Is it normal to write fanfiction

The fact that people in my life have dug them up and used them to make fun of me in the past makes me want to go ape shit on them for it. Let it be known, "normal people": we are not immune to your mockery, and it sucks. Fan fiction, for many people, is just a gateway drug to all other fiction writing. We obviously have the chops to commit ourselves to long pieces of works, and the imagination to go wild with somebody else's characters. Once we come up with our own which we frequently do , we have the same enthusiasm for our own work that we do for fan fiction.

And even if we don't—what's the big deal? We don't go up to kids on little league baseball teams and tell them there's no point in enjoying themselves if they aren't planning to make a career out of it. Fan fiction is the same thing: a fun hobby.

For some reason, though, it is one that people can't seem to wrap their heads around without thinking of it as a "waste of time". Honestly, I think I'd be a lot more comfortable letting people in my real life read my fan fiction if they weren't so hung up on this idea that authors are exclusively funneling their own desires into the writing.

To be fair, to some degree, all writers do that. But we don't go up to non-fan fiction authors and give them a hard time about an intimate scene between their characters, whereas it is, for some reason, totally fair game to accuse a fan fiction author of living vicariously through their characters.

Oh, yeah, THIS. At some point, it becomes pretty clear that if people have no interest in fandom life and aren't on the site themselves, their only real reason for finding our stuff is to find fodder to mock us for. Even if they're not on there for that sole purpose, it feels that way.

We are always on the defensive under these circumstances, and really, who can blame us? I will say right off the bat that there is nothing wrong with writing sex scenes in fan fiction, as long as they are properly tagged for the sake of the young'uns on the internets, and I respect the people who are bold enough to do it and doubly respect those who do it well. Yeah, Fifty Shades and the sexually explicit One Direction fic After both became wildly popular, but they are not an accurate representation of what most fan fiction writers are actually producing.

A lot of us take our plots and the research that goes into them very seriously, and work very hard to create an open and supportive community where we can learn from each other to make our works better. And a lot of us are just there for kicks and don't do any research, because the whole point of fan fiction is that it can be whatever you damn well want it to be.

There is enough weird sex-shaming in the world that I know that the stigma on sexual fan fiction will never ever ever die, but they shouldn't have to justify themselves at every corner. It happens all the time. Take a break, enjoy stories you love, and come back to your writing later. Thank you for sharing this time with me, and I hope these tips help you defeat your own writer's block. I wish you all the best in your writing endeavours.

Have you ever experienced writer's block? How did you get rid of it? The Watty Awards. Try Premium. Log in Sign Up. Writing multiple stories at the same time. Prequel, the importance of history on characters. Writing a Character Arc for a Canon Character. Prevent and Overcome Writer's Block. The Do's and Don'ts of Erotica Fiction. Focus: Writing AUs Fairy Tail Style!

New Reading List. Send to Friend. Where stories live. I myself still receive kind words from time to time on several of my now very old and outdated past fanfics. As one recent anonymous reviewer posted in response to a Fullmetal Alchemist story I wrote about Barry the Chopper and an original character named Kate,.

I have stayed up two nights in a row reading your barry and kate stories and i absolutely need more of it. Writing fanfiction helped me gain the practice and the confidence to be able to write professionally—and to keep writing about stuff I love even in the face of rejection.

Yes, some fics are written in incredibly poor taste. Yes, many of them are quite terribly written. Writing fanfiction is not inherently bad, nor is reading it.

Sign up for my newsletter! Get regular updates via email on new content, upcoming releases, and more! Includes monthly newsletter as well as the occasional timely announcement. In such a solitary practice as writing, this sense of community is tremendously meaningful.

From aliens to shape shifting, steamy sex scenes, random romantic pairings, and gender bending, you can find just about anything in fanfiction. When writing fanfiction, you have the freedom to be creative and weird, to truly experiment with anything and everything, all within a community of other fans. Plus, this kind of experimentation helps you push the boundaries of how you write characters and plots—you already have an existing character to work with, so now you can deeply explore how they think and act under different circumstances some logical, some totally wild.

It encourages a deeper connection with your favorite stories—far from simply consuming them and waiting for the next one, you become an active participant in the creative process. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction.

The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language. What is Fanfiction All About? Contents 1 What is Fanfiction All About? Leave a Reply Cancel reply.