In Defense of Fanfiction

So, fairly recently (at time of writing), a fellow writer decided to disparage authors who cut their teeth writing fanfiction which, in their words “actively teaches you to write worse.”

Now, as someone who did cut their teeth writing fanfiction, my gut instinct to seeing this tweet was to angrily quote tweet it with the reply “Oh fuck off.” But that much as a I wanted to do that, I didn’t for several reasons. For one, I just generally try to be restrained and selective for who I get that angry and confrontational with online, reserving it mostly for politicians, malicious celebrities, and DC’s Titans. Entities at once morally bankrupt, and largely immune to any kind of damage that I personally can inflict due to an absence of actual humanity.

And that all being said, this person was… well, a person. A person with a narrow-minded and incorrect opinion, but still a person. And a fellow writer. So then I thought about refuting their bad-take, but that felt too much like swooping in to mansplain writing to someone who by all accounts seems to have been doing it at least as long as I have, and who’s been considerably more professionally successful at it.

Plus, like I said, I got my start in fanfiction. My origins are quite literally being targeted and attacked here. And feeling targeted can make people say and do some really stupid stuff if they don’t stop and think beforehand.

Basically, I didn’t want to start a Twitter beef over this because quite frankly the internet would be a happier place if we all just did that less, but I still saw a lot of bad arguments and missed points, so I couldn’t just say nothing. And so here we are, at a compromise between Twitter arguing and saying nothing—blogging about it.

The writer in question turned her single tweet into an entire thread that brought up a lot of very different, very unrelated issues, some of which I want to touch on as well, but before I do any of that, I want to answer the central argument, taking it as much as I can on face value and inferring as little else as possible: that fanfiction “actively teaches you to write worse.”

Does it?

Twitter is a terrible medium for communication. It rewards broad, inflammatory statements and its character limit leaves little room for nuance. Some people attempt brute-force circumventions of that limit, but most don’t, and the site isn’t suited to it. So it is unsurprisingly difficult to parse out exactly what they meant, but I can take a stab at it by covering as many bases as I could think of.

Does the medium of fanfiction inherently teach poor writing fundamentals, like prose, plot structure, or character development?

No. Writing, like most skills, is honed by practice. Every time you think about the best word to put on a page or the best way to structure a sentence or story, you are getting better at writing. You start a sentence, and think to yourself, “Hang on, there’s gotta be a better way to word that.” And that moment, where you reflect on your craft and look for ways and spots to improve it—that is you learning. Developing. Maybe you think of a way to word that sentence better, maybe you don’t. But the act of thinking, of searching, of even just acknowledging that it could be better is still work towards improvement. Doesn’t matter if it’s dialogue written for Harry Potter or for your original character, do not steal.

90% of fanfiction is crap. But 90% of everything is crap. Fanfiction is perhaps more famous for being mostly crap, but it’s really not hard to understand why. First off, the only barrier to entry for writing is basic literacy. If you can read this sentence, you can try your hand at writing. The difference between fanfiction and say, traditionally published works, is that fanfiction kind of keeps that low barrier to entry, whereas to get traditionally published you typically have to impress at least two other people—your agent, and then the editor you agent sends your shit to. And even then, that’s not a insurmountable barrier to entry. A metric butt-ton of people do it all the time.

In short, with fanfiction, the “slush pile” is open and visible, whereas with most other stuff, the only people who have to read that garbage are agents and editors, God have mercy on their souls. But rest assured, there is just as much shitty original fiction as there is shitty fanfiction.

In addition to the low barrier to entry, fanfiction is where a lot of people first dip their toe into this gig. And unless you are an unparalleled prodigy, when you’re new at something, you are bad at something. Which is fine. Doing something poorly is the first step to doing something competently. Practice is practice.

Now, you can practice something incorrectly and do yourself wrong—anybody who knows about proper weight lifting form can tell you that. But for the most part, a writer working on fanfiction is no more likely to do this than someone writing anything else.

The two exceptions I can think of are character and worldbuilding. Somewhat unique to fanfiction (we’ll talk about that in a minute) versus original fiction is that in fanfic, the characters and world are already established. Depending on the kind of fic you write, you may very well not get practice or experience making characters or worlds, since you’re using someone else’s work to basically cover that for you. So, sometimes, in this one specific area, fanfiction does feature something of a crutch that could theoretically lead to deficiencies in a writer’s fundamentals.

That said, that is very much dependent on the type of fanfic. Some works feature entirely original casts, telling a new story with new characters in an established setting. And even in fics which predominantly focus on the established cast, fanfic writers are downright notorious for adding new, original characters into the mix. Most of them are… awful. But we already covered why that is. Remember, bad writing is not the same thing as bad practice.

Ditto worldbuilding, where we’ve got plenty of fanfics that outright replace the world of the established story. The Alternate Universe concept is a very popular one in fanfic.

I will say in a closing than with worldbuilding and character, fanfiction does typically replace only one of these while keeping the other. Mainly because if you changed both, you’re liable to have left the realm of fanfiction altogether.

Does fanfiction, by its nature, leave you unprepared for making the transition to the professional writing world?

Let’s pretend for a moment that we didn’t just shoot down the idea that writing fanfiction means you never honed your ability to create your own original world and characters. That’s nonsense, but let’s say for purely hypothetical arguments sake, that if you start out writing fanfiction, your character-creating muscles will atrophy and you’ll only be able to work with pre-existing concepts, worlds, and characters. Does fanfiction leave you unprepared for making it in the world of professional writing?

For your consideration, I present: the very concept of episodic television. TV shows regularly bring on writers who did not originate either the show or its characters. TV writers craft stories borrowing a world and characters that somebody else came up with. The only difference between them is fanfiction is they got paid and get to be stamped as canon. Same muscles getting used. Same kind of exercise.

The spec script, the method by which most people showcase their ability to write for TV, is literally just fanfiction.

Then we have adaptations and retelling of both licensed and public domain properties, where once again, we have scores of writers, taking characters and concepts that they did not come up with, and using them to tell their own stories, or even just put different spins on the originals. What if Hades and Persephone, but without the whole “against her will” thing? Hey Marvel, can I use your Norse god character to tell a story about how societies built on the back of colonialism are inherently flawed and shouldn’t be preserved at the expense of the people?

The skillset of playing with other people’s toys to make something compelling is an incredibly valuable one for a writer to have. If anything, I’d argue that fanfiction is even better suited to teaching this skillset than writing original fiction.

And as a quick aside, that practice of playing with other people’s characters and constantly asking “Is this in character for them?” is a very useful practice that actually translates very well to writing your own characters. When you invented a character, it can be tempting to declare anything you write “in-character” since, well, you wrote it, and they’re your creation. But that thinking can easily lead to disjointed characterization.

I routinely ask “is this in-character?” while writing for characters I created. It makes me a better writer, and I learned how to ask that question and how to identify the answer from writing fanfiction.

Does fanfiction distort your sense of good taste?

This is the closest I could possibly come to agreeing with the original argument. The last time I was actively involved in it, the fanfiction community had pretty low standards, actually? I say this, because when I was writing fics, I was actually heaped with praise and attention, almost all of which was near universally good.

But I was not good. I was bad. I was very bad. Because I was in junior high, and an idiot, and those fics were the first thing I ever wrote that was longer than seven pages. But I updated my fics daily over the summer, in a very popular fandom that predominantly targeted people my age. So I got lots of fans and praise, and I started to think I was a good writer. Even worse than that, other people thought I was a good writer, and told even more people that I was.

Which is an affront to good taste.

That having been said, even though I do hold fandom and its nature partially to blame for the single most humbling aspect of my entire life, I also just hold adolescence in general to blame? Maybe? I like to think that much as I grew beyond my poor grasp of my own woeful incompetence, so too did my audience grow up and get a better understanding of what actually good writing is.

But then again, EL James and Reki Kawahara have made more money than I’ve ever seen in my life. So maybe neither fanfic nor adolescence is to blame. Maybe sometimes trash just sells.

As an aside, I hope this doesn’t come off as me trying to be mean or make fun of all those people who liked my old stuff. I know I’m embarrassed by it, and the only reason I haven’t deleted it all is because I need an ego check every now and again (and they’re also how I met my wife). But whether you also did a 180 on my old stuff as you got older or you still unironically think it’s good… thank you for the support. You are my humble beginnings and I would not be the person I am today without all of you.

…and that’s enough getting sentimental and making this about me, let’s go back to debunking opinions that are objectively wrong because I disagree with them.

The Other Stuff

I feel I’ve thoroughly said my peace on the original argument put out by my colleague. Namely, that they are wrong. But I’d also like to very quickly address the everything else they spewed out. My takes on this are considerably less long winded and probably could have been sanded down to a Twitter reply, but I still figure their inbox is getting enough shit already, and I want to make this more about the arguments than the person.

I’m not going to cover everything in detail, especially since I am super not qualified to speak on some of them—there is only so much I as a cishet dude feel comfortable giving my opinion on—but I will cover the bits that stood out and ground my gears.

EL James and Cassandra Clare are “fucking terrible”

No disputing the EL James part. Her character work is atrocious, her understanding of actual kink and BDSM dynamics and lifestyles is woeful, her plot bears clear evidence of serialized work that was not properly cleaned up prior to publication.

I haven’t read Cassandra Clare’s work. I have heard both good and bad things about it, but let’s say for argument’s sake she’s also not great.

This comment shows a distinct lack of knowledge of just how many authors, many critically acclaimed, write fanfiction on the side or got their start in it. Neil Gaiman writes fanfiction—and usually manages to get paid for it. I could go on with a long and yet still non-exhaustive list of authors who have done or still do it. Bottom line, there are some very high profile, not good writers whose start in fanfiction has been effectively weaponized against them to further underline their badness—“Of course EL James is bad. What did you expect from someone who started in fanfiction—while simultaneously many good writers have their connections to it downplayed by either choice or their own profile.

“Low effort formulaic lowest-common-denominator writing is bad actually”?

I almost brought this into main discussion, but I said I would infer as little as possible and on its own, this tweet didn’t directly say it was talking about fanfiction. I would argue it heavily implied it, and I very much doubt the author of the tweet would disagree with me, but I made the no inferring rule and I stuck to it.

I’m actually still going to take this argument on its own for a moment. I’ve already covered how and why fanfiction is generally seen as bad—low barrier to entry and the bad stuff is as easy to find as the good stuff—so I want to talk about something else. “Low effort writing is bad. No real arguments. I could jokingly say Neil Gaiman could drunkenly scribble something on a napkin that would outclass my best efforts, but I actually don’t have that low an opinion of myself.

Lowest-common-denominator writing is probably bad. In general, I think trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator is a good way to make uninspired trash, but on the other hand…fuck it, I’m liable to be included in that lowest common denominator most of the time. That’s the whole goddamn point of the LCD. It casts a broad net. And there’s a place for that. I don’t think it should be a big place, but still a place.

“Formulaic writing is bad” though? That I also just straight up disagree with. Formulas are a tool. And like every tool, they can be used really well, or really poorly. Used well, a formula can provide a solid structure around which to build interesting stories or ground the audience in otherwise unfamiliar settings. Don’t call a hammer a bad tool just because you’re hitting the nail wrong.

Several arguments discussing fanfictions relationship to queer and female audiences/writers/identities:

Nope, not touching that.

This image, actually posted in the same thread.

Oh fuck off.

Fanfiction isn’t collaborative or about community because “it's all corporate IP” and “Ultimately, someone else legally owns it, and you are choosing to give a corporate entity your creative energy.”

And this is actually something that’s been bugging me a while, specifically regarding the relationship people have with corporately owned IP and how it being owned by a corporation doesn’t automatically invalidate it as a source of emotional investment or cultural symbolism. But quite honestly, that really deserves its own post, so I’m just going to put a pin in this that and say we’re done here.

Glad I got all that off my chest.

So that was a thing. If you’ve got your own experiences with fanfic, good or bad, I’d love to hear them in the comments or over on Twitter.

If your curious about my history in fanfiction, like I said, it is all still technically out there, and very bad, but I’m not so much of a masochist that I’d link it here. I wouldn’t read it if I were you.

I write newer, much better stuff now. Some of it is here on this website, and some of it is in a novel coming out Fall 2021! Check that out instead! I promise it’s a much better use of your time.