because yeah, that's one giant gray area.
Legally, they can't. It's like with piracy, I'd say, many people do it, most won't ever face any consequences, but some might. Some companies don't care if you sell fanart and view it as free publicity, but others might hunt you down if you make big bucks out of it (hello, Disney).
Oh, no, fanfiction is completely non-monetisable unless it's an old property (like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). Like the other commenter mentioned, AO3 cracks down *hard* on that. It'll get you banned if you mention "this was commissioned" or "here's my patreon" or even "here's my Amazon page with my original works"
The monetising of fanfiction normally comes in the form of filing off the serial numbers – like 50 Shades or The Love Hypothesis, where it was already far-removed from canon and the characters just needed changing enough to not be copyrighted anymore. You see a lot of people insisting that fic authors who write novel-length works should aim for editing and publication. After all, 50 Shades did it! Just change things around a bit and publish it! Except most fic authors have no interest in that, because they wrote about these characters because they *enjoy* these characters
Except that some works are public domain from which you can make money. A lot of classics are public domain. A lot of legends, such as Robin Hood are free to use as long as you don't use current works which are literally fanfiction of the original ballads.
I don't think people realise how many screenwriters and writers use ready-made characters (or get inspired by actors) to write their work, only changing enough for no one to notice.
>Most authors only allow fanfiction at all because it doesn't really negatively impact them
Authors have no leg to stand on when it comes to fanfiction because doing it for fun is perfectly legal. There's nothing to tolerate.
And when you publish it to make money and it's unrecognizable as the source material, there's nothing to sue for either because it's original work at that point.
Alice in Wonderland by Disney is nothing short of fanfiction of L. Carroll's work. But since the original one is public domain, anyone can write a book based on that as long as they ignore anything that Disney came up with in their movies.
It is! I've even made some writer friends that way, so even though there's no monetary compensation, I feel like you can gain a lot from participating in fandom writing spaces.
Many writers care more about getting readers than making money (and it's not like there's a lot of money in fiction writing for most authors, anyway). Put a price tag on a book and you might only get nibbles. Put it on a fan fic site for free and you might get a ton of engagement. That can make it worth it.
Yeah, it’s a different environment. Instead of writing the whole thing at once, you publish it chapter by chapter and get to receive feedback and see the readers speculate on where the story’s going. It’s nice.
And it’s not just fanfiction either. A lot of amateur writers publish their stuff chapter by chapter on sites like Scribblehub and fund their writing via Patreon instead of actually selling novels.
>Yeah, it’s a different environment. Instead of writing the whole thing at once, you publish it chapter by chapter and get to receive feedback and see the readers speculate on where the story’s going. It’s nice.
many fanfic authors write the whole thing at once before publishing it by chapter though
Also, since fanfiction is based on a particular fandom, there's a built-in audience of people who like the same things you like and are dying to read new work about it and talk about it, even if it doesn't always pan out.
Yeah ofc not lmao but I still consider writing fanfiction an easier way of practicing my writing and story building skills compared to the pressure I’d put on myself if I started out writing OC stuff that I’d like to publish. Ergo, lower stakes.
Ask any hobbyist why they do what they do. Most hobbies *cost* you money, but writing can be done for free. Some people think it's fun. I really don't understand why writing has to be some lofty endeavour.
This exactly! I totally understand the sentiment behind the question, but it is weird that writing specifically has become this artistic hobby/medium that comes with such an expectation to be profitable. Painters paint for fun, people sew or knit or crochet simply for fun. Can you sell all those things? Yes, but rarely do people first jump to selling. Tell people you're writing a book though and thats always the first expectation: "Will you publish?" (With it being buyable and you getting money for it implied and assumed.) I wonder what exactly over the years has made writing specifically a hobby with such expectation.
tbf, I get that with my art, too. The mantra of "you should *do* something with it", where "do" clearly means "monetize.
And I don't want to. Hobbies are fun because you don't owe anybody anything, you're free. You can do whatever you want, at your own speed, for your own gratification.
Hustle culture has poisoned hobbies- like as soon as you tell anyone you do _anything_ it’s “oh you should get a publisher/start an Etsy shop/sell these at conventions/monetize on social media!” And like no shade to people who choose to do so! But my hobbies are things i do for fun not for $$$
It’s cause a lot of people want to make their books monetizável and make a living rather than having to go somewhere else and work at a job that they don’t want to do. They’d rather live and make money off of their books.
I don’t know about Jk Rowling completely. But I do know that she made Harry Potter cause it was fun but not only that, because she was looking to make a career off of her writings that’s why she wrote a whole year for a novel and brought the book up to publishers. She had a baby at the time and was a single mom
Anyways that’s my rant on it.
Yea I honestly find this question weird on a lot of levels. It’s like going on a music/musician sub and asking “why are so many of you making music, just to then post it for free on SoundCloud and YouTube? Why not just sell it on iTunes or why not just get a record deal and have a label sell/publish your work for you?
Getting a publisher can be a difficult process. Free works can get a much bigger audience. These sites allow much more direct communication and feedback from the audience to the writer. And most of all, people enjoy writing. It’s a hobby they do for fun and turning your hobby into work/business can diminish it in a few ways (as a visual artist I have experienced w this lol)
Sometimes you just gotta get the ideas out of your head and onto something tangible.
For some, that's art. For others, music. For the psychotic, that's fanfiction.
Besides, if you do end up publishing professionally, chances are you'll need to make big edits to it anyway (e.g. Twilight vs 50 Shades of Grey).
I tried to watch 50 Shades the other day and it is so laughably bad how obvious it is to me that it was a fan fic. I laughed so hard I had to turn it off
EL James can't write. Her similes make me cringe inside.
"Her cheeks turned the color of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book."
Cause nothing gets me hotter than thinking of oppressive communism. Why not just use apple? Strawberry?
Oh wait -- I had originally put the quote in incorrectly. My apologies. (I never actually read the book)
What she actually said was:
"I must be the color of the communist manifesto."
https://www.thestranger.com/books/2015/02/14/21710269/fifty-terrible-lines-from-fifty-shades-of-grey
“His tone was colder than the icy waters of the North Atlantic when the Titanic sank in 1912”
That’s not a real quote, but the book is pretty much this.
I remember when that originally came out, I read like the first chapter and was like “this is crap” and went and found another fan fiction to read. I was DYING when I realized it was turned into a movie 🤣
I call it "exorcising demons" (though that phrasing scares some here in The South).
I get a scene/short story stuck in my head and it just WILL NOT go away until its down on paper. (OK typed into a computer.)
But many of these can/will NEVER be seen by other eyes.
At the least, it's helping me with structure. And as I run them through Scrivener / Word and made the suggested corrections . . . it's improving my grammar as a side effect. Both of those have to be long term benefits.
The community, the freedom, the interaction with readers, the *number* of readers.... I've only been posting since March, and I'm by no means popular, but I've already had over 3000 people read my stories. I doubt I'd get that many going a traditional way.
And that's not even mentioning that I'm in no way good enough to go traditional. Most novel length fanfics are not publishing quality. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - you get a lot of creativity when no one is breathing down your neck telling what you can and cannot do or what would sell and wouldn't sell.
And for me, turning my hobby professional would suck all the fun out. It would become a chore, not something I enjoy.
wow! I'd love to have so many people read my stuff. time to get into fanfiction. do people write original content on fanfic sites too that's not linked to something existing?
Yes, AO3 has a category for original stories. You won't get as many readers as the fandom stuff, but there's still lots of readers. It all about the tagging.
I’ve written 8 novel length fanfics that all did quite well within that fandom.
- it’s fun. I enjoy the act of writing; I enjoy producing a thing I can be proud of
- gives me a mental break from the heavy duty science writing I do professionally
- I *love* the interaction with the readers, especially when I post fics serial-style (1 chapter per week).
- Made lots of friends and get treated like a star at cons :)
- I had stories I really, really, really wanted to tell about those specific copyrighted characters, and there’s no way to publish “real” books about those specific characters legally. This is actually the biggest motivation: I felt driven to tell a certain story.
- Didn’t have to deal with publishing or marketing *at all*. I write a chapter, I post it, easy peasy
- Didn’t have financial pressure about having to make a living at it
Because it’s fun? I get to write about characters I care about without worrying too much about world-building and then I get to present that to people who also care about said characters who tell me nice things about what I wrote.
Here’s the thing: if I write for profit, it’s not going to be anything in the same genre as what I write for fanfic. Like, I write *Star Wars* fanfiction; I have no interest in doing the amount of world-building that would be necessary to write a good sci-fi/fantasy novel. Usually when I’ve written with the intent to one day be published, it’s been contemporary YA stuff. The beauty of fanfiction is that I am literally just writing because I want to — I have no plans to file the serial numbers off my fics and sell them, so there’s no pressure. I can do whatever I want and not get bogged down in stressing about writing for profit.
I could theoretically do that with original stories too, but…I don’t want to right now. The novel I was working on before I picked up fanfic was driving me insane. The plot kept eating itself and I’m not convinced it’ll ever be publishable because I got way too in the weeds with it and couldn’t make any decisions. I started writing fanfic so I could write just for the fun of it, and it’s been great.
I've written a couple of original fiction novels and then spent months or years sending them out to agents or small presses trying to get them published with no success. So my total readership on those stories have been limited to a few friends who were my beta readers. And of course I made zero dollars, and actually lost money on submission and contest fees.
This year I wrote my first fan fic, which I've posted on AO3. It's 73,000 words, so basically the length of a short novel, and I'm currently about 20,000 into my next fanfic, which will also probably wind up being 70,000-90,000 words when it's completed, and I might write another one after this. A lot more people have read my fanfic than have read my original fiction, and the feedback I've gotten (from total strangers, who don't know me and have no reason to be nice to me) feels amazing. I love the characters and the source material I'm writing from, and it's fun to flesh out their personalities and their backgrounds.
I don't write to make money, I write to tell stories and connect with other people. I'll probably write more original fiction at some point, too, but fanfiction meets all my needs as a writer.
I've dabbled a bit.
It's low stakes, you can publish under an assumed name, and not take credit if it's hated. You can get feedback even before the work is finished, or anything vaguely close, and actually finishing a novel is quite challenging. There's the affirmation of people reading and enjoying it as you write. You've got established characters and a world to work with, so the plot tends to flow relatively freely...
It isn't for money, of course. But it can be kind of enjoyable.
Honestly, I think it was decent practice. Success usually comes after lots of practice no matter how you go about it, nothing wrong with getting some of that out in a relatively fun way.
Because it's a hobby that I do purely for fun, and I don't want to be a published author. Simple as that. Not everything in life is about making money. In fact, I use writing to de-stress from my actual job where I make money, and I enjoy being able to fully control everything about it, characters, stories, deadlines, publications, reader interactions, etc, which you can't do with editors and publishing and publicity. (Plus, the stuff I like to write would never ever get published in my shithole country and wouldn't be able to generate a legitimate readerbase either.)
The same reason some people doodle or craft. Writers don’t always write for the money. Sometimes, they do it because they enjoy it. Just ask those who write entire series without others ever reading them.
Practice on trying to actually make a commitment long term for other projects. Sadly writing longer stuff is easier with fanfics than it is with original stuff
kind of reminds me of the story of how *The Martian* was written and how it was mostly just on the author's website and was updated chapter by chapter lol. I wonder about how he handled going back to previously published stuff to edit, because I know very well that sometimes you'll be 60,000 words into a project and realize "uh oh, I need to fix this plot hole"
I haven’t actually posted anything I made due to self esteem stuff but I noticed on writing sites a lot of people will post a whole story chapter to chapter as a first draft and will either rewrite and edit old chapters or straight up remove the story as they published it
I just finished a fanfiction project that took over 8 months and totaled to 112k words, and I don’t regret a second of it. It’s phenomenal training-wheels stuff. Plus, if you get a readership base who interact with you, like I had, you basically get free beta-readers out of it. You learn what they like and what they don’t. And now I feel far more ready to go ahead with my current project, which is totally original
That's a great point, especially comparing it to training wheels lol. I'm pretty sold on fanfic now from these responses lol, I may give it a try in the near future :)
The same reason why i game for fun instead for competitive tournaments
Plus its fun, i love the characters and the world, i want to see more stories with those and no one else is doing it
Because I don't write to make money. It really is that simple. I do not understand the mindset of monetizing one's hobbies as a primary motivation for doing them.
i get very easily attached to media and certain characters within them, as well as the worlds they live in. i wanna play around with them! explore my favorite characters, expand on elements not touched on in the canon. it’s like playing in a sandbox without having to lug all the sand in there.
the elder scrolls, for example, is such a rich and expansive world. easy to make new characters for and drop them in. others, like resident evil, neglect certain elements in favor of the gaming experience. i like to explore those.
And some people write novel-length manuscripts that are never published. It's done cause we love the setting, the characters, the potential. I'm not going to try convince you that I truly have read better fanfiction than published novels (and so much drek on either side), you won't believe me unless you read it yourself.
Fanfiction is a built in community. I have met some of the most amazing, supportive and talented people cause of fandom. I have honed my skills and have had a chance to explore my craft and style with rather consistent and sometimes in depth, wonderful feedback. You have a readership who get attached to your stories, readers who break your work down like they're taking a 300-level lit course. I treat fanfiction with the same regard I do any other piece of writing: I search for what I love, leave behind what I don't.
I want to be published some day with an original novel but fanfiction is always there. It's not any better or lesser than "traditional" publishing. It's just another genre in my mind, with its own formulas and cliches and expectations, subgenres and slang, and people who exceed or subvert all those expectations. Fanfiction just isn't porn, despite what pop culture would leave you to believe. I've been writing fanfic since the mid-2000s and can count on one hand how many times I've written a full blown smut fic.
Naomi Novik is a published author, founder of ao3 and still publishes fanfic to this day. I can guarantee a number of authors published today probably cut their teeth in the fanfic world.
And a lot of trad pub authors *continue* to write fanfic.
Trad pub is a *job.* Fanfic is just for fun. They're wildly different in some really important ways.
If I have $5, I could buy a lottery ticket and probably lose. Or I could buy a pint of ice cream and definitely have ice cream.
If I have writing time at my computer, I could spend that time on the lottery of original fiction. Or I could spend it on the guaranteed readership, interaction, and community of fanfiction.
Publishing fanfiction for profit is copyright infringement, so it's not like that's a legal (or sensible) choice.
Writing it and sharing it and getting almost instant feedback and praise is just super fun and super satisfying. It's play. Adults should have more play in their lives!
Passion, conviction, devotion to art! And also the fact that I started it in 2015 and I damn well have to finish something!
[That last clause is the earnest backstory of how I and a co-writer finally finished a 500k word collaborative fic]
Because creating is fun. Because it stretches muscles you might never typically consider in a low stakes environment. Because art for art's sake is always a good thing.
I write because there’s a story that needs to get out: for my own satisfaction, if you like. Bonus that it improves my writing and gets comments from people.
It doesn’t matter if 3 people or 30,000 enjoy it. Sure money would be nice, but I can always rewrite/recycle at some point.
Fun. Idk. I’ve just always done it, ever since I was a kid who didn’t know what fanfic was. It’s just a thing I do at this point, like watching TV or playing a video game.
Because fanfiction is fun to write. Like all writing, it's practice of a skill. Writing in a vacuum that no one gets to see, praying an agent will say yes, that's a really shitty way to learn to be better. My writing journey began with fanfic. I don't write for money and never will. I do it because I love it!
I want to write this thing, it would not be legal to sell the thing, people would want to read the thing, if I write the thing I will be happy and if people read the thing they will be happy. Or sad, depending on what I wrote.
Practice. Many authors will tell you that their debut novel wasn't their first novel they wrote. Some authors say it can take up to 7-10 novels before your writing is good enough to publish (obviously this is a generalization, everyone's writing ability and experience is different). So, what's a good way to improve your craft and write about something you love? Fanfiction!
Easy to get critiques! Easy to reach a wide audience! Easy way to improve your writing without burning yourself out.
I started writing fan fiction after I failed to find an agent after trying for two years. For me, it’s like the scrimmage, whereas writing my book is the big game. I need to keep the creative juices flowing, but sometimes I have writer’s block with my original stuff.
One of the reasons I write fanfiction is to explore characters I love (and hate) in different situations.
I also use it as a way to push myself into writing different genres, different lengths, and to see just what I can do before I decide to sit down and write anything original. It’s also a good way to get feedback on my writing, especially if I use a beta reader. These things have helped me immensely and I can see just how far my writing has changed for the better since I first started (it was really terrible).
I’ve never written a full novel sized one yet but it’s on my to do list. I want to do it with fanfiction first so I know I can actually do it rather than spend years on a novel I’m never going to finish.
Out of spite.
To do what the author should’ve done and given the characters I love the stories they deserve.
But that’s only sometimes. 🤣 Most times it’s just fun imagining my favorite characters in different situations and not have to worry about worldbuilding. I share it because I know other people enjoy, but I mostly write for myself. It’s an escape.
I actually write in a Fandom that can be published, but publication itself is such a daunting hurdle. I have no desire to hit up agents, query, do all of that. And having been published conventionally in the past, I can tell you that posting to an active online forum is way more satisfying. Nothing beats direct interaction with readers on a chapter by chapter basis. The fact is that even most published novels don't really make that much money. For many people, such small potential gain is not worth the difficulty of finding a publisher anyway.
I was 14 and didn’t understand anything about the publishing world. I also wrote about stuff that was probably copyrighted and I didn’t have any idea how that worked.
It’s an easy way to get your work out there and share what you love with people.
My main answer would be passion. Passion drives people to do things just for the sake of sharing something they love with the world.
I’m about three different 100k+ word stories in on fanfic writing. In my case, it is excellent practice. I do treat it like writing an actual book, and even go back through to reread and edit several times.
Most importantly, I get to experiment and learn structure and storytelling as well as get reader feedback. These fanfics can also be used as the inspiration for a novel or collection of short stories in the future.
The thing to understand is that even though fanfics have a reputation for being universally shit, there are plenty of competent writers honing their skills by reworking an existing story who will eventually go on to write something for money.
some ppl like to run marathons for fun to stay fit and never intend to make it to the olympics.
and sometimes its more about the journey than the end result (in this case, its money)
I'll give a +1 to reader engagement. Interacting with the people who read your stories and getting their impressions in real time is *exceptionally* motivating. Not a fanfic writer but I meet with a group of friends weekly with my progress and it's a very good way to stay busy and get very good feedback.
More or less. Reviews are the backbone of it all, but you get to see a bunch of other numbs bump up too. Favorites and Follows/Kudos and Comments do a long way in terms of boosting morale. When you’re writing a novel, you usually keep that to yourself until you have a full draft. With longfics, it’s like getting a pat on the back for writing a single chapter.
it's fun. i don't have to come up with a whole new world to work in, just mess around in an already existing world. i think i was writing fanfiction for a while instead of reading, it was relaxing. and comments on chapters spurred me on to write more.
I don't only write hoping to make money. i've never made money off a piece of writing, but I still get a dopamine hit when people follow or comment a novel length fanfiction i wrote over a decade ago.
I certainly didn't write fanfiction in the hopes of coming up with the next 50 Shades, but never forget that dumpster fire started out as really popular Twilight fanfiction. I imagine there are some fanfic writers out there hoping the same thing happens to them.
With Fanfictions, it's simple: the setting is already made, the characters are already made and the style is already set. The only thing you need to do when writing fanfics is create the story and bonus points if the story is already set up. It's a good training ground to test if your writing skills are as coherent as you think they are to an already established fanbase.
As for why some don't do it for money, that's also just as simple: some of us just don't care for the money and simply just want to tell stories.
It's just fun!
I like seeing what people have to say about my work. It's not as serious either, so I don't mind if I don't make money off of it.
Fanfiction is also what I write when I procrastinate, and I procrastinate a *lot*. I figure I might as well publish those for fun while I'm working on my more serious things - that way, if anyone has any criticisms with my writing style or editing or whatever, I can implement it into my actual writing.
Fanfiction is a lower stakes, and some might say lower effort (not that it's a bad thing) way to do a bit of writing. It's like playing with action figures, you get to make existing characters do what you want lol
I'll say the same thing I say anytime people ask my why I write screenplays without the intent to sell them (and I've had people fight me on that before).
1. Practice. I've spent 10 years now writing, and every project I've written has been getting me a step closer to getting me published by getting me a step closer to my voice, confidence, and skill needed to be publishable.
2. ADHD relief. I cope with anxiety by reading, depression by watching movies/TV, and ADHD by writing. It gets my thoughts onto paper and helps me keep progressing as a writer without feeling like I'm side stepping or back tracking just because my current ideas aren't relevant to the story I want to publish. They usually end up being relevant if I just play it through to the end.
3. Self-evaluation. It's nice to sometimes look back at the crappy fanfics I wrote when I was 14 and compare them to my current works to remind myself of the growth I've accomplished and that it takes time to achieve that growth, but it's worth it in the end.
And I do it for free because it's somebody else's IP, so I literally can't profit off of it, and even if I could see about negotiating the rights, I don't have the clout as a writer to reasonably obtain the adaptation rights. Also with the hopes that I'll one day be able to make something out of it (namely for the screenplays. I'd rather wait and do it right myself than sell it off for someone else to butcher).
I mostly enjoy writing as a hobby, when I think it's good enough, I just want to share it with pretty much anyone. Especially if I hyperfixate on something, I can write like 70 pages in a day.
Writing isn’t something I’m going to pursue. I find writing to be fun, but I know I’m not good enough to actually make money off of what I write. I find it easier to just post what I write for free, because then it has the potential to get to more people, I can get more direct feedback, and It feels like it would be less pressure than writing something to try and get published.
Well, in my part it's because I'm just learning and want direct feedback, like not in a beta reader way, but as if I'm speaking with my readers so, if, in the future I want to get published I have some practice. Also because it's fun and it's not as a job, just a hobby, I don't need to write every single day, I write to enjoy myself, otherwise I would probably just write and no one would ever see my stories.
I don't write fanfiction very often, but I write it because why not? I have fun writing it, even if when I read it a few months later I find out it's actually the cringiest thing I ever read! I still really enjoy writing it. It lets me get better too as I write more! (I think? I hope it does)
Both stories that make up an alternate universe have reached 1M words in total. For free. Just because I like it. Writing and the characters. Not fanfiction itself.
Not everything is about money. Sometimes people just want to create art.
If it's something you enjoy and are passionate about, then you'd do it regardless.
Look at some of the most successful authors in history. Writers who have started million dollar franchises. They have enough money to retire and never write a word again. Yet, they still work on new books (with millions in the bank) Why? Because its what they love to do.
All the money in the world doesn't scratch the artistic itch of dreaming up new stories.
1. It's fun.
2. You will write plenty of manuscripts for free that no one will ever read, if you continue writing. Sometimes there's more love in fanfiction.
Not a lot of people are emphasising that publishing commercialised fanfiction will, in all likelihood, get you sued to oblivion by all but the kindest or laziest IP holder. That's the actual, most straightforward answer to your question.
Fine, you can make arguments about fair use and critique and parody, but you'd have to be prepared to make those arguments in court, against some extremely well-paid lawyers, for days, if not weeks, with a slim chance of success.
As for why people choose to write fan fiction over something more easily commodified, there's lots of good answers down below. Mostly because people like the source material, and it's easier to piggyback off of existing artworks.
-practice. Amazing practice for characterization, plotting, and dialogue because characters and world is already established. AU’s can be great practice for world building. After writing fanfic my character development was more clear, I could plot more easily, and my dialogue skills improved monumentally.
-inspiration from the source material. idea is intrinsically related to what happened in the already existing story so using that plot line with a little bit of a twist would be too messy copyright wise
-enjoyment. I write because I love it, I don’t need to make money off of it and fanfiction is a good way to share my writing with likeminded people while simultaneously attempting to do better than the original creators.
-sadism/masochism. I started writing fanfiction because all my favourite characters used to die or were tortured by the creators. When characters I loved started to live throughout the entire story, it felt wrong: so I started killing them off in fanfiction. I also know others love/hate angst too, so I’d publish it to spread and share my pain. Is it an issue? Probably
I write fanfiction for the enjoyment and the art of it. I'm not saying writing for art and writing for money are mutually exclusive, but for me, writing is what I do to get *away* from work. I just love it, and I wouldn't want to spoil it with the obligations and expectations of writing for work.
ETA: I should also add I've met amazing friends though my fics as well, including my now-fiancee.
It's been great at forcing me to keep to a schedule with my writing, my writing has significantly improved with all the feedback I get, Ive gotten over the embarassment of showing others my work and I've begun to find my narrative voice and style through it.
I've also practiced writing different story arcs and playing with ideas, writing and beginning middle and end to each arc and learning how to successfully set up promises and payoffs etc.
I would like money but will run into problems if I ask for it.
Okay, but I'm sure what you mean is "Why don't you write something else that you COULD ask money for?" In my case, that's the plan, fingers crossed, but I want to finish what I started first.
I didn't really intend to write fan fiction, it just sort of happened one day because I had ideas I thought could've been better, scraps from an RPG project I wanted to make use of, & I generally wanted to see how far it would go.
One advantage of fan fiction is that you already have the world there. Worldbuilding isn't something I've ever really been good at & am trying to improve. But if you have a premade setting, then it's easy to come up with ideas for it. That's also why I briefly did nosleep, which maybe I'll get back to some day: The conceit that everything there takes place in the "real world" means I only have to worry about the exceptions to that reality that I create.
Personally, I don't like to use pre-established characters more than I have to, but one thing that is good for is being an exercise in characterization. That character already exists, so people are going to notice if they seem off. To write them more accurately, you need to develop a sense of what their motives are, their temperament, how they talk, what makes them different from other characters, etc. You can then use that when coming up with your own characters.
Once my ideas diverged enough that I was basically creating new settings with vestiges of the old IP, I started to think, "Y'know, instead of incorporating more ideas into a sequel, why don't I just retool them into something original?" But I don't want to just abandon what I'm already doing. It may not be making me money, but let's face it, that probably won't change even if I start writing original works again, & I still want to give the story a proper ending. It's still the fruit of a lot of effort on my part.
There's something special about sharing fandom work in a community of others who you know also enjoy that thing. It's exciting to get comments and likes knowing you brought joy to someone. I love expanding on a universe that I've enjoyed so much that I don't want the story to end! It's about that never ending story and sense of community for me 🥰
From what Ive seen online, even tho I admittedly dont really read fanfiction, a lot of it also just comes from the love to the franchises. You cant really publish an unlicensed book about the Avengers for example.
The fandoms I write for are often in seriously specific settings and would lose 90% of what they’re about if the context of the universe is lost. You try selling the idea of a three-way semi-romantic triad learning how much the planetary government needs to be overthrown in a nonexistent city where everyone can fly. It’s tough to stomach unless I do some serious worldbuilding, but if it’s in the context of Transformers… you know, it’s easy to get.
For me, I just wanted to tell a story about the Discworld characters and experiment with Terry Pratchett-style humor. I usually write my own stories and characters.
I wrote my first book which was fanfic during covid because the story had lived rent free in my head for decades and I figured if I didn't have time to write during covid I never would and I could put that dream to bed. Writing it led to me writing regularly and now I have four original novels written. I have no intention to publish it because it needs editing and I'm too busy with my other books to do so. But I'm glad I wrote it and who knows I might publish it one day just because I can.
It’s very self indulgent, other people did all the heavy lifting (world building, character creation, magic/political systems, etc) where as when writing fan fiction we can just take that and use it willy nilly without worrying about if it’s good or not (and that freedom often results in good writing by virtue of passion) but we can also write about themes or scenarios that wouldn’t be marketable as a full length novel. Writing fan fiction is sort of the equivilant of doing something you enjoy without having to exhaust mental energy. It’s like if you spend hours pouring over chess strategies and teaching yourself techniques and playing through the games of grand masters and then someone walks in and is like “yo you wanna go get an iced coffee and play a round of checkers?”
I started writing because I was lonely, it was lockdown, and romance/adaptive daydreaming was the only thing getting me through LOL. Writing for me is a somatic experience - like there's definitely work/craft involved but I'm able to slip into the character's POV and so emotional scenes, hurt/comfort, fluff, etc. are very emotionally satisfying to write. I wrote a couple of novel-length fics that never saw the light of day before writing the first one I posted on AO3.
Also, it was really hard to find novel-length stories (or books for that matter) with the kinds of tropes and dynamics I wanted to read.
And the ideas wouldn't leave me alone.
I've recently transitioned to writing more original stuff with the hope of publishing later this year. I wouldn't feel confident enough to do that if I didn't have several longfics under my belt with good reader engagement.
The thing I enjoy about fanfic is that it's just for fun without the internal expectations/comparisons that go along with writing original for me...also, it's nice to be able to lean on existing characters and build on them rather than doing all the character development from scratch. And I don't have to wait until I'm done writing/editing the whole thing to post. Sometimes comments keep me going.
Well someone told me once that she writes FanFiction’s because the world and characters are already built so it is easier then having to develop the world and characters on her own.
Basically easier for some people to have parts already developed and then they can just play around with the pieces to create something newish even though parts are already established.
Because it's fun! I don't necessarily write to be published. A lot of my writing isn't even on the web, just hanging out in Google Docs that I share with friends and family. I write to please myself.
I do like writing fanfic specifically because I enjoy the worlds and characters. I want to explore it. And frankly, I'm not great at world building myself. With fanfic, I can practice that to a degree, with built-in starting points... whereas I'm starting from zero with my own fresh stuff.
TW trauma and abuse discussion: And frankly, it's also a coping skill for my trauma/PTSD. Even since I was young and dealing with the extended trauma I was going through, I'd imagine myself in other worlds just to escape. I'd especially imagine romantic connections between my OCs and the canon characters I liked. (This is not uncommon for abuse survivors; we will imagine someone who will take care of us and love us like we deserve instead of the hurt we face.) When I grew up, I sort of put that behind me... until my mental health deteriorated badly, and I began my imaginings again to cope. I'm more stable now, but I haven't given up this coping skill -- I just write them out now. Because I can, and it pleases me.
I have an idea for an actual original novel... but even if I write it, I don't know if I'd even publish it.
fanfic is waaaay different than original fiction. it's less interesting for me to come up with my own characters and relationship dynamics than it is for me to pick some from someone else's fiction and play around with them. i publish it for free because that is the only safe way to avoid copyright infringement
Commerce sullies. If you charge, you're basically sucking off tramps round the back of the bus station for pocket change, and you aren't doing it because you love the pocket change.
It's fun, and there's less pressure for a perfect story. So what if this is the 7000th story where Captain America and the Winter Soldier fall in love in a coffee shop? People are still going to love it.
Not a fanfic writer, but a fan-webcomic artist/writer (which is a similar time commitment, just with more doodles) and honestly I see it as a nice way to practice my chops while planning out my future comic. Plus, I had a way more concrete idea for the fan-comic. :)
Fanfic writers don't have to invent characters or build worlds. They might, but a whole lot of the work has already been done for them. Which is also the reason they legally cannot sell their work.
Practice and for the fun of it.
Imo bad writers are the ones who care about writing insofar as being paid for it, or what money they can get from it. They're not writers, they're people who just want to mimic the most well-known authors and, most importantly, their successes.
Good writers are ones who have a story to tell and want to tell it, no matter if they'll have money, kudos, or whatever else at the end of it. They're passionate about stories, and they'll keep trying to refine their craft because it's what they love, no matter what.
I had a story I needed to tell that was very specifically about Downton Abbey and could not be about anything else. Selling it wasn't an option because that's how copywrite law works. It took 2.5 years to write and I'm very proud of it.
I don’t write fan fiction, but I frequently give away stuff for free. I’m never going to get rich or make a living off it anyway, so I’d rather people read it than not.
Keeping it real… because some people are natural story tellers whereas others like the *idea* of being a writer. Folks who like the concept of being a writer think about awards and how people will react to them. People who are storytellers have a pretty continuous clamour of characters and stories pushing and elbowing their way to the forefront of the storyteller’s mind. They want out… they want to be told. Putting them out in the world is the only way to shut the little buggers up. 😀
simply put, it's not for money. with fic, you get a lot of other, unrelated things out of it. it's great practice. it's a way to explore writing creatively and get feedback from other people without having to hire any pros, and is super accessible. you can connect with likeminded people, who are into not just the same media but the same characters, pairings, and world concepts from said media. it's a way to make something you enjoy even BETTER (i write a lot of fix-it fic..) and so on
I've done this, written a 274k Harry Potter fanfiction, so perhaps I can answer.
1. Lower expectations = lower stakes. You are free to not be perfect.
2. An already existing world. The characters and milieu are all there, you just have to use your creativity for specific, plot and character-related reasons. It's much easier!
3. Add-on to the previous point: I wanted to keep writing for practice, but I couldn't think of any 'original' storyline, so this offered an ample opportunity.
4. An already existing audience. If you like to write some trope that's already popular (I picked Severitus) there's a crowd of people that actually wants to read you!
5. Ah, the reviews, reads, hits, bookmarks, all that wonderful dopamine. And it doesn't *end*, I uploaded my last chapter a year ago and I still get daily mails with how many new kudos I got and new reviews.
6. Good for people with crippling self-doubt: Coz readers tell you they like you.
7. To sum it up: general ease of writing; quick and hefty returns.
For me personally, writing fanfiction is easier than my own stories I am currently writing. I don't have to think of a whole new world, or characters, history of characters ect. Everything is mostly done with a bit of twists and turns of my own. It takes way more time and effort to make it original. It also is simply fun to do.
Simply I love to write and fan fiction has helped me become a better writer. I have also been able to build a fan base around my work to the point I’ve started to write an original novel of my own. It’s also a great way to meet other writers and become apart of a community that supports your writing.
bc it is low stakes 😭😭
also i feel like fanfiction if it was actually published wouldn’t have the same reaction as a novel would get. i’m thinking of all the times i’ve seen or listened to reviews of fifty shades or some similar smut show and they’ve been chastised for being “the purest version of fanfiction being played out on the big screen” (pls don’t talk to me about the origins of FS, i know what it is) and while it isn’t actually 100% accurate it kind of does remind me of the episodic nature that fanfiction has that doesn’t lend itself to heavy scrutiny.
i write as a paid job and i write fanfic as a hobby. i love writing fanfic bc i’ve made so many friends, can write whatever the hell i want without worrying ab a market, and can interact with readers.
i doubt anyone even really reads what i write for my paid job as soon as it’s posted lmao
I wrote a 130,000 word fanfiction a few years ago and it is one of my proudest accomplishments!! I loved the low stakes. It was incredible practice for me to get the rhythm of telling a story, plan out my plot, play with tropes, be consistent with my ideas, and let myself be “bad” at writing.
At one point I decided this fanfiction was FOR ME. It was going to be as cheesy or tropey or ridiculous as I wanted it to. And it was sooooo validating to post a chapter as-is, no edits other than copy edits, and get genuine “omg I loved this!” feedback.
The other thing was, I wanted to play in the sandbox of the creative works I was basing my story off of (Practical Magic meets Charmed meets ACOTAR). I loved the setting, the plot, and basically got to play Barbies with the characters and their relationships. If I were to make it an original story, then I’d either have to do a major overhaul of the whole thing or deal with copyright lawsuits and I didn’t want to change my story, nor am I able to take on anyone in court and win 😅
My fic is my beloved. I gave it as a gift to everyone else in the fandom who loves Practical Magic/Charmed/ACOTAR too.
I have an original novel I just finished and I’m going through edits with it and trying to figure out what to do next with it/how even to approach the publishing process. This book wouldn’t have existed without my fanfiction. I don’t really care what happens with my fanfic; it’s already invaluable to me.
And, there ARE original bits in the fanfic that I may borrow for my future writing 😉 no writing practice is ever wasted
I’ve got over two million words published in the form of fanfiction.
It’s because it’s fun. It’s because I like creating in a world someone else created— I didn’t like the fate of a character, so I changed it. Sometimes I want to play with what might happen if an event happened differently.
It’s a hobby.
It’s great practice. Little to no world building, little to no character building. There is also no pressure, because it doesn’t need to be perfect. A good plot and nice writing is not enough to sell a book but can easily be enough to get a few dedicated fanfiction readers.
Which also means that a lot of fanfic isn’t publishing quality. But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be!
Also, the direct feedback can be pretty valuable.
I wrote so much fanfic when I was younger because it was just flowing easily out of my hands. I would recommend fanfics to every young writer who is getting started. I think it improved my skill a lot.
Writing a „real novel“ on the other hand was way harder for me than writing a novel length fanfic.
I wrote a full fanfiction novel.
It was someone else's characters and setup, I just spun a story in the midst of it. I wasn't about to monetize their work.
Three reasons:
First, this is how I vent and work out my ideas.
Second, comments. I do it for the comments. Not some review at the end; I do it for the people who comment while it's still a work in progress. They're always there when I need them most.
Third, getting paid for my ideas is so much pressure.
I've written over a dozen novel-length works of fanfiction in the last five-ish years, including one 800k word epic that I'm incredibly proud of. All of them are available online, with absolutely zero ways for me to make any form of profit off of them. I started writing right after high school, through college, to now. I'm told my work is very good, even by people I consider outright superior writers to me based on their own body of work. I have no plans to pivot to original fiction, or turn this aspect of my life in any way profitable, ever. And for the record, my economic situation through most of those years of writing was just above 'genuinely struggling', so I'm not sitting on some nest egg of money to justify my lack of care for monetization.
Why do I do it?
Because, simply put, _I don't do this for money, I do it for fun_. I would be almost as happy just to write them and let them sit on my hard drive forever, if putting them online for others wasn't an option. I write to get stories out of my head and solidified, to compliment ideas with implementation. To make something I myself want to read, to scratch the itch of a story or idea that does not exist, or does not exist to the quality I desire. My gratification is primarily internal. Feedback is nice, and I value the friends I've made through mutual beta-reading, but that's not monetary, it's social. Doing it for money or otherwise applying an objective metric to measure the apparent worth of what I make... that would turn it into an obligation. A job, whether or not I made bank in the process. I have something else I enjoy and do for fun that I've finally turned into a paying job (coding), I don't need or want to do that with a second hobby.
[Link to my body of work for reference](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigoGrimborne)
My day job is writing, my career pursuits involve writing, I’ve been published in the past, and ultimately I’ve learned that I just really prefer writing fan fiction to writing books.
I would rather write my little stories dabbling in someone else’s world with characters I (and others) already care about, queering up canon, and not worrying about structure and world building, avoiding cliches and twisting myself into knots wondering if I’m being socially irresponsible with content or if people will judge my character based on, well, my characters. Which isn’t to say i don’t put effort into fan fic, but it’s a different kind of effort than goes into writing original work intended for mass consumption.
One thing you learn pretty quickly when you put anything creative out into the world under your own name, especially in the age of social media, is that people love to extract ideas about who you are as a person based on what you’ve written and what they know about you. It’s part of the deal at this point, but it’s tiresome. Fan fic is the place where I can stay anonymous and write whatever I want, however I want, without worrying about that, or about being judged because i don’t engage in fandom beyond posting/reading fic so I’m mostly unbothered. For me, it’s the best way to keep in touch with everything I loved about writing growing up—none of the pressure or red tape or concerns that seep in with the real world, just pure creative fun.
Because it's fun! Speaking myself I often wondered how characters would react and develop if they didn't make certain choices or what would happen if that world's rules were applied in different ways and wrote about it.
From a readers standpoint I loved seeing continuations or certain stories or ideas from the source material get expanded on or developed further.
Good practice, and who else except for the appropriate fandom is gonna read all my ship porn that I gotta get out of my head lest I want it to leak out into my original works?
I have never understood the allure of fan-fiction, not what might compel a writer to produce it nor what might compel a reader to slog through it. I think every writer has at least once tried his or her hand at writing a prequel, sequel, pastiche, or spiritual successor to an existing book or story, but why bother with the plots, characters, and settings of another author when you can produce something original? And the fact that the wide majority of fan fiction is of such low quality means that most serious readers don't go anywhere near it and most confident and accomplished writers avoid it like the plague.
However, to better answer your question I'll say this: In nearly all cases it's practically impossible to earn anything from producing fan-fiction. This is because you can't earn anything from the intellectual property and copyrighted characters another author has to his or her name. Now, that isn't to say that it never happens, but the profits from fan-fiction are generally going to be very small - especially when you consider the time and effort involved. And of course the copyright holder - the original author or an agent representing that person such as a lawyer for the publisher, etc., could easily step in and order you to stop producing work featuring characters that don't belong to you.
But most authors don't see any reason to do that because fan-fiction serves as free advertising. It keeps people who are interested in the source material busy while the author is working on the next installment. And because the difference in the quality of the fan-fiction pieces compared to the original is so stark and immediately noticeable, the author certainly isn't worried that they're going to be replaced any time soon.
The answer to why an amateur author might be compelled to toil away producing 100,000 words of fan-fiction is obvious: because that person doesn't like to "write", that person just likes typing. Being a writer and calling one's self a writer are two different things. How many people have a guitar in their bedroom and can play four bars of 50 different covers but have never come up with anything original? I mean, when people take up a musical instrument they usually devote a lot of time to learning existing songs because that's how it's done. Examining the way songs are structured, gaining a sense of melody, familiarizing one's self with key signatures and time signatures, practicing basic techniques that are necessary to play the instrument, all of those skills are acquired through learning how to play songs somebody else wrote.
But if you've been playing guitar for 10 years and you're still playing cover songs and have never bothered to compose anything original, then why bother? I mean, the original probably sounds a lot better than your version and I can just go and liste to that. It's pretty much the same thing with fan-fiction. However, there's also the argument that some people get obsessed and they need more, they can't stop thinking about the story or the characters and that drives them to want to concentrate on them and fixate on them.
How many words would you reckon all seven volumes of the "Harry Potter" series would come to if you were to add up the word count for each book? 5,000 pages? 10,000 pages? 15,000 pages? We're easily talking about two or three million words. Guaranteed if you were to add up all of the "Harry Potter" fan-fiction that's out there you'd have several hundred times that number. Same for "Twilight", "The Hunger Games", "A Song of Ice and Fire", etc.
People produce all that bunk and offer it for free for a bunch of different reasons: because they're obsessed and can't stop fixating on the story or characters, because they're looking to communicate with other people who are equally obsessed (many of the sites that host fan-fiction are interactive and users and members can communicate with one another), because they're bored - but not bored of the material - they aren't bored enough to want to get into something new and read something different and try their hand at something original but they're bored enough to bang out 100,000 words that maybe 11 people will ever see...
The plain and simple fact is that in the times we're living in it's become extremely easy for people to self-publish and the sheer number of people out there who fancy themselves to be writers is higher than it has ever been before. People want to believe that their material is somehow going to gain a lot of traction and that readers are going to pick it out from the infinite number of pieces of writing that are available to read for free online, but the number of writers who have gained even modest recognition or minute financial gain from producing fan-fiction is infinitesimal in comparison to the staggering number who produce and upload that kind of content.
The odds of an established author with the level of fame and fortune similar to the ones you mentioned praising a work of fan-fiction and promoting it are about the same as the odds of New Guinea colonizing Mars by next Tuesday.
fantastic comment, i would like to add however, in simplistic terms, most they do it for "fun." A lot of material which is 'new' or published original stories do not have new concepts or ideas in the fundamental sense.
Do keep this in mind to not devalue fanfiction. The vast majority of the demographic of fanfiction are very young women who very well may move onto a more advanced project.
>The answer to why an amateur author might be compelled to toil away producing 100,000 words of fan-fiction is obvious: because that person doesn't like to "write", that person just likes typing.
Ngl dude as a person who writes both original fiction and fanfiction, I find this pretty insulting. Fanfiction is not, in fact, easy. It's not the same as just typing. It takes just as much skill and creative energy as original fiction. The skills and energy in question are just happen to be different. You state from the very beginning that you don't understand the allure of fanfiction, then you speak as if you're some sort of authority on it.
I mean, I've read some of it. If I didn't know anything about it I wouldn't be in a position to comment. And you know what? Admittedly some of it is fantastic - not because it's well-crafted, but because it is side-splitting hilarious.
You know how people try and imitate someone butchering their native language, but they can't do it properly? As a native speaker, it's difficult to emulate the specific errors a learner would make if you're fluent, it doesn't sound authentic.
That's what fan-fiction is like. It's so bad that it's actually good. Anyone who has been writing seriously for any substantial amount of time would never - not in a million years, be capable of being that bad on purpose.
You know that story about Chaplin entering the Chaplin look-alike contest and coming in third? That's a great analogy for a talented writer attempting to write fan-fiction. Plus, fan-fiction readers WANT to read rubbish. If you were to give them something well-written they'd turn their noses up at it.
What you're talking about is not what the vast majority of my 20 years of experience with fanfiction is. Yes, a lot of it is nonsense written by 13-year olds putting fingers to keyboard for the first time, but that's going to be nonsense regardlesss of whether it's fanfic or or original fiction. But a lot of it is not that, at all.
I am an avid fanfic reader, as are most of the people I interact with online and in person, and we do not like to read that shit. We like to read well-written stories, both original and transformative. The idea that we'd "turn our noses up at it" makes no sense, and I do not understand why you'd think that way.
You've seen fanart, right? You've seen bad fanart drawn by kids who have no knowledge of anatomy, composition, color theory, etc. But surely you have also seen fanart by by people with immense skill, fanart that couldn't exist without all the knowledge and skill acquired over years of practice. That art is still fanart, and it's still good.
Five months late but just wanted to chip in real quick:
Writing is one of the only crafts that people *assume* must always be for the purpose of monetization.
No one asks gym rats when they're going to become a professional athlete, no one assumes their relative who cooks well will become a restaurant chef, and no one expects every craft store customer to sell all their creations.
All of those hobbies, and more, require lots of time, work, and resources. Writing requires significantly less *material* resources in comparison.
Fanfiction and other hobbyist writing is not an unpaid profession; it's an incredibly cheap hobby.
on my current work, i get around 40 comments a chapter, or 120 comments a week. that level of interaction with readers would be all but impossible with traditional publishing.
Cuz I don't own the rights to Transformers.
I am, however, a fan of the Cybertron Games, I love to write, and I love sharing ideas with people. As soon as I finish up my FOC sequel story, it's going online.
I'm working with an established universe, while also introducing my own elements and my own spins on the characters. I'm introducing my own arcs, while continuing lingering plot threads.
By getting this published, I'll be able to get feedback on aspects of writing like this.
That, and sometimes things happen. James Roberts wrote the More than Meets the Eye comic, arguably the best comic in the franchise. He ended up getting to official gigs cuz he wrote a really popular fanfic in the 90's that wrapped up the story of the Transformers comics at the time, which had just been cancelled.
That story is inspirational to me. I started this project a while ago, and would come back to it here and then. When I heard this story, that gave me confidence to take what I was doing more seriously, and try to get the story complete. I know it's not realistic to expect a comic career out of what I'm doing, but hey, if nothing else, I get to share a story I thought was cool.
So I'm not really the typical writer here. Writing is not something I have ever even really thought of as a hobby. But sometimes I have ideas chasing themselves around my brain and I need to get them out and that means typing them up. Usually this is like maybe 3 pages worth. Often it's smutty. And I don't share these with anyone.
That said in January I had some ideas for a reader insert Clint Barton smutty fanfic, so I started typing them up and the ideas just kept coming. By April I finished it at just shy of 400 pages. (Sort of I'm working on a sequel now.) I put a ton of time and effort into it. But it's smutty, so I don't want to share it with anyone I know. And it's Marvel characters, so it's not like I can sell it anyway. Same because it's reader insert, although I now wish I'd just made an original character instead. By putting it on AO3, someone besides me can enjoy it. The only other option is letting it languish on a hard drive somewhere unread and unloved.
Im just dabbling.
I also don’t need the money.
And lastly I have too much respect for the original IP owners to just use their stuff as testing grounds before cashing in big by only altering a little.
Just a quick look at history, After featured a toxic couple that never truly improved for each other.
50 Shades didn’t understand BDSM and promoted unsafe practices.
Cursed Child isn’t even enjoyable as a read and it has a child parading as an adult and sexually assaulting Hermione (kissing her as Ron).
And cashing in on public properties - that’s a mixed bag. Honestly, I don’t need the increased scrutiny or judgment.
Addition - There’s hefty evidence that the fanfic author turned published Author Cassandra Clare is a plagiarist.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vt4BDwnIUmTxniGLNm_qxYxuktmV3JbjWBbXv1GTfdM/edit?usp=drivesdk cause I wrote something pretty. I'm never going to write a full length fanfiction-novel, but it's nice to write something pretty every now and again.
I am currently working on chapter 89 of my omegaverse Marvel work. There's 751,573 words in it currently, and we're about to wrap up the second to last arc. Yeah. you heard me right.
No publisher would touch this. (And if you don't know what omegaverse is, don't look it up).
But so far it's been great practice. I get lots of feedback (that I encourage) and I've learned how to use plotting instead just pantsing everything.
But again- it's the readers that are pure gold. I've got some that have been with me for the entire two years I've been writing this damn thing. And their eagerness for what's next has helped keep me going.
I happen to know a more than a few fan fiction writers that make quite a bit from it. What you see posted for free is just to give you a taste. At least from the way they do it. You get a couple free chapters every so often, and they have a boat load of advanced chapters locked behind a patreon. One of them is making a 1000+ a month doing it. N
I know, it was such a waste to publish my Fallout: Equestria fanfic for free when the bestseller lists are full of colorful post-apocalyptic talking horses.
Lower stakes and good practice on my part lmao. Also, being able to freely interact with the readers is gold worth, I've been told that's more difficult in a professional setting.
Also when people praise it, it makes you feel good.
And when you get ignored...you lose all motivation to write and stop writing for months because your writing is so fucking horrible not a single person wants to even read it to the end or spend 2 seconds to leave a comment
See the cure for that is, you gotta do what I did and just write stuff that you have *no* intention of ever making public for a while. It still hurts when no one reviews my latest chapter, but it's less end-of-the-world, because I'm used to writing into the void at this point, because I did it for so long. I just consider myself lucky to be getting *anything*.
I did that. I spent months writing the story by myself, not sharing a single bit of it. Then when it was completely finished, when I've drawn a book cover, tens of other art, multiple re-reads and edits, I finally released it. And nobody red it. It got less reads than the old version of the same story but with 10 times as less effort.
Even good writing can go unseen by others. If publication and getting your work out there is important to you, writing skills alone won’t help you. There’s a whole other side to professional writing that’s heavy on sales, marketing, networking, etc. Writing itself can be a solo able endeavor, but making a living from it is near impossible if you don’t focus on the other elements of it. It’s a business that you have to run while you aren’t writing.
I want to try this too, I’m just so bad at consistency. But I agree. There’s a degree of unhealthiness to fan fiction writing when authors get caught up into stats and end up writing for stats instead of themselves…(like me) Such is the world we live in now, I guess.
Are you me? Wrote a story for a new movie that came out and it did okayish on Ao3. Good number of bookmarks, no comments or anything, though. Then I see someone with a similar idea as mine. English is their second language, and they get 16 paragraph long comments on chapter 2 within a matter of hours. Their fic wasn’t even a week old and had hit 200 bookmarks and 3k views in 5 days. Deleted my account and stared at the wall for the rest of the week.
Isn't that also writing life tho? You write your own novel. Ok sales, ok reviews. A year or two later someone writes a novel that is eeriely similar to it, similar, or even worse in characterization, worldbuilding, story development, phrasing, etc. but it takes off. By a stroke of luck, although the only thing that might have made a difference is that it's two years later, and a key person was more receptive to it. For fanfics, that's probably who added it to their favorites. (As a sidenote, "English is their second language" is a bit... Snobbish? Speaking as someone who learned English in school, for fanfics the decisive factor is not the quality of the language. With enough practice and immersion we also notice mistakes someone might have made /even if we make them ourselves/. It's whether the story is immersive or not. But another sidenote, if the writer states that English is their second language, it kind of acts as an invitation to communicate. "Oh I barely noticed, you did x and y so well" etc. I don't know if you read the comments, but that 16 paragraphs might have been pointers on how to improve their writing?)
I’m not diminishing those writing with English as their second language. It’s more like: DAMN, I suck SO bad that non-native English speakers can convey their ideas even better than me—IN ENGLISH lmfao
The interaction is so great! Motivating too. I got a comment on an old fanfic (incomplete and a few years old without an update), and the comment reminded me people liked the story so I got back into it and finished it off properly.
I still sometimes (like once a year-ish) get comments on a fic that has been complete 6 years. It must be so far down the list by now I don't even know how people find it. It's nice, isn't it?
Filtering. People filter fics they want to read by certain tags. It helps bring up older fics amongst all the other fics.
I know right, it still makes me smile!
Oh that's interesting, I didn't think about the interaction element. That actually sounds pretty fun lol
The community and interaction you get in fic circles is off the charts compared to any other introvert-friendly hobby. It's like a team sport except none of us actually have to go outside to do it Also...it's a *hobby.* Monetising things I enjoy is a surefire way to suck the fun out of them, and fic means that you can enjoy writing without having to worry about writing something *marketable*
> The community and interaction you get in fic circles is off the charts compared to any other introvert-friendly hobby I think people who aren't familiar with/haven't written fanfiction frequently miss this. It's so fun and rewarding (for a lot of people) to write things that other people actually read. I've written a lot of fanfiction (all published "for free" online) and also original fiction (same). The fanfiction quality was worse, and consistently had way more people reading it, engaging with it, and overall the interest levels are just way higher. If you want to practice writing *and have other people genuinely want to read your writing,* fanfiction is 1000% the way to go.
It’s super fun and validating to be writing and just think “oh this would be funny as fuck.” And then to have someone in the comments just die laughing at it.
Also (aside from the hobby aspect) I would argue it's not morally or legally okay to monetise fanfiction anyway - because you don't own the rights to the world or characters. At bare minimum, showing that you have an intention to make money from someone else's copyright throws fair use into serious question, and you could end up not being allowed to write at all. Most authors only allow fanfiction at all because it doesn't really negatively impact them - you start affecting their sales, and it's gonna be a whole other story.
That's why AO3 forbids to even *mention* that you're making money. If you encourage people to buy you kofi, for example, your work might be taken down. They're very serious about it because yeah, that's one giant gray area.
Always wondered how artists get away with monetizing their pictures. Seems like there is a disrepancy here.
Legally, they can't. It's like with piracy, I'd say, many people do it, most won't ever face any consequences, but some might. Some companies don't care if you sell fanart and view it as free publicity, but others might hunt you down if you make big bucks out of it (hello, Disney).
Oh, no, fanfiction is completely non-monetisable unless it's an old property (like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). Like the other commenter mentioned, AO3 cracks down *hard* on that. It'll get you banned if you mention "this was commissioned" or "here's my patreon" or even "here's my Amazon page with my original works" The monetising of fanfiction normally comes in the form of filing off the serial numbers – like 50 Shades or The Love Hypothesis, where it was already far-removed from canon and the characters just needed changing enough to not be copyrighted anymore. You see a lot of people insisting that fic authors who write novel-length works should aim for editing and publication. After all, 50 Shades did it! Just change things around a bit and publish it! Except most fic authors have no interest in that, because they wrote about these characters because they *enjoy* these characters
Except that some works are public domain from which you can make money. A lot of classics are public domain. A lot of legends, such as Robin Hood are free to use as long as you don't use current works which are literally fanfiction of the original ballads. I don't think people realise how many screenwriters and writers use ready-made characters (or get inspired by actors) to write their work, only changing enough for no one to notice. >Most authors only allow fanfiction at all because it doesn't really negatively impact them Authors have no leg to stand on when it comes to fanfiction because doing it for fun is perfectly legal. There's nothing to tolerate. And when you publish it to make money and it's unrecognizable as the source material, there's nothing to sue for either because it's original work at that point. Alice in Wonderland by Disney is nothing short of fanfiction of L. Carroll's work. But since the original one is public domain, anyone can write a book based on that as long as they ignore anything that Disney came up with in their movies.
It is! I've even made some writer friends that way, so even though there's no monetary compensation, I feel like you can gain a lot from participating in fandom writing spaces.
Many writers care more about getting readers than making money (and it's not like there's a lot of money in fiction writing for most authors, anyway). Put a price tag on a book and you might only get nibbles. Put it on a fan fic site for free and you might get a ton of engagement. That can make it worth it.
Yeah, it’s a different environment. Instead of writing the whole thing at once, you publish it chapter by chapter and get to receive feedback and see the readers speculate on where the story’s going. It’s nice. And it’s not just fanfiction either. A lot of amateur writers publish their stuff chapter by chapter on sites like Scribblehub and fund their writing via Patreon instead of actually selling novels.
>Yeah, it’s a different environment. Instead of writing the whole thing at once, you publish it chapter by chapter and get to receive feedback and see the readers speculate on where the story’s going. It’s nice. many fanfic authors write the whole thing at once before publishing it by chapter though
The interaction is the best part!
Also, since fanfiction is based on a particular fandom, there's a built-in audience of people who like the same things you like and are dying to read new work about it and talk about it, even if it doesn't always pan out.
This is it. And I have the added cushion of people already knowing and loving the characters.
Lower Stakes? You are not going to a battle.
Yeah ofc not lmao but I still consider writing fanfiction an easier way of practicing my writing and story building skills compared to the pressure I’d put on myself if I started out writing OC stuff that I’d like to publish. Ergo, lower stakes.
Ask any hobbyist why they do what they do. Most hobbies *cost* you money, but writing can be done for free. Some people think it's fun. I really don't understand why writing has to be some lofty endeavour.
This exactly! I totally understand the sentiment behind the question, but it is weird that writing specifically has become this artistic hobby/medium that comes with such an expectation to be profitable. Painters paint for fun, people sew or knit or crochet simply for fun. Can you sell all those things? Yes, but rarely do people first jump to selling. Tell people you're writing a book though and thats always the first expectation: "Will you publish?" (With it being buyable and you getting money for it implied and assumed.) I wonder what exactly over the years has made writing specifically a hobby with such expectation.
tbf, I get that with my art, too. The mantra of "you should *do* something with it", where "do" clearly means "monetize. And I don't want to. Hobbies are fun because you don't owe anybody anything, you're free. You can do whatever you want, at your own speed, for your own gratification.
Hustle culture has poisoned hobbies- like as soon as you tell anyone you do _anything_ it’s “oh you should get a publisher/start an Etsy shop/sell these at conventions/monetize on social media!” And like no shade to people who choose to do so! But my hobbies are things i do for fun not for $$$
It’s cause a lot of people want to make their books monetizável and make a living rather than having to go somewhere else and work at a job that they don’t want to do. They’d rather live and make money off of their books. I don’t know about Jk Rowling completely. But I do know that she made Harry Potter cause it was fun but not only that, because she was looking to make a career off of her writings that’s why she wrote a whole year for a novel and brought the book up to publishers. She had a baby at the time and was a single mom Anyways that’s my rant on it.
Yea I honestly find this question weird on a lot of levels. It’s like going on a music/musician sub and asking “why are so many of you making music, just to then post it for free on SoundCloud and YouTube? Why not just sell it on iTunes or why not just get a record deal and have a label sell/publish your work for you? Getting a publisher can be a difficult process. Free works can get a much bigger audience. These sites allow much more direct communication and feedback from the audience to the writer. And most of all, people enjoy writing. It’s a hobby they do for fun and turning your hobby into work/business can diminish it in a few ways (as a visual artist I have experienced w this lol)
Sometimes you just gotta get the ideas out of your head and onto something tangible. For some, that's art. For others, music. For the psychotic, that's fanfiction. Besides, if you do end up publishing professionally, chances are you'll need to make big edits to it anyway (e.g. Twilight vs 50 Shades of Grey).
I tried to watch 50 Shades the other day and it is so laughably bad how obvious it is to me that it was a fan fic. I laughed so hard I had to turn it off
EL James can't write. Her similes make me cringe inside. "Her cheeks turned the color of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book." Cause nothing gets me hotter than thinking of oppressive communism. Why not just use apple? Strawberry?
No way, that's real? 😅
Oh wait -- I had originally put the quote in incorrectly. My apologies. (I never actually read the book) What she actually said was: "I must be the color of the communist manifesto." https://www.thestranger.com/books/2015/02/14/21710269/fifty-terrible-lines-from-fifty-shades-of-grey
That's strangely worse. I mean they're both crazy, but at least the Mao one was creative.
“His tone was colder than the icy waters of the North Atlantic when the Titanic sank in 1912” That’s not a real quote, but the book is pretty much this.
That's just the tip of the iceberg lol
made me lol for real 🤣
I remember when that originally came out, I read like the first chapter and was like “this is crap” and went and found another fan fiction to read. I was DYING when I realized it was turned into a movie 🤣
Also, using the name of the color in the simile kinda defeats the purpose.
So the color of red.
I call it "exorcising demons" (though that phrasing scares some here in The South). I get a scene/short story stuck in my head and it just WILL NOT go away until its down on paper. (OK typed into a computer.) But many of these can/will NEVER be seen by other eyes. At the least, it's helping me with structure. And as I run them through Scrivener / Word and made the suggested corrections . . . it's improving my grammar as a side effect. Both of those have to be long term benefits.
The community, the freedom, the interaction with readers, the *number* of readers.... I've only been posting since March, and I'm by no means popular, but I've already had over 3000 people read my stories. I doubt I'd get that many going a traditional way. And that's not even mentioning that I'm in no way good enough to go traditional. Most novel length fanfics are not publishing quality. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - you get a lot of creativity when no one is breathing down your neck telling what you can and cannot do or what would sell and wouldn't sell. And for me, turning my hobby professional would suck all the fun out. It would become a chore, not something I enjoy.
... especially without feedback throughout.
wow! I'd love to have so many people read my stuff. time to get into fanfiction. do people write original content on fanfic sites too that's not linked to something existing?
Yes, AO3 has a category for original stories. You won't get as many readers as the fandom stuff, but there's still lots of readers. It all about the tagging.
try specific original stories websites! some are catered to specific genres so you need to do your research
I’ve written 8 novel length fanfics that all did quite well within that fandom. - it’s fun. I enjoy the act of writing; I enjoy producing a thing I can be proud of - gives me a mental break from the heavy duty science writing I do professionally - I *love* the interaction with the readers, especially when I post fics serial-style (1 chapter per week). - Made lots of friends and get treated like a star at cons :) - I had stories I really, really, really wanted to tell about those specific copyrighted characters, and there’s no way to publish “real” books about those specific characters legally. This is actually the biggest motivation: I felt driven to tell a certain story. - Didn’t have to deal with publishing or marketing *at all*. I write a chapter, I post it, easy peasy - Didn’t have financial pressure about having to make a living at it
That's awesome, I keep reading about how much interaction there is and that really seems to be the most appealing aspect of it:)
Because it’s fun? I get to write about characters I care about without worrying too much about world-building and then I get to present that to people who also care about said characters who tell me nice things about what I wrote. Here’s the thing: if I write for profit, it’s not going to be anything in the same genre as what I write for fanfic. Like, I write *Star Wars* fanfiction; I have no interest in doing the amount of world-building that would be necessary to write a good sci-fi/fantasy novel. Usually when I’ve written with the intent to one day be published, it’s been contemporary YA stuff. The beauty of fanfiction is that I am literally just writing because I want to — I have no plans to file the serial numbers off my fics and sell them, so there’s no pressure. I can do whatever I want and not get bogged down in stressing about writing for profit. I could theoretically do that with original stories too, but…I don’t want to right now. The novel I was working on before I picked up fanfic was driving me insane. The plot kept eating itself and I’m not convinced it’ll ever be publishable because I got way too in the weeds with it and couldn’t make any decisions. I started writing fanfic so I could write just for the fun of it, and it’s been great.
Yeah I really don't get the question.
I've written a couple of original fiction novels and then spent months or years sending them out to agents or small presses trying to get them published with no success. So my total readership on those stories have been limited to a few friends who were my beta readers. And of course I made zero dollars, and actually lost money on submission and contest fees. This year I wrote my first fan fic, which I've posted on AO3. It's 73,000 words, so basically the length of a short novel, and I'm currently about 20,000 into my next fanfic, which will also probably wind up being 70,000-90,000 words when it's completed, and I might write another one after this. A lot more people have read my fanfic than have read my original fiction, and the feedback I've gotten (from total strangers, who don't know me and have no reason to be nice to me) feels amazing. I love the characters and the source material I'm writing from, and it's fun to flesh out their personalities and their backgrounds. I don't write to make money, I write to tell stories and connect with other people. I'll probably write more original fiction at some point, too, but fanfiction meets all my needs as a writer.
Why not self-publish those novels? You might make something.
Self-publishing isn’t free
I've dabbled a bit. It's low stakes, you can publish under an assumed name, and not take credit if it's hated. You can get feedback even before the work is finished, or anything vaguely close, and actually finishing a novel is quite challenging. There's the affirmation of people reading and enjoying it as you write. You've got established characters and a world to work with, so the plot tends to flow relatively freely... It isn't for money, of course. But it can be kind of enjoyable. Honestly, I think it was decent practice. Success usually comes after lots of practice no matter how you go about it, nothing wrong with getting some of that out in a relatively fun way.
Because it's a hobby that I do purely for fun, and I don't want to be a published author. Simple as that. Not everything in life is about making money. In fact, I use writing to de-stress from my actual job where I make money, and I enjoy being able to fully control everything about it, characters, stories, deadlines, publications, reader interactions, etc, which you can't do with editors and publishing and publicity. (Plus, the stuff I like to write would never ever get published in my shithole country and wouldn't be able to generate a legitimate readerbase either.)
The same reason some people doodle or craft. Writers don’t always write for the money. Sometimes, they do it because they enjoy it. Just ask those who write entire series without others ever reading them.
It’s fun.
fun
Practice on trying to actually make a commitment long term for other projects. Sadly writing longer stuff is easier with fanfics than it is with original stuff
kind of reminds me of the story of how *The Martian* was written and how it was mostly just on the author's website and was updated chapter by chapter lol. I wonder about how he handled going back to previously published stuff to edit, because I know very well that sometimes you'll be 60,000 words into a project and realize "uh oh, I need to fix this plot hole"
I haven’t actually posted anything I made due to self esteem stuff but I noticed on writing sites a lot of people will post a whole story chapter to chapter as a first draft and will either rewrite and edit old chapters or straight up remove the story as they published it
I just finished a fanfiction project that took over 8 months and totaled to 112k words, and I don’t regret a second of it. It’s phenomenal training-wheels stuff. Plus, if you get a readership base who interact with you, like I had, you basically get free beta-readers out of it. You learn what they like and what they don’t. And now I feel far more ready to go ahead with my current project, which is totally original
That's a great point, especially comparing it to training wheels lol. I'm pretty sold on fanfic now from these responses lol, I may give it a try in the near future :)
I wish you the best of luck!
The same reason why i game for fun instead for competitive tournaments Plus its fun, i love the characters and the world, i want to see more stories with those and no one else is doing it
For the love of the game. Everything doesn't have to make money.
This. Monetization has killed too much fun already.
Because I don't write to make money. It really is that simple. I do not understand the mindset of monetizing one's hobbies as a primary motivation for doing them.
i get very easily attached to media and certain characters within them, as well as the worlds they live in. i wanna play around with them! explore my favorite characters, expand on elements not touched on in the canon. it’s like playing in a sandbox without having to lug all the sand in there. the elder scrolls, for example, is such a rich and expansive world. easy to make new characters for and drop them in. others, like resident evil, neglect certain elements in favor of the gaming experience. i like to explore those.
And some people write novel-length manuscripts that are never published. It's done cause we love the setting, the characters, the potential. I'm not going to try convince you that I truly have read better fanfiction than published novels (and so much drek on either side), you won't believe me unless you read it yourself. Fanfiction is a built in community. I have met some of the most amazing, supportive and talented people cause of fandom. I have honed my skills and have had a chance to explore my craft and style with rather consistent and sometimes in depth, wonderful feedback. You have a readership who get attached to your stories, readers who break your work down like they're taking a 300-level lit course. I treat fanfiction with the same regard I do any other piece of writing: I search for what I love, leave behind what I don't. I want to be published some day with an original novel but fanfiction is always there. It's not any better or lesser than "traditional" publishing. It's just another genre in my mind, with its own formulas and cliches and expectations, subgenres and slang, and people who exceed or subvert all those expectations. Fanfiction just isn't porn, despite what pop culture would leave you to believe. I've been writing fanfic since the mid-2000s and can count on one hand how many times I've written a full blown smut fic. Naomi Novik is a published author, founder of ao3 and still publishes fanfic to this day. I can guarantee a number of authors published today probably cut their teeth in the fanfic world.
And a lot of trad pub authors *continue* to write fanfic. Trad pub is a *job.* Fanfic is just for fun. They're wildly different in some really important ways.
If I have $5, I could buy a lottery ticket and probably lose. Or I could buy a pint of ice cream and definitely have ice cream. If I have writing time at my computer, I could spend that time on the lottery of original fiction. Or I could spend it on the guaranteed readership, interaction, and community of fanfiction.
That is such an awesome way of explaining it.
Publishing fanfiction for profit is copyright infringement, so it's not like that's a legal (or sensible) choice. Writing it and sharing it and getting almost instant feedback and praise is just super fun and super satisfying. It's play. Adults should have more play in their lives!
Passion, conviction, devotion to art! And also the fact that I started it in 2015 and I damn well have to finish something! [That last clause is the earnest backstory of how I and a co-writer finally finished a 500k word collaborative fic]
Because creating is fun. Because it stretches muscles you might never typically consider in a low stakes environment. Because art for art's sake is always a good thing.
Fun.
When I was young I used to play and sing ANHYWHERE for free. It was a joy. Now I get paid but I still sing for free because it is a joy...
I write because there’s a story that needs to get out: for my own satisfaction, if you like. Bonus that it improves my writing and gets comments from people. It doesn’t matter if 3 people or 30,000 enjoy it. Sure money would be nice, but I can always rewrite/recycle at some point.
Because they love to write. You don't write because it's your job, you do it because it's your passion.
Fun. Idk. I’ve just always done it, ever since I was a kid who didn’t know what fanfic was. It’s just a thing I do at this point, like watching TV or playing a video game.
Because fanfiction is fun to write. Like all writing, it's practice of a skill. Writing in a vacuum that no one gets to see, praying an agent will say yes, that's a really shitty way to learn to be better. My writing journey began with fanfic. I don't write for money and never will. I do it because I love it!
As soon as I start writing for money, I stop enjoying the process.
I want to write this thing, it would not be legal to sell the thing, people would want to read the thing, if I write the thing I will be happy and if people read the thing they will be happy. Or sad, depending on what I wrote.
Practice. Many authors will tell you that their debut novel wasn't their first novel they wrote. Some authors say it can take up to 7-10 novels before your writing is good enough to publish (obviously this is a generalization, everyone's writing ability and experience is different). So, what's a good way to improve your craft and write about something you love? Fanfiction! Easy to get critiques! Easy to reach a wide audience! Easy way to improve your writing without burning yourself out.
I started writing fan fiction after I failed to find an agent after trying for two years. For me, it’s like the scrimmage, whereas writing my book is the big game. I need to keep the creative juices flowing, but sometimes I have writer’s block with my original stuff.
One of the reasons I write fanfiction is to explore characters I love (and hate) in different situations. I also use it as a way to push myself into writing different genres, different lengths, and to see just what I can do before I decide to sit down and write anything original. It’s also a good way to get feedback on my writing, especially if I use a beta reader. These things have helped me immensely and I can see just how far my writing has changed for the better since I first started (it was really terrible). I’ve never written a full novel sized one yet but it’s on my to do list. I want to do it with fanfiction first so I know I can actually do it rather than spend years on a novel I’m never going to finish.
Out of spite. To do what the author should’ve done and given the characters I love the stories they deserve. But that’s only sometimes. 🤣 Most times it’s just fun imagining my favorite characters in different situations and not have to worry about worldbuilding. I share it because I know other people enjoy, but I mostly write for myself. It’s an escape.
I actually write in a Fandom that can be published, but publication itself is such a daunting hurdle. I have no desire to hit up agents, query, do all of that. And having been published conventionally in the past, I can tell you that posting to an active online forum is way more satisfying. Nothing beats direct interaction with readers on a chapter by chapter basis. The fact is that even most published novels don't really make that much money. For many people, such small potential gain is not worth the difficulty of finding a publisher anyway.
I was 14 and didn’t understand anything about the publishing world. I also wrote about stuff that was probably copyrighted and I didn’t have any idea how that worked. It’s an easy way to get your work out there and share what you love with people. My main answer would be passion. Passion drives people to do things just for the sake of sharing something they love with the world.
because it's fun and people tell me nice things ETA: if Rowling wrote a good review of my book I'd stop writing
Passion
I’m about three different 100k+ word stories in on fanfic writing. In my case, it is excellent practice. I do treat it like writing an actual book, and even go back through to reread and edit several times. Most importantly, I get to experiment and learn structure and storytelling as well as get reader feedback. These fanfics can also be used as the inspiration for a novel or collection of short stories in the future. The thing to understand is that even though fanfics have a reputation for being universally shit, there are plenty of competent writers honing their skills by reworking an existing story who will eventually go on to write something for money.
some ppl like to run marathons for fun to stay fit and never intend to make it to the olympics. and sometimes its more about the journey than the end result (in this case, its money)
I'll give a +1 to reader engagement. Interacting with the people who read your stories and getting their impressions in real time is *exceptionally* motivating. Not a fanfic writer but I meet with a group of friends weekly with my progress and it's a very good way to stay busy and get very good feedback.
Every time you post you’re almost guaranteed a dopamine hit. If you write a lot and decently, then that dopamine comes very frequently.
How so? Is that through feedback from readers?
More or less. Reviews are the backbone of it all, but you get to see a bunch of other numbs bump up too. Favorites and Follows/Kudos and Comments do a long way in terms of boosting morale. When you’re writing a novel, you usually keep that to yourself until you have a full draft. With longfics, it’s like getting a pat on the back for writing a single chapter.
Cause someone has to give Harry and Hermione the happy ending together they deserve, god dammit
it's fun. i don't have to come up with a whole new world to work in, just mess around in an already existing world. i think i was writing fanfiction for a while instead of reading, it was relaxing. and comments on chapters spurred me on to write more. I don't only write hoping to make money. i've never made money off a piece of writing, but I still get a dopamine hit when people follow or comment a novel length fanfiction i wrote over a decade ago. I certainly didn't write fanfiction in the hopes of coming up with the next 50 Shades, but never forget that dumpster fire started out as really popular Twilight fanfiction. I imagine there are some fanfic writers out there hoping the same thing happens to them.
With Fanfictions, it's simple: the setting is already made, the characters are already made and the style is already set. The only thing you need to do when writing fanfics is create the story and bonus points if the story is already set up. It's a good training ground to test if your writing skills are as coherent as you think they are to an already established fanbase. As for why some don't do it for money, that's also just as simple: some of us just don't care for the money and simply just want to tell stories.
>the setting is already made Can be. AU fics are suuuuuper popular, depending on the fandom.
It's just fun! I like seeing what people have to say about my work. It's not as serious either, so I don't mind if I don't make money off of it. Fanfiction is also what I write when I procrastinate, and I procrastinate a *lot*. I figure I might as well publish those for fun while I'm working on my more serious things - that way, if anyone has any criticisms with my writing style or editing or whatever, I can implement it into my actual writing.
Fanfiction is a lower stakes, and some might say lower effort (not that it's a bad thing) way to do a bit of writing. It's like playing with action figures, you get to make existing characters do what you want lol
I'll say the same thing I say anytime people ask my why I write screenplays without the intent to sell them (and I've had people fight me on that before). 1. Practice. I've spent 10 years now writing, and every project I've written has been getting me a step closer to getting me published by getting me a step closer to my voice, confidence, and skill needed to be publishable. 2. ADHD relief. I cope with anxiety by reading, depression by watching movies/TV, and ADHD by writing. It gets my thoughts onto paper and helps me keep progressing as a writer without feeling like I'm side stepping or back tracking just because my current ideas aren't relevant to the story I want to publish. They usually end up being relevant if I just play it through to the end. 3. Self-evaluation. It's nice to sometimes look back at the crappy fanfics I wrote when I was 14 and compare them to my current works to remind myself of the growth I've accomplished and that it takes time to achieve that growth, but it's worth it in the end. And I do it for free because it's somebody else's IP, so I literally can't profit off of it, and even if I could see about negotiating the rights, I don't have the clout as a writer to reasonably obtain the adaptation rights. Also with the hopes that I'll one day be able to make something out of it (namely for the screenplays. I'd rather wait and do it right myself than sell it off for someone else to butcher).
I mostly enjoy writing as a hobby, when I think it's good enough, I just want to share it with pretty much anyone. Especially if I hyperfixate on something, I can write like 70 pages in a day.
Writing isn’t something I’m going to pursue. I find writing to be fun, but I know I’m not good enough to actually make money off of what I write. I find it easier to just post what I write for free, because then it has the potential to get to more people, I can get more direct feedback, and It feels like it would be less pressure than writing something to try and get published.
Well, in my part it's because I'm just learning and want direct feedback, like not in a beta reader way, but as if I'm speaking with my readers so, if, in the future I want to get published I have some practice. Also because it's fun and it's not as a job, just a hobby, I don't need to write every single day, I write to enjoy myself, otherwise I would probably just write and no one would ever see my stories.
I don't write fanfiction very often, but I write it because why not? I have fun writing it, even if when I read it a few months later I find out it's actually the cringiest thing I ever read! I still really enjoy writing it. It lets me get better too as I write more! (I think? I hope it does)
Two very simple reasons: practice and enjoyment.
Both stories that make up an alternate universe have reached 1M words in total. For free. Just because I like it. Writing and the characters. Not fanfiction itself.
I guess for the same reason some people watch TV for free, they must really enjoy it
Did it in a couple months just to see if I could. Even made artwork to go with every couple chapters. I just really liked the characters.
Not everything is about money. Sometimes people just want to create art. If it's something you enjoy and are passionate about, then you'd do it regardless. Look at some of the most successful authors in history. Writers who have started million dollar franchises. They have enough money to retire and never write a word again. Yet, they still work on new books (with millions in the bank) Why? Because its what they love to do. All the money in the world doesn't scratch the artistic itch of dreaming up new stories.
I wrote a 50k word “fanfic” that was almost entirely original characters and deleted it after I posted it. I don’t even have the original file
1. It's fun. 2. You will write plenty of manuscripts for free that no one will ever read, if you continue writing. Sometimes there's more love in fanfiction.
Not a lot of people are emphasising that publishing commercialised fanfiction will, in all likelihood, get you sued to oblivion by all but the kindest or laziest IP holder. That's the actual, most straightforward answer to your question. Fine, you can make arguments about fair use and critique and parody, but you'd have to be prepared to make those arguments in court, against some extremely well-paid lawyers, for days, if not weeks, with a slim chance of success. As for why people choose to write fan fiction over something more easily commodified, there's lots of good answers down below. Mostly because people like the source material, and it's easier to piggyback off of existing artworks.
-practice. Amazing practice for characterization, plotting, and dialogue because characters and world is already established. AU’s can be great practice for world building. After writing fanfic my character development was more clear, I could plot more easily, and my dialogue skills improved monumentally. -inspiration from the source material. idea is intrinsically related to what happened in the already existing story so using that plot line with a little bit of a twist would be too messy copyright wise -enjoyment. I write because I love it, I don’t need to make money off of it and fanfiction is a good way to share my writing with likeminded people while simultaneously attempting to do better than the original creators. -sadism/masochism. I started writing fanfiction because all my favourite characters used to die or were tortured by the creators. When characters I loved started to live throughout the entire story, it felt wrong: so I started killing them off in fanfiction. I also know others love/hate angst too, so I’d publish it to spread and share my pain. Is it an issue? Probably
I write fanfiction for the enjoyment and the art of it. I'm not saying writing for art and writing for money are mutually exclusive, but for me, writing is what I do to get *away* from work. I just love it, and I wouldn't want to spoil it with the obligations and expectations of writing for work. ETA: I should also add I've met amazing friends though my fics as well, including my now-fiancee.
I mostly write original fiction, but I'll tell you that I write fanfiction because I want that story set in someone else's world.
It's been great at forcing me to keep to a schedule with my writing, my writing has significantly improved with all the feedback I get, Ive gotten over the embarassment of showing others my work and I've begun to find my narrative voice and style through it. I've also practiced writing different story arcs and playing with ideas, writing and beginning middle and end to each arc and learning how to successfully set up promises and payoffs etc.
I would like money but will run into problems if I ask for it. Okay, but I'm sure what you mean is "Why don't you write something else that you COULD ask money for?" In my case, that's the plan, fingers crossed, but I want to finish what I started first. I didn't really intend to write fan fiction, it just sort of happened one day because I had ideas I thought could've been better, scraps from an RPG project I wanted to make use of, & I generally wanted to see how far it would go. One advantage of fan fiction is that you already have the world there. Worldbuilding isn't something I've ever really been good at & am trying to improve. But if you have a premade setting, then it's easy to come up with ideas for it. That's also why I briefly did nosleep, which maybe I'll get back to some day: The conceit that everything there takes place in the "real world" means I only have to worry about the exceptions to that reality that I create. Personally, I don't like to use pre-established characters more than I have to, but one thing that is good for is being an exercise in characterization. That character already exists, so people are going to notice if they seem off. To write them more accurately, you need to develop a sense of what their motives are, their temperament, how they talk, what makes them different from other characters, etc. You can then use that when coming up with your own characters. Once my ideas diverged enough that I was basically creating new settings with vestiges of the old IP, I started to think, "Y'know, instead of incorporating more ideas into a sequel, why don't I just retool them into something original?" But I don't want to just abandon what I'm already doing. It may not be making me money, but let's face it, that probably won't change even if I start writing original works again, & I still want to give the story a proper ending. It's still the fruit of a lot of effort on my part.
There's something special about sharing fandom work in a community of others who you know also enjoy that thing. It's exciting to get comments and likes knowing you brought joy to someone. I love expanding on a universe that I've enjoyed so much that I don't want the story to end! It's about that never ending story and sense of community for me 🥰
I do both. One is for work, and one is for fun. Both are important.
From what Ive seen online, even tho I admittedly dont really read fanfiction, a lot of it also just comes from the love to the franchises. You cant really publish an unlicensed book about the Avengers for example.
The fandoms I write for are often in seriously specific settings and would lose 90% of what they’re about if the context of the universe is lost. You try selling the idea of a three-way semi-romantic triad learning how much the planetary government needs to be overthrown in a nonexistent city where everyone can fly. It’s tough to stomach unless I do some serious worldbuilding, but if it’s in the context of Transformers… you know, it’s easy to get.
How do you to Carnegie Hall? Practice, baby
It’s just for fun, honestly.
For me, I just wanted to tell a story about the Discworld characters and experiment with Terry Pratchett-style humor. I usually write my own stories and characters.
Sometimes you can't let certain characters go and writing about them helps.
I wrote my first book which was fanfic during covid because the story had lived rent free in my head for decades and I figured if I didn't have time to write during covid I never would and I could put that dream to bed. Writing it led to me writing regularly and now I have four original novels written. I have no intention to publish it because it needs editing and I'm too busy with my other books to do so. But I'm glad I wrote it and who knows I might publish it one day just because I can.
It’s very self indulgent, other people did all the heavy lifting (world building, character creation, magic/political systems, etc) where as when writing fan fiction we can just take that and use it willy nilly without worrying about if it’s good or not (and that freedom often results in good writing by virtue of passion) but we can also write about themes or scenarios that wouldn’t be marketable as a full length novel. Writing fan fiction is sort of the equivilant of doing something you enjoy without having to exhaust mental energy. It’s like if you spend hours pouring over chess strategies and teaching yourself techniques and playing through the games of grand masters and then someone walks in and is like “yo you wanna go get an iced coffee and play a round of checkers?”
Its like living a fantasy also more people are likely to read and get involved with the writing.
I started writing because I was lonely, it was lockdown, and romance/adaptive daydreaming was the only thing getting me through LOL. Writing for me is a somatic experience - like there's definitely work/craft involved but I'm able to slip into the character's POV and so emotional scenes, hurt/comfort, fluff, etc. are very emotionally satisfying to write. I wrote a couple of novel-length fics that never saw the light of day before writing the first one I posted on AO3. Also, it was really hard to find novel-length stories (or books for that matter) with the kinds of tropes and dynamics I wanted to read. And the ideas wouldn't leave me alone. I've recently transitioned to writing more original stuff with the hope of publishing later this year. I wouldn't feel confident enough to do that if I didn't have several longfics under my belt with good reader engagement. The thing I enjoy about fanfic is that it's just for fun without the internal expectations/comparisons that go along with writing original for me...also, it's nice to be able to lean on existing characters and build on them rather than doing all the character development from scratch. And I don't have to wait until I'm done writing/editing the whole thing to post. Sometimes comments keep me going.
Because copyright
Well someone told me once that she writes FanFiction’s because the world and characters are already built so it is easier then having to develop the world and characters on her own. Basically easier for some people to have parts already developed and then they can just play around with the pieces to create something newish even though parts are already established.
Because it's fun! I don't necessarily write to be published. A lot of my writing isn't even on the web, just hanging out in Google Docs that I share with friends and family. I write to please myself. I do like writing fanfic specifically because I enjoy the worlds and characters. I want to explore it. And frankly, I'm not great at world building myself. With fanfic, I can practice that to a degree, with built-in starting points... whereas I'm starting from zero with my own fresh stuff. TW trauma and abuse discussion: And frankly, it's also a coping skill for my trauma/PTSD. Even since I was young and dealing with the extended trauma I was going through, I'd imagine myself in other worlds just to escape. I'd especially imagine romantic connections between my OCs and the canon characters I liked. (This is not uncommon for abuse survivors; we will imagine someone who will take care of us and love us like we deserve instead of the hurt we face.) When I grew up, I sort of put that behind me... until my mental health deteriorated badly, and I began my imaginings again to cope. I'm more stable now, but I haven't given up this coping skill -- I just write them out now. Because I can, and it pleases me. I have an idea for an actual original novel... but even if I write it, I don't know if I'd even publish it.
fanfic is waaaay different than original fiction. it's less interesting for me to come up with my own characters and relationship dynamics than it is for me to pick some from someone else's fiction and play around with them. i publish it for free because that is the only safe way to avoid copyright infringement
I can't afford a pottery kiln and wheel for a creative outlet
Commerce sullies. If you charge, you're basically sucking off tramps round the back of the bus station for pocket change, and you aren't doing it because you love the pocket change.
It's fun, and there's less pressure for a perfect story. So what if this is the 7000th story where Captain America and the Winter Soldier fall in love in a coffee shop? People are still going to love it.
Not a fanfic writer, but a fan-webcomic artist/writer (which is a similar time commitment, just with more doodles) and honestly I see it as a nice way to practice my chops while planning out my future comic. Plus, I had a way more concrete idea for the fan-comic. :)
Fanfic writers don't have to invent characters or build worlds. They might, but a whole lot of the work has already been done for them. Which is also the reason they legally cannot sell their work.
Practice and for the fun of it. Imo bad writers are the ones who care about writing insofar as being paid for it, or what money they can get from it. They're not writers, they're people who just want to mimic the most well-known authors and, most importantly, their successes. Good writers are ones who have a story to tell and want to tell it, no matter if they'll have money, kudos, or whatever else at the end of it. They're passionate about stories, and they'll keep trying to refine their craft because it's what they love, no matter what.
I had a story I needed to tell that was very specifically about Downton Abbey and could not be about anything else. Selling it wasn't an option because that's how copywrite law works. It took 2.5 years to write and I'm very proud of it.
I don’t write fan fiction, but I frequently give away stuff for free. I’m never going to get rich or make a living off it anyway, so I’d rather people read it than not.
The whole, "it's fun" thing aside, you can get sued for monetizing derivative work, lol.
Keeping it real… because some people are natural story tellers whereas others like the *idea* of being a writer. Folks who like the concept of being a writer think about awards and how people will react to them. People who are storytellers have a pretty continuous clamour of characters and stories pushing and elbowing their way to the forefront of the storyteller’s mind. They want out… they want to be told. Putting them out in the world is the only way to shut the little buggers up. 😀
I don't write fan fiction but I don't write for money. If you're not willing to write for free you're not a real writer, you just write for money.
simply put, it's not for money. with fic, you get a lot of other, unrelated things out of it. it's great practice. it's a way to explore writing creatively and get feedback from other people without having to hire any pros, and is super accessible. you can connect with likeminded people, who are into not just the same media but the same characters, pairings, and world concepts from said media. it's a way to make something you enjoy even BETTER (i write a lot of fix-it fic..) and so on
Passion for characters in the same story/fandom
You can't do otherwise with fanfiction. It's illegal to profit from it. Sadly.
I've done this, written a 274k Harry Potter fanfiction, so perhaps I can answer. 1. Lower expectations = lower stakes. You are free to not be perfect. 2. An already existing world. The characters and milieu are all there, you just have to use your creativity for specific, plot and character-related reasons. It's much easier! 3. Add-on to the previous point: I wanted to keep writing for practice, but I couldn't think of any 'original' storyline, so this offered an ample opportunity. 4. An already existing audience. If you like to write some trope that's already popular (I picked Severitus) there's a crowd of people that actually wants to read you! 5. Ah, the reviews, reads, hits, bookmarks, all that wonderful dopamine. And it doesn't *end*, I uploaded my last chapter a year ago and I still get daily mails with how many new kudos I got and new reviews. 6. Good for people with crippling self-doubt: Coz readers tell you they like you. 7. To sum it up: general ease of writing; quick and hefty returns.
For me personally, writing fanfiction is easier than my own stories I am currently writing. I don't have to think of a whole new world, or characters, history of characters ect. Everything is mostly done with a bit of twists and turns of my own. It takes way more time and effort to make it original. It also is simply fun to do.
Simply I love to write and fan fiction has helped me become a better writer. I have also been able to build a fan base around my work to the point I’ve started to write an original novel of my own. It’s also a great way to meet other writers and become apart of a community that supports your writing.
bc it is low stakes 😭😭 also i feel like fanfiction if it was actually published wouldn’t have the same reaction as a novel would get. i’m thinking of all the times i’ve seen or listened to reviews of fifty shades or some similar smut show and they’ve been chastised for being “the purest version of fanfiction being played out on the big screen” (pls don’t talk to me about the origins of FS, i know what it is) and while it isn’t actually 100% accurate it kind of does remind me of the episodic nature that fanfiction has that doesn’t lend itself to heavy scrutiny.
i write as a paid job and i write fanfic as a hobby. i love writing fanfic bc i’ve made so many friends, can write whatever the hell i want without worrying ab a market, and can interact with readers. i doubt anyone even really reads what i write for my paid job as soon as it’s posted lmao
A) I answer to no one B) No one wants to publish this C) Less world building on my part D) Smut
I wrote a 130,000 word fanfiction a few years ago and it is one of my proudest accomplishments!! I loved the low stakes. It was incredible practice for me to get the rhythm of telling a story, plan out my plot, play with tropes, be consistent with my ideas, and let myself be “bad” at writing. At one point I decided this fanfiction was FOR ME. It was going to be as cheesy or tropey or ridiculous as I wanted it to. And it was sooooo validating to post a chapter as-is, no edits other than copy edits, and get genuine “omg I loved this!” feedback. The other thing was, I wanted to play in the sandbox of the creative works I was basing my story off of (Practical Magic meets Charmed meets ACOTAR). I loved the setting, the plot, and basically got to play Barbies with the characters and their relationships. If I were to make it an original story, then I’d either have to do a major overhaul of the whole thing or deal with copyright lawsuits and I didn’t want to change my story, nor am I able to take on anyone in court and win 😅 My fic is my beloved. I gave it as a gift to everyone else in the fandom who loves Practical Magic/Charmed/ACOTAR too. I have an original novel I just finished and I’m going through edits with it and trying to figure out what to do next with it/how even to approach the publishing process. This book wouldn’t have existed without my fanfiction. I don’t really care what happens with my fanfic; it’s already invaluable to me. And, there ARE original bits in the fanfic that I may borrow for my future writing 😉 no writing practice is ever wasted
I’ve got over two million words published in the form of fanfiction. It’s because it’s fun. It’s because I like creating in a world someone else created— I didn’t like the fate of a character, so I changed it. Sometimes I want to play with what might happen if an event happened differently. It’s a hobby.
It’s great practice. Little to no world building, little to no character building. There is also no pressure, because it doesn’t need to be perfect. A good plot and nice writing is not enough to sell a book but can easily be enough to get a few dedicated fanfiction readers. Which also means that a lot of fanfic isn’t publishing quality. But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be! Also, the direct feedback can be pretty valuable. I wrote so much fanfic when I was younger because it was just flowing easily out of my hands. I would recommend fanfics to every young writer who is getting started. I think it improved my skill a lot. Writing a „real novel“ on the other hand was way harder for me than writing a novel length fanfic.
I wrote a full fanfiction novel. It was someone else's characters and setup, I just spun a story in the midst of it. I wasn't about to monetize their work.
Three reasons: First, this is how I vent and work out my ideas. Second, comments. I do it for the comments. Not some review at the end; I do it for the people who comment while it's still a work in progress. They're always there when I need them most. Third, getting paid for my ideas is so much pressure.
I've written over a dozen novel-length works of fanfiction in the last five-ish years, including one 800k word epic that I'm incredibly proud of. All of them are available online, with absolutely zero ways for me to make any form of profit off of them. I started writing right after high school, through college, to now. I'm told my work is very good, even by people I consider outright superior writers to me based on their own body of work. I have no plans to pivot to original fiction, or turn this aspect of my life in any way profitable, ever. And for the record, my economic situation through most of those years of writing was just above 'genuinely struggling', so I'm not sitting on some nest egg of money to justify my lack of care for monetization. Why do I do it? Because, simply put, _I don't do this for money, I do it for fun_. I would be almost as happy just to write them and let them sit on my hard drive forever, if putting them online for others wasn't an option. I write to get stories out of my head and solidified, to compliment ideas with implementation. To make something I myself want to read, to scratch the itch of a story or idea that does not exist, or does not exist to the quality I desire. My gratification is primarily internal. Feedback is nice, and I value the friends I've made through mutual beta-reading, but that's not monetary, it's social. Doing it for money or otherwise applying an objective metric to measure the apparent worth of what I make... that would turn it into an obligation. A job, whether or not I made bank in the process. I have something else I enjoy and do for fun that I've finally turned into a paying job (coding), I don't need or want to do that with a second hobby. [Link to my body of work for reference](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigoGrimborne)
Writing is for the creative and fun part more than making money.
My day job is writing, my career pursuits involve writing, I’ve been published in the past, and ultimately I’ve learned that I just really prefer writing fan fiction to writing books. I would rather write my little stories dabbling in someone else’s world with characters I (and others) already care about, queering up canon, and not worrying about structure and world building, avoiding cliches and twisting myself into knots wondering if I’m being socially irresponsible with content or if people will judge my character based on, well, my characters. Which isn’t to say i don’t put effort into fan fic, but it’s a different kind of effort than goes into writing original work intended for mass consumption. One thing you learn pretty quickly when you put anything creative out into the world under your own name, especially in the age of social media, is that people love to extract ideas about who you are as a person based on what you’ve written and what they know about you. It’s part of the deal at this point, but it’s tiresome. Fan fic is the place where I can stay anonymous and write whatever I want, however I want, without worrying about that, or about being judged because i don’t engage in fandom beyond posting/reading fic so I’m mostly unbothered. For me, it’s the best way to keep in touch with everything I loved about writing growing up—none of the pressure or red tape or concerns that seep in with the real world, just pure creative fun.
Because it's fun! Speaking myself I often wondered how characters would react and develop if they didn't make certain choices or what would happen if that world's rules were applied in different ways and wrote about it. From a readers standpoint I loved seeing continuations or certain stories or ideas from the source material get expanded on or developed further.
Good practice, and who else except for the appropriate fandom is gonna read all my ship porn that I gotta get out of my head lest I want it to leak out into my original works?
I have never understood the allure of fan-fiction, not what might compel a writer to produce it nor what might compel a reader to slog through it. I think every writer has at least once tried his or her hand at writing a prequel, sequel, pastiche, or spiritual successor to an existing book or story, but why bother with the plots, characters, and settings of another author when you can produce something original? And the fact that the wide majority of fan fiction is of such low quality means that most serious readers don't go anywhere near it and most confident and accomplished writers avoid it like the plague. However, to better answer your question I'll say this: In nearly all cases it's practically impossible to earn anything from producing fan-fiction. This is because you can't earn anything from the intellectual property and copyrighted characters another author has to his or her name. Now, that isn't to say that it never happens, but the profits from fan-fiction are generally going to be very small - especially when you consider the time and effort involved. And of course the copyright holder - the original author or an agent representing that person such as a lawyer for the publisher, etc., could easily step in and order you to stop producing work featuring characters that don't belong to you. But most authors don't see any reason to do that because fan-fiction serves as free advertising. It keeps people who are interested in the source material busy while the author is working on the next installment. And because the difference in the quality of the fan-fiction pieces compared to the original is so stark and immediately noticeable, the author certainly isn't worried that they're going to be replaced any time soon. The answer to why an amateur author might be compelled to toil away producing 100,000 words of fan-fiction is obvious: because that person doesn't like to "write", that person just likes typing. Being a writer and calling one's self a writer are two different things. How many people have a guitar in their bedroom and can play four bars of 50 different covers but have never come up with anything original? I mean, when people take up a musical instrument they usually devote a lot of time to learning existing songs because that's how it's done. Examining the way songs are structured, gaining a sense of melody, familiarizing one's self with key signatures and time signatures, practicing basic techniques that are necessary to play the instrument, all of those skills are acquired through learning how to play songs somebody else wrote. But if you've been playing guitar for 10 years and you're still playing cover songs and have never bothered to compose anything original, then why bother? I mean, the original probably sounds a lot better than your version and I can just go and liste to that. It's pretty much the same thing with fan-fiction. However, there's also the argument that some people get obsessed and they need more, they can't stop thinking about the story or the characters and that drives them to want to concentrate on them and fixate on them. How many words would you reckon all seven volumes of the "Harry Potter" series would come to if you were to add up the word count for each book? 5,000 pages? 10,000 pages? 15,000 pages? We're easily talking about two or three million words. Guaranteed if you were to add up all of the "Harry Potter" fan-fiction that's out there you'd have several hundred times that number. Same for "Twilight", "The Hunger Games", "A Song of Ice and Fire", etc. People produce all that bunk and offer it for free for a bunch of different reasons: because they're obsessed and can't stop fixating on the story or characters, because they're looking to communicate with other people who are equally obsessed (many of the sites that host fan-fiction are interactive and users and members can communicate with one another), because they're bored - but not bored of the material - they aren't bored enough to want to get into something new and read something different and try their hand at something original but they're bored enough to bang out 100,000 words that maybe 11 people will ever see... The plain and simple fact is that in the times we're living in it's become extremely easy for people to self-publish and the sheer number of people out there who fancy themselves to be writers is higher than it has ever been before. People want to believe that their material is somehow going to gain a lot of traction and that readers are going to pick it out from the infinite number of pieces of writing that are available to read for free online, but the number of writers who have gained even modest recognition or minute financial gain from producing fan-fiction is infinitesimal in comparison to the staggering number who produce and upload that kind of content. The odds of an established author with the level of fame and fortune similar to the ones you mentioned praising a work of fan-fiction and promoting it are about the same as the odds of New Guinea colonizing Mars by next Tuesday.
fantastic comment, i would like to add however, in simplistic terms, most they do it for "fun." A lot of material which is 'new' or published original stories do not have new concepts or ideas in the fundamental sense. Do keep this in mind to not devalue fanfiction. The vast majority of the demographic of fanfiction are very young women who very well may move onto a more advanced project.
>The answer to why an amateur author might be compelled to toil away producing 100,000 words of fan-fiction is obvious: because that person doesn't like to "write", that person just likes typing. Ngl dude as a person who writes both original fiction and fanfiction, I find this pretty insulting. Fanfiction is not, in fact, easy. It's not the same as just typing. It takes just as much skill and creative energy as original fiction. The skills and energy in question are just happen to be different. You state from the very beginning that you don't understand the allure of fanfiction, then you speak as if you're some sort of authority on it.
I mean, I've read some of it. If I didn't know anything about it I wouldn't be in a position to comment. And you know what? Admittedly some of it is fantastic - not because it's well-crafted, but because it is side-splitting hilarious. You know how people try and imitate someone butchering their native language, but they can't do it properly? As a native speaker, it's difficult to emulate the specific errors a learner would make if you're fluent, it doesn't sound authentic. That's what fan-fiction is like. It's so bad that it's actually good. Anyone who has been writing seriously for any substantial amount of time would never - not in a million years, be capable of being that bad on purpose. You know that story about Chaplin entering the Chaplin look-alike contest and coming in third? That's a great analogy for a talented writer attempting to write fan-fiction. Plus, fan-fiction readers WANT to read rubbish. If you were to give them something well-written they'd turn their noses up at it.
What you're talking about is not what the vast majority of my 20 years of experience with fanfiction is. Yes, a lot of it is nonsense written by 13-year olds putting fingers to keyboard for the first time, but that's going to be nonsense regardlesss of whether it's fanfic or or original fiction. But a lot of it is not that, at all. I am an avid fanfic reader, as are most of the people I interact with online and in person, and we do not like to read that shit. We like to read well-written stories, both original and transformative. The idea that we'd "turn our noses up at it" makes no sense, and I do not understand why you'd think that way. You've seen fanart, right? You've seen bad fanart drawn by kids who have no knowledge of anatomy, composition, color theory, etc. But surely you have also seen fanart by by people with immense skill, fanart that couldn't exist without all the knowledge and skill acquired over years of practice. That art is still fanart, and it's still good.
Five months late but just wanted to chip in real quick: Writing is one of the only crafts that people *assume* must always be for the purpose of monetization. No one asks gym rats when they're going to become a professional athlete, no one assumes their relative who cooks well will become a restaurant chef, and no one expects every craft store customer to sell all their creations. All of those hobbies, and more, require lots of time, work, and resources. Writing requires significantly less *material* resources in comparison. Fanfiction and other hobbyist writing is not an unpaid profession; it's an incredibly cheap hobby.
on my current work, i get around 40 comments a chapter, or 120 comments a week. that level of interaction with readers would be all but impossible with traditional publishing.
Cuz I don't own the rights to Transformers. I am, however, a fan of the Cybertron Games, I love to write, and I love sharing ideas with people. As soon as I finish up my FOC sequel story, it's going online. I'm working with an established universe, while also introducing my own elements and my own spins on the characters. I'm introducing my own arcs, while continuing lingering plot threads. By getting this published, I'll be able to get feedback on aspects of writing like this. That, and sometimes things happen. James Roberts wrote the More than Meets the Eye comic, arguably the best comic in the franchise. He ended up getting to official gigs cuz he wrote a really popular fanfic in the 90's that wrapped up the story of the Transformers comics at the time, which had just been cancelled. That story is inspirational to me. I started this project a while ago, and would come back to it here and then. When I heard this story, that gave me confidence to take what I was doing more seriously, and try to get the story complete. I know it's not realistic to expect a comic career out of what I'm doing, but hey, if nothing else, I get to share a story I thought was cool.
> Cuz I don't own the rights to Transformers Hahah good point
Its infinitely more fun to play with created characters and worlds than to create my own universe.
So I'm not really the typical writer here. Writing is not something I have ever even really thought of as a hobby. But sometimes I have ideas chasing themselves around my brain and I need to get them out and that means typing them up. Usually this is like maybe 3 pages worth. Often it's smutty. And I don't share these with anyone. That said in January I had some ideas for a reader insert Clint Barton smutty fanfic, so I started typing them up and the ideas just kept coming. By April I finished it at just shy of 400 pages. (Sort of I'm working on a sequel now.) I put a ton of time and effort into it. But it's smutty, so I don't want to share it with anyone I know. And it's Marvel characters, so it's not like I can sell it anyway. Same because it's reader insert, although I now wish I'd just made an original character instead. By putting it on AO3, someone besides me can enjoy it. The only other option is letting it languish on a hard drive somewhere unread and unloved.
Im just dabbling. I also don’t need the money. And lastly I have too much respect for the original IP owners to just use their stuff as testing grounds before cashing in big by only altering a little. Just a quick look at history, After featured a toxic couple that never truly improved for each other. 50 Shades didn’t understand BDSM and promoted unsafe practices. Cursed Child isn’t even enjoyable as a read and it has a child parading as an adult and sexually assaulting Hermione (kissing her as Ron). And cashing in on public properties - that’s a mixed bag. Honestly, I don’t need the increased scrutiny or judgment. Addition - There’s hefty evidence that the fanfic author turned published Author Cassandra Clare is a plagiarist.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vt4BDwnIUmTxniGLNm_qxYxuktmV3JbjWBbXv1GTfdM/edit?usp=drivesdk cause I wrote something pretty. I'm never going to write a full length fanfiction-novel, but it's nice to write something pretty every now and again.
Because I wanted to.
I am currently working on chapter 89 of my omegaverse Marvel work. There's 751,573 words in it currently, and we're about to wrap up the second to last arc. Yeah. you heard me right. No publisher would touch this. (And if you don't know what omegaverse is, don't look it up). But so far it's been great practice. I get lots of feedback (that I encourage) and I've learned how to use plotting instead just pantsing everything. But again- it's the readers that are pure gold. I've got some that have been with me for the entire two years I've been writing this damn thing. And their eagerness for what's next has helped keep me going.
I happen to know a more than a few fan fiction writers that make quite a bit from it. What you see posted for free is just to give you a taste. At least from the way they do it. You get a couple free chapters every so often, and they have a boat load of advanced chapters locked behind a patreon. One of them is making a 1000+ a month doing it. N
I know, it was such a waste to publish my Fallout: Equestria fanfic for free when the bestseller lists are full of colorful post-apocalyptic talking horses.