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The Fanfic Writers’ Craft is a podcast that discusses all things fanfiction with a focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. Every three weeks, Jo and Blayne (otherwise known in fandom as @pebblysand and @nargles15) sit down for a fun, multi-fandom, fanfic-related chat and delve into particular topics such as: the particularities of writing and reading fanfiction, monetisation, how to build a fanfiction plot, etc. Hope you enjoy!
You can find us and contact us at: https://thefanficwriterscraft.tumblr.com/
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S1E1. What Is Fanfiction? (or, Children with Unsupervised Internet Access in the Early 2000s)
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Introduction:
The Fanfic Writers' Craft is a podcast that discusses all things fanfiction with a focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. My name is Jo, aka @pebblysand, and I'll be your host for the next hour or so. My co-host is also known online under the name @copper-dust, you'll meet her shortly. But for now, buckle up get yourself a nice cup of tea, and welcome to the fanfic writers’ craft.
Show:
Jo: Hello and welcome to The Fanfic Writers' Craft! My name is Jo, happy to host! I'm here with my co-host, Lani! On this podcast, we're going to be discussing fanfic and all things writing, writing in fandom, etc. The idea for this came about as we both wanted to discuss the art of writing fanfic, in a manner that would be fandom-agnostic. So, welcome everyone! I'm going to let Lani introduce herself first, and tell you more about who she is and what she writes - all of that good stuff!
Lani: Hi everyone, my name is Lani. On the internet, I usually go by the handle @copper-dust on Tumblr and AO3. Lately, I’m mostly writing in the Harry Potter fandom although in the past, I also wrote for musical theatre fandoms, in particular Rent. I haven't done that in quite a few years, though. In terms of genre, I like to usually write gen fiction or historical fiction, writing stories that are set in a specific time and place. I would say I'm pretty much a settings-first writer. What about you, Jo? Do you want to introduce your writing profile on the internet?
Jo: Yeah, so I’m Jo and I usually go by pebblysand online. I started writing fanfic like most people: when I was a teenager. I mostly wrote for TV shows, including The Good Wife. I later joined the Harry Potter world with the pandemic, and started writing Harry Potter fanfiction then. I write both one-shots and long fics, including a longer work I have going on right now, called castles. I think I'm maybe more character-driven (or maybe plot-driven, in certain instances). I think I like to dig into specific characters, especially side characters. I also have a separate series of one-shots called ROAR which explores that.
Lani: Great! And, so, maybe we'll introduce a little bit more about who we are outside of the world of fanfiction. For me, in addition to writing fanfiction, I'm also a visual artist, as well as someone who writes original fiction. Contrary to the myth that fanfiction prevents you from growing into writing original fiction, it actually does not - those things can coexist! I have a degree in art and I also work as an elementary school teacher. So, whatever bad fanfics you've read on the internet, I promise you: I have seen worse! And, Jo you definitely have a very different background from that, right?
Jo: Yeah, so outside of writing, I have a law degree and I work in tech. I've also written a couple of original short stories, but I've never really considered myself to be an original fiction writer. Not that I don't want to write original fiction, but it just never came about. It was never something that I really want to dedicate time towards. I don't consider myself to be an artist or anything like that either, I just write - that's my only artistic endeavour.
Lani: Yeah, so I think we have two very different backgrounds that we’re coming to fan fiction from. However, in other ways, we're very similar. We’re the same age - I think we're both 27 -
Jo: I'm 28!
Lani: Well, I'm turning 28 unforgivably soon! We both grew up reading fan fiction in the wild west, unfiltered internet of the early 2000s - RIP. And, we were exposed to both fanfictions that we enjoyed, and to many that were shocking or horrifying to us as underage children with unsupervised internet access. We've kind of grown up in that world in the same way that I think a lot of Harry Potter fans our age have. That same kind of introduction to fan culture in the early 2000s. This is of course not to say that this podcast is only going to be discussing Harry Potter, because we're going to be talking about fan fiction more broadly as it might apply to any fandom or combination of fandoms in the case of crossovers.
Jo: Yeah. So, what I wanted to ask you first, I suppose, is: what do you see as fan fiction? Like: how do you define fanfiction and how did you get into it/why do you still read it? Because, you know, I think there's a lot of - not stigma, but this belief that fanfiction is for teenagers and that when you grow up, you go into the “real” world of original fiction. And, so, how do you sort of define fanfiction and why do you enjoy writing it?
Lani: I think FanFiction is probably the way that most people discover writing in the sense that when you're a child, in grade one or grade two, the first writing assignments you get are your teacher asking you to write, like: what would happen after the end of the book? What would be the next chapter? Or, write this chapter from another character's perspective. Traditionally, we don't define those kinds of writing assignments as FanFiction but basically, they are. So, that might be part of the reason why we think of fanfiction as something that is for children or teenagers. Because those are some of the earliest stories that we would tell.
But, I don't actually believe that fan fiction has to be for any specific age group - although certainly, demographically on the internet, it does seem to be most popular with women who are in their teens or 20s. But, that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. For me, I guess I like to define fanfiction very broadly. So, I would include any work of storytelling that is based on a previously existing work that is not by the author of the new work. A person writing a sequel to their own book - that's not fan fiction. But, somebody writing a sequel or a prequel or a parallel story or an alternate universe version of a story that already existed would in my mind be considered fan fiction.
For some people, their narrow definition of fanfiction is: it only exists on the internet, it has to be written based on works that are not yet in the public domain, and so it's not legal to publish them and earn money off of them. I personally think it's a bit silly to define fan fiction by whether or not you are allowed to make money off of it because while that certainly affects the distribution, it doesn’t affect the actual art form.
Jo: You're right. And, the thing with marketability and “sellability” of fanfiction is that, if you think about it: a lot of books even coming out today, or a lot of works coming out today, being sold to the public actually are fan fiction. It's just that with a lot of that stuff, they're based on something that is in the public domain, which can then be remarketed and resold. Whereas for us, obviously, when you're talking about Harry Potter, it’s the kind of story that is not yet in the public domain, and so by default, you can't make money off of it. Fanfiction, in that way, is one of the last things on the internet that is actually free for everyone to enjoy. It’s a very interesting thing.
That being said, I also think it contributes to this vision we have of fan fiction as this kind of sub-form of art that is somehow “less than” original work. Because we live in a capitalist society, obviously, stuff that doesn't have monetary value can be disregarded in that way. We see fan fiction as “less than” and as a thing for teenagers, or as a thing for people who are not “strong enough” to write original fiction because it's not marketable. But, obviously, that’s a real shortcoming.
Outside of the fandom community, we also see fanfic as something that is just “teenage girls writing sex” or writing porn. In my experience, it’s very reductive. Of course, fanfiction includes sexual content, but it's not the only thing. And, I think that is something that we also need to address when discussing fan fiction.
Lani: Yeah, and I think there are actually so many angles to this because there were multiple complaints made about fan fiction where, if you extended that complaint, you would have to get into a whole other issue. For example, if your argument is: it's not artistic, it's not original, then you could say the same thing about a lot of American rom-com movies and children's television shows. If your complaint is that it's pornographic, you would also have to complain about just pornography in general. If your complaint is that you can't make money off of it and it's not legal, then I suppose you would have to say similar things about street art and graffiti artists who are also illegally making work.
So, it does seem that a lot of this comes down to the fact that overwhelmingly, young women enjoy it. And of course, we know that historically, everything women like is bad, unless men also like it. If young women like it, that makes it stupid. If older women like it, that means it's pathetic because they're trying to be like young women.
People have made this comment before, but I think it is something we have to come back to: studies have shown that the overwhelming demographic for writers and readers of fanfiction is young women. And, we can't get away from the kind of disdain that is shown for things that young women are fans of, even when they later become culturally accepted. Like: The Beatles, for instance. In the sixties, it was like “Oh my God, you like The Beatles? That's such a teenage girl thing!” Where teenage girls would go to their concerts and scream for three hours. Of course, nowadays there are men who are Beatles mega collectors and have spent $50,000 on rare vinyl items, and have gotten PhDs in The Beatles. Of course, at the time, it was like: you were just another pathetic teenage fangirl.
Jo: Right, definitely. So, I guess one of the other questions I wanted to ask you is: how did you get into writing fan fiction?
Lani: So, I was always interested in making up stories of any kind, whether they were fanfiction or not, ever since I was little. Before I could even write, I would just make things up in my head. And then, once I could write, I would write them down with a marker in a lined notebook. I’ve found notebooks and stuff with stories I wrote when I was five, and every word was phonetically spelt; it was pretty funny.
So, I wouldn't say there was one moment at which I became interested in it. That was just always something that I was interested in. But definitely, when I discovered that it was a thing that other people did on the internet, it became more appealing. When I was nine, that was really when I was first using the internet by myself, and that was when I discovered that this was a thing that existed that people older than me were doing in a way that was probably more artful and elegant than what I, as a kid, could do. And so, I would say that for a while, I just sort of made up stories in my head, but I didn't have an interest in writing them down because I didn't have an interest in sharing them with other people, I just read things that I found online.
As I got into being 11 or 12, I became more interested in actually going from just sort of writing as a form of play to a form of craft, and something that I actively wanted to improve on. I started publishing stuff on the internet when I was, maybe, 12. I'm not standing by those works and saying that they were amazing because they were not, but that was when I started sharing work with other people. What's interesting is that, because I have that stuff up, I can sort of track my growth over 15 or 16 years, now, and see how I've changed over the course of that span of time.
It was definitely something where for me, my interest in fan fiction was not separate from my interest in any other type of original fiction. To me, it's the same interest, which is wanting to make up stories.
Jo: Yeah, I think it's this thing where, as writers, we see art in a general way as something to engage with and entertain us. You know, we were talking previously about the “read another book” injunction people sometimes give HP fans and it's like: of course, we read other books! We read many many books! We're currently writing Harry Potter fanfiction but obviously, I engage with other forms of art. I love television, I love films… There's this kind of nexus around that of wanting to engage with art as a general medium, and having that conversation, having an audience for that conversation and being able to contribute to a dialogue with people who will read your work, or interact with your work, and that’s the joy of it. Of course, there are specificities about writing fan fiction and reading fan fiction that you wouldn't find in reading “normal” fiction but I think there are also a lot of things that are common to all art forms.
Anyway, for me, you might not be able to hear it but I am French, originally. I started writing fanfiction when I was about 12 or 13 for a show I loved which was called Without a Trace. It was an American procedural and I just, I don't know, I had a fixation on it. So, I started going online, as you did when you were, you know, a 12-year-old in the 2000s, and found… I think it was French forums about the show at the time, because my English wasn't that good. It was: the French fandom community for Without a Trace, which was tiny - and I mean, very very tiny. And, I remember people were writing these stories on message boards and there was this person who had created one that she had later left unfinished. I think it only had one chapter but I really liked it so I messaged her and I was like: “Is this abandoned? Can I take it over?” And, actually, to her credit, she was like: “Sure, go for it!” Now that I think about it, I think that's a bit weird, but you know, at the time, that was something you could do. So, I wrote, like, 50,000 words for it or something, it was massive [editor’s note: since this recording, I have found this fic again after some internet digging, and it turns out it was 13,000 words. Still massive for a 12-year-old]. And, it was so bad - so, so bad -
Lani: Have you seen it recently?
Jo: So, no, that's the thing: I'm kind of sad about that because, well, you were mentioning that you're able to track your progress since then whereas unfortunately, all these French websites have now gone under. There was a kind of French version of LiveJournal called Skyblog and I think mine was purged. [editor’s note: it was, but I had forgotten that someone else tried to steal (!!!) my precious shitty fanfiction and reposted it on their blog, which is still online. So, this turned out to be a blessing because thanks to this outrageous rip-off, I have since been able to dig it up and save it :)] Obviously, at that age, I didn't see the value in safeguarding my shit, so I only have stuff from 16 and older, which is when I started writing in English. That stuff is still on fanfiction.net and under my profile - RIP fanfiction.net, by the way -
Lani: I think it’s kind of like the walking dead: instead of just dying properly - which it should - we keep the website going even though it’s awful -
Jo: Yeah, I’ve the weirdest emotional attachment to fanfiction.net. I still update! My long fic is on there, just out of sheer nostalgia. I get weird comments but there are also still people who are reading mostly on ff.net. There are not that many, but there are definitely some. I'm not posting new work on ff.net anymore (again, it's a shit website), but I'm still updating my long work ‘cause it’s just there. I know some people are reading it, so I don’t want to cut them off and be disrespectful.
But yeah, on ff.net, I do have the archives of pebblysand back from when she was 16/17, but that's kind of it, I don't have anything older than that. Which is kind of sad, to be honest, I wish I had that.
Lani: You know, I think I have a unique sort of privilege because most people, when they read their early work, they go “well, this is awful.” But, I read my early work that I wrote when I was, let's say 12 or 13, but I also have access to what lots of other 12 and 13-year-olds write, because I'm a teacher. So, I know that yes, as a work of fiction, it's awful, but comparatively - developmentally - I can see where it stands up next to what other 12/13-year-olds write. Which I guess is helpful for me to not just feel totally humiliated about it. And, you know, people aren't embarrassed when you dig up something they wrote in grade one that has a spelling mistake in every word, people think it's cute. But somehow, the cringe fan fiction you wrote when you were 13, is not cute. I think that’s wrong, I think it’s cute. I think it's sweet that people write cringe fan fiction when they're 13.
Jo: Oh yeah, 100%. As I said, I kind of wish I still had access to that because yeah, it would have been cute. I mean, to be honest, it probably wasn't that bad because people were reading it. Of course, it was a small fandom so they didn't really have a choice, they kind of had to read whatever was out there, but I think it probably was on the low end of readable.
One of the things I do now - and I know this is kind of, well, I don't want to say “controversial” but I know different fanfic writers have different takes on this - is that I always keep all of my work up on AO3. I know a lot of people will take offline the things that they don't like anymore but I try not to do that. The reason is that when I was 16/17, I started writing in English (and I started reading in English) and there was this author who I really liked. I remember I was obsessed with her work and kind of went down her fanfiction.net at the time and started reading her very early work. And, I remember being like: “Oh, she wasn't always this good!” I remember thinking to myself: “Okay, I really like what she writes now, and obviously her early work had potential - it was definitely readable - but it wasn’t the same standard as what she writes now.” And so, this was an incredible boost for me because I was like: “Oh, that means I can get better too!”
I knew I wasn't great at it but I thought: “Oh, that means if you keep going, you can get better.” So, I always try to keep my old stuff online because if there's one person who's 16/17 right now, and reading what I'm writing and thinking to themselves “Oh, I really like her stuff,” I want them to be able to go back in my archive and see that my old stuff wasn't to the standard of what I write now. I want them to be able to relate to that, and be able to be like “Oh, I can improve, too!”
Lani: I think for me, some of my earliest works, I mean, there were people who enjoyed it. I don't know who they are, but they left comments saying that.
Jo: Same! I know!
Lani: So it feels mean to say, “This is so bad it has to be taken down,” because those people enjoyed it. I don't want to take down the kindness that they left in leaving a review. And also, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it. If you see a fan fiction posted in the year 2007 and it's bad - have a nice time not reading it! Some of us don't like damaging the archaeological record.
Jo: Yeah, and I think that goes to FanFiction in general where I think it's much easier to be like: “Oh, I don't like this, so I'm just not gonna read it anymore.” Especially in bigger fandoms, there's so much on offer that you can just be like: “Oh, I don't want to read this and I'll read something else.” When I buy a book - a physical book - even if I don't like it, I kind of feel like I have to finish it. Whereas with fan fiction, because there's so much on offer - and also because it's for free - you're kind of like: “Okay, live and let live,” kind of thing. I can read something else. And, I think that's why I like FanFiction so much is that there's a very broad spectrum of what you can read and it's all for free, and it's all out there, and all you have to do is find it. Finding it can be hard, but it exists somewhere.
Lani: I definitely think that if you’re becoming interested in a tiny fandom, you will read whatever is in there. If there are, like, 15 stories, you'll try each one. If you don't like it, you won't finish it, but you get what you get and you don't get upset. If you're in a massive mega fandom like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or something like that, people come in with this idea that because the fandom is so big, and there are so many cultural products available, they have to find the thing that is absolutely the niche that they love. For many people, they actually can find that thing because so much has been created.
And on the writer’s side, that can also sometimes result in a writer's block issue where you’re like: “How could I write this when it's obviously been done before?” For me, as somebody who likes a lot of Marauder's era stories, the thing that's always been done before is the prank. Everybody has their own take on it. But for me, it's like: even though I read like 6,000 takes on the prank, I was like: “Yeah, but none of those was my take,” you know? I've a slightly different take on it.
I don't care if there's been 50,000 takes because if you expand this to genre ideas: have there been books about falling in love or getting revenge, or getting an education and growing up? Yes. That doesn't mean that you can't read a western or a romance or a coming-of-age novel again. People love variations on a common theme. I think what we see with fan fiction is that people love to see a thousand versions of almost exactly the same thing, but a little bit different each time. I think that’s okay, that's not something where people need to get a lecture on “you need to read something new,” there's nothing new under the sun. If you believe in this kind of myth of total originality, you probably aren't very well exposed to a lot of art.
For me, I sometimes think the way originality is treated in the publishing world is bizarre, coming from a visual art background. In visual art, the cultural norms around originality versus plagiarism are much looser. A lot of things are considered not plagiarism but a response to a previously existing work. There’s this famous Great Depression era photo taken by Walker Evans of a woman leaning against a kind of wood frame house. Then, another photographer called Sherrie Levine came along and she literally just took a photo of the Walker Evans photo. She photographed it and her version is the same photo but she printed it herself. It's just a photo of the original and the point was that her work is a commentary on originality. Nobody came after her for plagiarism because it’s understood in the visual art world that you can do that, you can make something that looks exactly like somebody else's work if you have some kind of concept or reasoning behind it that's different. Later, somebody else whose name I don’t remember even took a photo of her work which was called After Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans. Once again, it's the same photo of the woman leaning against the wall, and now it's a double commentary on post-modernity and originality.
Again, this is considered fine in visual art, this is a normal thing to do. People adapt each other's images. They take images, they reproduce them with variations far more subtle than the variations you'll see in fan fiction. This is considered playful and postmodern and fine, and yet in the writing world, publishers are like: “Why can’t you write original fiction?” I mean, you know, musicians cover other artists’ songs all the time. This is still considered music, not “fan music.” So, I don't know why the publishing industry is extremely conservative in the way it interprets originality.
Jo: I completely agree. And so, in preparing the podcast, you said that you had a great story about a university professor stigmatizing fan fiction. Do you want to talk about that?
Lani: Yes! So, this was in 2014 and I was at art school. For some context, everybody enrolled in this course was doing either a Bachelor of Design or a Bachelor of Fine Arts, so they're all automatically, by definition, creative people. I enrolled in an elective called Web Theory. It was a liberal arts course about the history of the internet and the culture of the internet, ways that the internet affects society, etc. It was said in the syllabus that they would be discussing fan fiction, so I was sort of excited for this class.
The class comes around there's a male professor maybe in his fifties or 60s, and he brings up the concept of fan fiction. Immediately, he starts denigrating it, talks about how it's so stupid, saying that all fan fiction is terrible, that it's all soft or hardcore porn, that it's exclusively written by middle-aged cat ladies who can't find a boyfriend or can't find a husband. Then, he pulls up AO3 and randomly goes onto the most recently updated story for all fandoms. He just sort of scrolls through it and clicks on one that's a fandom for a children's puppet TV show - I can't remember what show it was, but it was the sort of thing where you didn't even know there would be a fan fiction community for it.
So, of course, he pulls up one that is maybe the most characteristic in terms of the things that people make fun of when it comes to fanfiction. It's sexual, the main characters are from a bizarre children's TV show, it’s badly written or whatever. But: he's pulled this from like the most recently updated page, which nobody who reads FanFiction would ever do. He shows it to the classes like: “Look how stupid this is!”
And, after he does that, he says: “Oh, by the way, has anyone here ever heard of fan fiction or read it?” And, in this class of about, let's say 30 people, nobody raises their hand. And, I'm just gonna repeat: this is a roomful of majority women and gay men between, let's say, 18 and 22 years old, all of whom are creatives in the year 2014. You're telling me that not a single person in this room has ever heard of fan fiction? I'm willing to bet every person in that room has heard of fan fiction!
Jo: Yeah! Especially because that was after your one with the porn novel, what was her name again?
Lani: Fifty Shades of Grey.
Jo: Yeah! Everyone heard about fanfiction after Fifty Shades of Grey!
Lani: Yeah and also, this was 2014, which was the peak year of Tumblr and incidentally, I think it was also the year of the ball pit! We will not go into that but you know, again, these people are all artists! You’re really telling me that none of these people, who not only are artists but they’ve also signed up for an elective called Web Theory, which is about internet culture! It was just so transparent that we were all saying, “no, we've never heard of it,” because the guy had just disparaged it very misogynistically for half an hour, and made fun of anyone who would ever write or read it.
I think, to me, we all knew there was a stigma and that it was considered embarrassing or something, that you wouldn't tell people, but I had never seen it sort of enacted quite so literally and clearly as I had seen it in that moment. I think I came away from that class not only thinking that I wasn’t right to have been embarrassed, but also thinking about how stupid this guy came off. Anyone who knows anything about fan culture knows people don't choose what to read on the basis of the most recently published work. No one would walk into a library and say whatever book is closest to the door is the one I’m going to read - if that's the children's section and I'm an adult, then so be it! Or, if that's the large print section in my eyesight is fine - nobody does that! Nobody, when they're cooking dinner, is like: whatever recipe is at the front of the cookbook, that's what I have to make!
So, that's the first thing. The second thing is: this point about “Oh, there's no gatekeeping so there's no means of ensuring that the product is good quality,” this is the same thing that could be said about zine culture and independent artists. Yet, at art school, if you try to say that any artist who did not receive approval from the Academy or the powers that be, is necessarily bad - that would be an insane thing to say if you had any kind of knowledge of art or art history. Some of the artists who are now most respected were absolutely disparaged by the Academy. None of the gatekeepers were letting them in.
With fanfiction, that guy showed he had no idea what he was talking about, and that he literally just hates women. Because, I'm sorry, saying: “This thing is enjoyed by middle-aged women, so it's bad,” or “This thing is enjoyed by single women, so it's bad,” - I mean there's nothing else to say, you just hate women. You don't respect them.
So, that was an experience that in some ways made me less embarrassed about this idea. Because, I realised: there's no way anyone in that room was telling the truth that they had never heard of fan fiction. I don't believe that for a moment. There's also no way that this guy knew anything about what he was talking about, he was just a college professor going off about something he was totally ignorant about. That sort of gave me more room to be like: this is the argument of somebody who doesn't like poetry because they can't understand metaphors, and thus says that all poetry is garbage.
Jo: You’re definitely right. A lot of the criticism that comes with fan fiction is from people who've never read it and who don't understand the diversity of the kind of fanfiction that is out there. As I said before, I've been writing Harry Potter fanfiction, I've also written in very niche, very small fandoms and there's such a diversity in terms of themes, in terms of the stories themselves. For example, fanfiction featured a lot of LGTBQ+ content way before it became more wildly accepted in traditional media. That’s transformative. So, when you hear criticism from people who've never read it, and who just think 50 Shades of Grey is the standard, it’s very annoying.
Lani: Also, 50 Shades of Grey started as fan fiction, but it ended up getting published by mainstream publishers in the industry, so any criticism you could make about it, could be responded with: “Yes, but then the gatekeeper saw how popular it was and published it in a mainstream way.” So, if you're arguing that gatekeepers make decisions on the basis of artistic value, I mean you're gonna have to admit they make a decision on the basis of sellability and whether something is going to have an audience. It's not like all books that have been traditionally published are viewed as fine literature. So, certainly, it's true that anybody could go on the internet and publish fan fiction because there's no gatekeeping - as long as we have internet access you could do it. That's true, and the absence of gatekeeping means that your process of selection for what you want to read is gonna have to be maybe a little bit more robust to read something of a certain quality, but that doesn't mean that all FanFiction is bad.
The reality is: I think for me and for you, and for most people who are interested in reading works that are of a certain quality, what we do is we build up networks of communities of people whose opinions we know and trust and value. If we have an author we like, we see what kind of work have they favourited or liked. If there’s someone who loves works that we loved, we’re going to check out what else they liked. It basically ends up being like: you know when people want to go to a good restaurant in your neighbourhood, they would usually ask their friends what places they would recommend. Restaurants become popular based on word of mouth. That's kind of how it works in the fan fiction world. Would you agree?
Jo: Definitely! I think that's why AO3 has taken over the world and completely annihilated ff.net as well, because their way of having bookmarks and kudos is so much better than what you used to have. It's so much easier to go through someone else's bookmarks and find good works you might enjoy because you've enjoyed either this person's work or another work that they have recommended.
I was wondering if we could discuss how we think fan fiction differs from other forms of writing. The benefits and the challenges of writing fan fiction. I know you've said you've written original fiction as well, so what's your opinion on that? What makes you stay in fan fiction?
Lani: I think there are multiple reasons why people get in it, and then there are reasons why people stay in it. As we've discussed, because a lot of people get into it as kids, some people lose interest in writing altogether. Some people maintain interest but move on to original fiction and never come back. Some people maintain both interests, and some people only write fan fiction. So, it can be any combination of those things.
For me, when I talk to people who are extremely gifted fan fiction writers and I say: “What makes you stay in this area when you know you can't make money in it, and you can't really receive public recognition for it?” I've gotten answers like: they like having a guaranteed audience. They like being able to get feedback without waiting six years from a first draft, to getting an agent, to getting a publisher, etc. Some of them have said that they have published original fiction but when people read your original work, there's no means for them to respond or comment. It doesn't matter how many people have read it, because you're not really hearing from them.
Some people also say that the publishing industry is very hard to get into because of various forms of nepotism. If you don't have connections, it's very hard to get into the publishing industry, even if you are a great writer. The publishing industry is collapsing because of the internet, so there's really not a lot of money to go around anymore. It’s like the music industry in that respect. Even if you did manage to find mild success, you likely wouldn't hear anything from your readers. You would get a cheque, which would probably be abysmally small, and you would never really hear anything from the majority of your readers. Whereas fan fiction offers a different experience of community.
That being said, some people write both. For me, like I've said, I'm not trying to make a living off of this. I certainly worry about whether my work is good, but when it comes to financial gain, I have a job that I use to pay for things, and it doesn't rely on me being in an industry that needs a new financial model, desperately. I guess the reason I write fan fiction is because I like the community. I like the exchange of ideas. I like that immediate feedback aspect.
I write original fiction because there are specific stories I want to tell which are original ideas, and aren’t based on anything. I also have a community of original fiction writers who I share that kind of work with. I don't put it online or publish it anywhere because if I ever do want to publish it, putting it online makes you unable to ever publish it in a magazine, but I do share it with my community of people I know in real life who are also writers. I have that space for my original fiction, and that's why you won't see it on AO3, but it does exist. With FanFiction, it just fulfils a different need.
Jo: Yeah, I very much identify with what you said about people staying in fan fiction for the community aspect of it. That’s definitely my experience. In 2020, I was unemployed and I spent a lot of time writing. One of the things I wrote was an original short story. I was very happy with it, it was the first one that I took from beginning to end. I got it published - I even got paid for it - but then that was that. I got this high of: “Wow! My first original short story and it got published!” but then I just kind of like… “Eh?” You never hear from your readers, you just get a bit of feedback from the editor. They gave me really good comments, but being used to the community aspect of writing fan fiction, and being able to exchange with my readers all the time, made the experience a bit underwhelming.
I'm someone who will answer every single comment I get on AO3 just because I like the community. And, yes, sometimes you get comments that are stupid, and I think everyone has been there, but you get such an exchange overall, out of fanfiction, that is very satisfying as a writer. I don't have that kind of real-life community you have for original fiction, I’ve never been one for creative writing groups or whatever, I’m not super comfortable with them. So, I think if I was to write original stories, I'd probably put them out online for free. That is what I do, what I’ve always done, what I know, and what brings me joy.
Of course, there are differences in who's gonna read your original stories versus who's gonna read your fan fiction. Fan fiction has an in-built audience, but I think generally speaking, for me, the community aspect and the feedback aspect are what has made me stay in fan fiction, even as I age. As you said, for me, it’s a hobby, I'm also not trying to make a living out of this, so I think it's just a very engaging and rewarding medium.
Lani: I definitely agree with that. And, it's not just that you can't make money off fan fiction, realistically you also can't make money off of original fiction. The difference is that with fan fiction you went in not expecting money to begin with, whereas with original fiction, you went in not expecting a once-every-six-months cheque for 30 cents. I've spoken to people who are published authors; they will literally get a check in the mail for an amount that is less than a dollar. Somehow, that's worse than getting no money.
I think for some of us who are “older” writers, it's a little bit like how movie producers want to cast a star before they finance a project. They know people will come see the movie because they hear the name of the star, and that will get people in the door. With fanfiction, that's sort of the same thing. You have a story that you want to tell, but you need to attach the name of a famous fandom because that will get people in the door.
I’ve begun writing stuff that's more Alternate Universe lately, and is less structurally reliant on canon. And, I know that more and more, I'm going past building off or extrapolating from canon, and more into writing an original story. It has elements of having a celebrity on the marquee to get people in the door. I think people are okay with that as long as you're delivering in some way something that has some level of inspiration in the original product. We've talked before this conversation about someone who I know who has even written fan fiction for fandoms where they've never actually consumed the original canon. So, you can't even call it a derivative work because they don't even know what they're derivating from. It gets quite clearly into the area of like: this person is not using FanFiction as a crutch because they can't tell an original story, they're using a brand name as a marketing tactic.
Jo: Yeah. The only thing I wanted to mention regarding what you just said is: I think it's very interesting where you draw the line between original fiction and fanfiction. I recently wrote a fanfic called the fault in faulty manufacturing which was centred on Seamus Finnigan from Harry Potter. In it, there is a very prominent OC - Aoife, Seamus’s sister - and I got so many comments asking me to write a story about her. People really liking her as an original character. And, I was kind of sitting there thinking: if I were to write that, where does that sit? Because at this point I’d be writing a story about an original character who happens to have relatives in the magical world. That’s very distant. It’s a bit like your Vietnam War AU. It's such a distant relationship to the original material. So, where is the line between fan fiction and original fiction?
Lani: I think it gets to a point where the answer to the question “Is this fan fiction or not?” is: “Does it matter?” There's a writer I like who did a Harry Potter fan fiction that was centred on 99% original characters, and one character who was maybe name-dropped in the original narrative once. The amount of creativity that was required to write it was the same amount of creativity as with original fiction, because not everyone could just sit down and write that. So, I mean, for me, I've been writing this recent AU (which is my first time going into a real AU) and I'm really pushing the limits of what I think has to be the same as canon, in order for this to be remotely recognizable to people who came in expecting some recognizable characters. Yet, at the same time, I could definitely file the serial numbers off of this and nobody who didn't know its origin would know.
Jo: Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, Sherlock, the BBC TV show is FanFiction of Sherlock Holmes!
Lani: Right? It’s like a Modern!AU -
Jo: Yes! It’s a Modern!AU of Sherlock Holmes! And, I'm sure there had been like Modern AUs of Sherlock Holmes written before the BBC show came up. And, obviously, I don't think there's anything wrong with that particularly, it's still an incredibly original take, and an original story.
To be honest, even if you're writing straight canon-compliant stories, you're still writing something that isn't in the original material. So, at that point, it is an original story to me, as far as I'm concerned.
Lani: I definitely agree with that. I think some writers who have been prominent writers have chosen to write sequels or other versions of books that did go into the public domain. Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer prize for her book March which is told from the perspective of the father in the family from Little Women. She's basically telling the story of the father who we know from canon as having written letters to the girls when he was away. And, you know, because that work had gone into the public domain, she was able to publish it and make all this money - although probably not actually that much - and to win a Pulitzer prize, which obviously is the more relevant concern here.
Somehow, that's not considered fan fiction, even though it totally is. It's not even AU, it fits perfectly into canon, the only difference is that she waited until the material had gone into the public domain - there’s literally no other difference.
Jo: Okay, well, I think it might be time to wrap up. I was wondering if maybe you could give us some recommendations to read or to listen to?
Lani: Yes! So, I would say anybody who writes anything, including non-fiction argumentative writing, needs to read the Elements of Style by Strunk and White, which is a fairly dry book on how to construct proper sentences, paragraphs, and so on. It sounds very boring but some of the advice they give is stuff that you hear once, test it out to see if it works, and you realise it does work, and then you use it for the rest of your life. You don't have to sit down and read it cover to cover but buy it, put it in your bathroom, and read one little piece every time you go to the bathroom. I promise this stuff really works.
Jo: Yeah, that's a really good recommendation. I have not read it and I'm not one for books on writing but I definitely I'll look into that!
I suppose my recommendation would be some authors that I can recommend in Harry Potter fanfic who don’t fall into the usual cliché of fanfiction being “just porn.” Someone I could definitely - well, I could recommend your work first of all - but I could also recommend dirgewithoutmusic. I think their work is incredible; they're a gen fanfiction writer. I think they would be great for someone who doesn't know that much about fan fiction and wants to go beyond the clichés.
Lani: Oh, yeah, if I could also recommend someone where, in terms of writing skills, I believe this person could be published if they filed off the serial numbers, is The Divine Comedian, also in the Harry Potter fandom. Their ability to construct a sentence, construct a plot, and do foreshadowing - all of it, to me, is at a professional quality. Read their work and you’ll be shocked that this is a person who isn't being paid for what they do!
Jo: Okay! So, Lani, where can we find you online?
Lani: So, you can find me at copper-dust on Tumblr and copper_dust on AO3.
Jo: Perfect! And I'm Jo, and I’m pebblysand on all platforms including Tumblr and AO3. Bye!
Lani: Bye!