FROM DANTE TO STAR WARS: WHY WE WRITE FANFICTION
What's the point in writing fanfiction? Six authors share their experiences.
Please be advised that this article contains non-graphic discussion of abuse, gender dysphoria, mental illness, and trauma processing.
The Ant Nebula, photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Image via NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
If the first Mars rover hadn’t landed in 1997, science fiction and fantasy author J.M. Frey wouldn’t have discovered fanfiction or become a published writer.
Frey was in her friend Karen’s basement waiting to see the images that the rover was transmitting back to Earth. As the girls waited, Frey suggested that they use the Internet to read about topics they liked. Choosing to look up a Toronto-based television show called Forever Knight, Frey stumbled upon a fanfiction forum.
"I'd never heard of [fanfiction] before, which was so cool," Frey said. "I thought all these people who were writing fanfiction were getting paid for it I thought it was the coolest thing ever and then I realized that they were all doing it for free and then I could just do it if I wanted to."
Right then and there, Frey wrote and posted a fanfiction for the 90s television show Dracula: The Series and that moment kicked off Frey’s lasting relationship with fanfiction.
Forever Knight and Dracula: The Series are vampire television shows that ran during the 90s. Images via TV Tropes and johnkennethmuir on wordpress.
Fanfiction, often abbreviated as 'fanfic' or 'fic,' refers to stories written by fans of a novel, film, television series, and sometimes even celebrities. Fanfiction based on published or broadcast fiction involves characters from the source work and may be set in the canon universe, another fictional universe, or a certain time period.
As an avid fanfiction writer and fan community (or 'fandom') participant, Frey, 34, calls herself a "professional geek" and says that if it weren't for fandom and fanfiction, she would never have become a professional author.
J.M. Frey is the author of Triptych and The Accidental Turn series. Images via Goodreads and J.M. Frey.
"When someone tries to write a novel, if they’ve never written anything before, it’s difficult," Frey said. "Fanfiction really served me because by the time I was ready to write my first original novel, I'd written thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of stories. I'd been ripped up in comments, I'd had my work edited, I'd had it beta-read. I'd taken constructive criticism; I'd learned how I like to write, not just the tone and the mood and the word choices but my habits and my environment. By the time I decided to write an original novel, I had a decade’s worth of practice writing."
Božena Čechalová, 35, had Frey's experience in reverse, beginning with original fiction and branching into fanfiction later. Čechalová has been writing and publishing original work since 2008 but grew frustrated with the publication and feedback process.
"Publishing original fic is lengthy — it goes through editor approval, then you wait long months for a slot in a printed magazine, and then you get about ten readers’ feedback. Well, and the money, but not much for short stories. I was intrigued by writing and sharing something that would get instant feedback," Čechalová said.
Online publishing platforms such as Archive of Our Own (AO3) and FanFiction.net have feedback systems where readers can comment on fanworks, leave 'kudos,' and bookmark stories. For Čechalová, the feedback she received on her fanfiction was "heaps and heaps better" than on her original work.
"Even my earliest, shittiest fics were doing better [than my original fiction]. Nowadays the numbers are varying — I have fics written for [the] Hobbit fandom, which is huge, with hundreds of comments, and fics written for obscure Japanese anime fandom, which got like two or three. But the feedback is instant — I don't have to wait months for my stories to appear in the open," Čechalová said.
The works of J.R.R. Tolkein are the third most popular under AO3's Books & Literature category and The Hobbit has been adapted into three feature films. Image via The Lord of the Rings Wiki.
Not only did Čechalová receive helpful feedback on her fanfiction, she says that fanfiction helped her improve her English. Writing original fiction, Čechalová said, helped strengthen her English. "My betas say that I improved tremendously. Really you'd have to read my things from 2011 to compare it to 2016 to see the difference. It was quite a ride," she said.
Čechalová lives in the Czech Republic and publishes original fiction in Czech, but writes fanfiction in English. Although she has written over 400,000 words of fanfiction in English, Čechalová cannot speak the language. "I learned by reading and writing," Čechalová said in an interview conducted over Skype chat. "I have no idea how half the words sound."
Six per cent of people used AO3 in 10 languages other than English in 2013. Image via centrumlumina on tumblr.
"I started writing original fic to be published in Czech printed magazines. And when I fell for Sherlock, Czech fandom didn't exist," Čechalová said of her decision to write fanfiction in English.
A 2013 survey of AO3 users with a sample size of 10,005 revealed that just six per cent of users read the website in a language other than English.
Art imitates life
Gen Hart, 34, began writing fanfiction in January 2016 for the Star Wars fandom.
"The reason I originally started is the story I wrote first, it’s called "Closed Circuit." The reason I wanted to go with that [is because] it gave a redemption arc and it gave characters I didn’t have to create too much of a background for," they said.
For Hart, one of the benefits of fanfiction is that you can get to the meat of the story without having to do too much exposition. "I think sometimes, with literature, people over-explain stuff," Hart said. "Yes, you"ve been explaining that your character’s attractive, deeply intelligent but doesn't think she's intelligent, blah, blah, blah, get on with the story!"
The ease of writing was only one of the reasons for which Hart started writing fanfiction. After a conversation with their therapist, Hart had the idea of taking their experiences and handing them to a character to process.
"I woke up the next morning after I finished it and published it. [It was] like someone had opened an air-lock, and all the pressure had gone," they said.
"I've been really, really ill for a while. Looking at photos of myself from two years ago, I don’t know how I'm still alive now, and how I feel the way I feel. But I know it was because having written that story and getting it out of my head," Hart added.
Hart found some of the feedback on "Closed Circuit" encouraging and inspired them to continue to write fanfiction for fun. "Originally it had a specific purpose, I was only supposed to write this one thing and never try again," they said.
Ren Hill, 26, also wrote Star Wars fanfiction to process trauma. Hill decided to write several fanfictions that imagined General Hux from Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a transgender man in order to combat their discomfort with their own identity.
Armitage Hux is a general of the sinister First Order in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Image via Star Wars Screencaps.
"I was feeling really awful before that, feeling really lost and messed up. But then I wrote that and I chilled out so much after it," Hill said. "I can’t say how or why or what aspects, but just in a vague sense it's having a character that you like and then just giving them something you don't like about yourself so you can like it more or be more accepting of it. I don't understand the psychology of it, but it helped so much. It worked," they added.
Hill also found that fanfiction helped them to realize and articulate their experiences, on top of processing experiences that they already understood. Specifically, they watched In The Flesh, a critically acclaimed television show about a zombie apocalypse, and found a striking resemblance between themselves and a character called Rick Macy. Through writing fanficiton about Rick Macy, they realized that their father was abusive and the relationship they had was atypical and unhealthy.
Rick Macy is the son of the town's most strident anti-zombie campaigner in the British television series In The Flesh. Image via ladygeekgirl on wordpress.
"To try and accurately portray a character, you end up us