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How to write fan fiction

We all have fictional characters and worlds we know and love, but what about reimagining them with different plots and genre-bending crossovers to create a whole new story? You might not know this, but one of the first genres to take off on Wattpad was fanfiction. And as a category that ignites inspiration and unbounded creativity, it’s popular for a reason.

What is fanfiction?

Fanfiction , also known as fanfic, sees fans borrowing stories or characters (and sometimes both!) from an existing novel, TV show, or movie, and using them to create an entirely new story.

While the origins of fanfic are, well, fictional, the genre has grown to include real-world people, like celebrities, being pulled from pop culture and written into stories. It’s one way for fans of these characters, worlds, and people to play out their stories and lives in different scenarios. It’s all about self-expression, and it’s about as close to roleplaying as you can get.

Here are 5 types of fanfiction to help you get started:

• Canon fics: These types of stories keep as close to the original story and plot line as possible, while taking other liberties like telling the story from the perspective of a different character.
• Crossover fics: Multiple existing worlds come together to create an entirely new story in crossover fics.
• Original characters: In this form of fanfiction, the original setting and storyline are the same but a brand-new character is added in to provide a new point of view.
• Alternate universe: These stories see existing characters moved into a new world or scenario.
• Slash fiction: This is one of the most popular types of fanfiction, in which the writer mashes up two characters (sometimes from different worlds, but not always) together romantically.

Start small

While most works of fiction require long outlines, drafts, and rounds of editing, fanfiction is a little more loose—and that’s part of the appeal. Start with a small idea and don’t feel pressured to write too much. Maybe you want to see your favorite K-pop stars join a group of superheroes from a movie you love, and have an idea of how they discover their powers one afternoon. Your story doesn’t have to be an epic length. It can be a few sentences or a couple paragraphs (known in the fanfic world as drabbles or oneshots) to get your feet wet and give your readers a taste of this unique world you’ve built.

But plan for the long run

We’re willing to bet that once you’ve written your short story, you’re going to want to keep it going. Inspiration will take hold and the scene will grow into something bigger. Take this moment to outline where you want your story to go, thinking about specific events to get your characters there. Consider making biographies of all of your characters, including things like hair and eye color, what their demeanor is like, who they’re friends with, and anything from their pasts that could be useful in the story. Knowing your characters well will help your piece of fanfiction flourish.

Make storytelling friends

Even the best storytellers have editors. Instead of isolating while you work on your story, make some friends in the storytelling world who can help edit and proofread your story as you write. They can also help you brainstorm, come up with new ideas, and see plot holes where you hadn’t. Being a helpful proofreader to other writers like yourself will also help improve your own work, and may even spark some new ideas. Need help connecting with other writers? Find them in the comments section of some of your favorite stories or explore resources from Wattpad Ambassadors in your preferred genre.

Remember: Stay safe by always using caution when connecting with people on the internet. Use our new Block feature to restrict anyone’s access to your profile.

Write what you know

It’s the most solid piece of advice spanning all genres and types of stories. While being familiar with the characters and settings in which your story takes place, it goes a bit deeper than that. Lean on your own life experiences—use subjects you studied in school, jobs you’ve had, relationships that have come and gone, and all of the feelings that go with it. Your readers will recognize and appreciate your authenticity.

Ready to get started? Check out this full guide on writing fanfiction.

How to Start Writing Fan Fiction

CJ Connor is a cozy mystery and romance writer whose main goal in life is to make their dog proud. They are a Pitch Wars alumnus and an Author Mentor Match R9 mentor. Their debut mystery novel BOARD TO DEATH is forthcoming from Kensington Books. Twitter: @cjconnorwrites | cjconnorwrites.com

View All posts by CJ Connor

I began writing fan fiction in around 2008, when I was 11 years old. So, since I’m 24 now, that’s more than half of my life ago! It was then that I loved Twilight and a few other fantasy novels so much that I was desperate to find more stories in that universe and Google searched for that exact thing. And to my surprise, there were tons of them on a magical but now outdated site called “Fan Fiction Dot Net.”

Through middle and high school, I wrote fanfic for a ton of different fandoms but mainly The Avengers . Fan fiction not only helped me practice character development but also come to terms with my queer identity through pairings I enjoyed, especially since I grew up in a fairly conservative area where being queer wasn’t something I could share without losing friends.

These days, I’m a reader of fanfic more so than a writer of it — in part because I have other writing projects that take up more of my time, and a day job, and non-writing hobbies that help me avoid burnout but also take up time, et cetera, et cetera. But I still enjoy reading it for stress relief and a reminder that writing can be purely for joy and personal fulfillment if you want it to be.

Fan fiction became my gateway to writing original stories. I’m adamant that it can play a positive role in practicing things like character development or even just finding a love of writing. These six tips will help you get started writing fan fiction if you’re a beginner and get the most out of your project.

1) Don’t take yourself too seriously.

If you feel an impending sense of pressure to make your fanfic perfect before you’ve even begun, don’t. Unlike writing original fiction, which can sometimes be driven by success or money, fanfic is all about writing what interests you — whether that’s a certain pairing or a new ending to a series you love.

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Think of fan fiction like a creative sandbox for you to try out new ideas. Rather than worry about writing the best fanfic you can, start with a storyline that interests you and build from there. If you like angsty stories, write angst. If you enjoy a certain pairing and wish they’d gotten together in the canon, write a story where they do.

2) Decide whether you want to write in-universe or an alternate universe fanfic.

Fan fiction usually falls into two big categories: in-universe and alternate universe (AU). In-universe fan fiction takes place in the same general setting and plot line as the original story. It could be, for example, a prequel or a story that follows characters that aren’t focused on as much in the main plot.

Alternate universe fan fiction explores different settings or plot lines for characters within a fandom. This can be anything from a fanfic where a character who dies in the original story lives or an alternate setting where all of the characters work at a coffee shop. AU fanfics are great for if you want more control over your storyline or want to explore an entirely different setting with characters you already love.

3) Read up on tropes.

Tropes are plot elements or themes that help readers know what to expect from a story. They can also make for great story inspiration or jumping off points. One popular fanfic trope, for example, is “hurt/comfort” — which describes a story where one character is sad and another character (usually a love interest) helps them feel better.

For a few examples, check out this guide to romance tropes or read up on fan fiction terminology for the fandom you’re planning to write in. You may be able to find tropes that are specifically popular within that fandom.

4) Choose a platform.

Right now, there are two main platforms for fan fiction: Archive of Our Own (AO3) * and Wattpad. The beauty in AO3 is its simplicity in design as well as its tags, which makes finding fan fiction for a certain pairing or trope easy. Because it is a nonprofit, it’s also 100% free — though it does take donations to keep the site running.

Wattpad allows for more creativity in presentation. You can, for example, make a cover photo for each story you upload. It’s also more popular among original fiction writers, which can be useful if you write both. Wattpad also uses tags, but AO3 is more well-known for it.

Tumblr has also been a venue for posting fan fiction for the past decade but, in recent years, has fallen in popularity. Often, Tumblr users will link to their AO3 fanfic rather than upload it directly to the site.

Fan Fiction Dot Net was extremely popular during the 2000s, but is less used these days (partially because their site looks about the same as it did when it began in 1998). But, as discussed by Rioter Dana Lee in a previous post on fan fiction , it’s got a large collection of fanfics from the past few decades. It’s great for reading stories from fandoms that have been around for a long time but not necessarily for finding new readers.

I’ve been using AO3 exclusively since 2012 or so, because I like its tagging system and frankly am too stubborn to figure out any other sites unless I have to. That being said, I have friends who seem to get a lot out of Wattpad. It all comes down to personal preference.

* Editor’s Note: AO3 doesn’t automatically filter out triggering content and shows all fanfics for a specific fandom by date.

5) Add tags to help other people find it.

Once you’ve written a standalone or first chapter of a longer project, upload it to your preferred platform and add fandom, trope, and/or pairing tags. One of the most enjoyable parts of writing fanfic is finding a community of writers who enjoy the same fandoms you do. Tags will help other readers find your stories and help you organize your writing.

6) Update regularly, if possible.

Generally, readers prefer longer stories that update on a regular basis. Nobody wants to get invested in a story that will never finish, after all. But, as discussed earlier, this is all up to you. If you want to update every Tuesday, go for it! But if you don’t have time for a set schedule or lose interest in a project, don’t feel pressured to keep writing.

Interested in learning more about fan fiction? Check out this list of the most popular pairings in fan fiction history (including the ship that started it all: Kirk/Spock).

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How to Write Fanfiction

A step-by-step guide to writing compelling fanfiction! Plus, get insights on coping with criticism and navigating the legal aspects of fanfiction.

Fanfiction writing allows fans of books, movies, TV shows, and other media to expand on existing stories by creating their own new tales featuring favorite characters. Writing compelling fanfiction requires creativity, attention to detail, and strong writing skills. This guide provides tips and advice on how to write an engaging fanfiction story within your favorite fandom.

How to Choose a Fandom to write Fanfiction

The first step is picking which media franchise you want to write fanfiction for. Consider books, movies, TV series, anime, video games, comics, etc. that you are extremely passionate about and know inside and out. Writing fanfic for a fandom you love will make the process more fun and rewarding. Think about what specific aspects draw you in—the characters, themes, relationships, worldbuilding, etc. Focusing on elements you find most intriguing will help generate ideas to write fanfiction.

Some popular fandoms for fanfiction include:

• Harry Potter – Wizarding world with vivid characters that mature over time
• Marvel – Superheroes with complex backstories and relationships
• Star Wars – Sprawling space opera with endless story potential
• Lord of the Rings – Intricate fantasy world that lends itself to exploration
• Sherlock Holmes – Great modern character dynamics open to reinterpretation
• Supernatural – Urban fantasy elements with devoted fan following
• Avatar: The Last Airbender – Creative magic system and detailed world culture
• Doctor Who – Time travel creates infinite possibilities

Don’t just default to the most mainstream fandoms. Consider exploring a lesser-known work you personally connect with. The most important factor is choosing a world and cast of characters that inspire your imagination.

Researching Canon Source Material

Once you’ve chosen a fandom, take time to thoroughly research the canon source material. Read/watch/play through the original works closely, taking notes on key details like:

• Character biographies, personalities, quirks, backgrounds
• Important relationships between characters
• Sequence of events in the storyline
• Rules of how the fictional world operates
• Descriptions of settings like locations, technology, architecture
• Socio-cultural context like politics, history, prejudices
• Any supernatural, mythical or sci-fi elements
• Memorable lines of dialogue or quotations

Immersing yourself in exhaustive canon review will help you craft a fanfic that feels seamlessly connected to the original work rather than contradicting it. Don’t just rely on memory – dive deep with firsthand observation. Highlight or bookmark particularly useful details you might want to reference later in your writing.

Choosing a Story Idea

Once familiar with the source material, the fun part begins—brainstorming an original fanfiction idea! Typical starting points include:

Premise “What ifs” – How would the story change if you altered a key event, relationship, or character trait? E.g. “ What if Katniss and Peeta both survived the Hunger Games? ” or “What if Harry Potter has mental health issues and needs a therapist?”

AUs (Alternate Universes) – Explore a drastically different plotline in a fresh setting, like characters in a modern college vs. their original fantasy world.

Missing scenes – Expand on events that happened “off screen” in the original story. E.g. Ginny’s first year at Hogwarts .

Backstories – Create origin stories exploring how characters became who they are. E.g. Kylo Ren’s path to the dark side .

Crossovers – Blend two fictional worlds and character ensembles. E.g. a case that requires Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to team up .

Ship fics – Focus on non-canon romantic relationships readers wish existed. E.g. Hermione Granger/Luna Lovegood .

Role reversal – Switch main and minor character roles. E.g. Making Neville Longbottom the Boy Who Lived instead of Harry .

For want of a nail – Spin a storyline from a tiny canon detail. E.g. a fic focused on Harry Potter’s lost sock .

Once you have a concept, expand it into a full narrative arc with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution. Outline major plot points and consider how long you intend the story to be – a quick drabble, extended epic, or multi-chapter work. Make sure your idea aligns with the tone and spirit of the original fandom.

Developing Original Characters

While most fanfiction focuses on established canon characters, you may want to develop some original characters (OCs) to inhabit supporting roles. Here are tips for crafting effective OCs:

• Ensure they serve the story vs. distracting from canon characters
• Avoid “Mary Sue” traits like perfection, unique powers, central roles
• Give them clear motivations, flaws, and abilities that complement canon characters
• Develop unique, non-clichéd backstories connecting them to the fandom
• Make their dialogue and behavior fit the canon setting
• Show canon characters responding to them in believable ways
• Don’t let OCs hijack the storyline from protagonists

With thoughtful development, original characters can enrich your fanfic rather than detracting from the appeal of familiar canonical figures.

Choosing Point of View and Tense

Two key technical decisions in writing fanfiction are which perspective and tense to use.

Point of view options:

• First person – Immersive POV of one character
• Third person limited – Follows a single character
• Third person omniscient – Shifts between perspectives
• Second person – Uncommon but puts “you” in the driver’s seat

Tense options:

• Present tense – Unfolding in real-time
• Past tense – Recollecting events afterward
• Present shifting to past – Mix of concurrent and retrospective

Many fanfics use third person past tense to match the original works. But experiment to find the POV and tense that best fits your story.

Outlining the Plot

Before you start writing, map out your plot in detail to maintain cohesive storytelling. Outline all major events from start to finish including:

• Hook – Opening scene that introduces conflicts and mysteries
• Exposition – Backstory and worldbuilding foundation
• Inciting incident – Catalyst that kickstarts the central arc
• Rising action – Escalating conflict, stakes, and character interactions
• Climax – Height of tension where conflicts are resolved
• Falling action – Loose ends are addressed moving toward the resolution
• Resolution – Final glimpse of character futures and takeaways

Flexible outlines help you stay on track while still allowing for spontaneity in drafting specific scenes. Adjust the outline as needed, but maintain your overall intended storyline.

Writing Engaging Narrative

With an outline in hand, it’s time to start writing! Here are tips for crafting immersive narrative:

Show don’t tell – Rely more on vivid sensory details than explanatory statements.

Active voice – Use precise verbs that drive momentum and immediacy.

Vary sentence structure – Combine short, punchy sentences with longer descriptive ones.

Paragraph length – Break text into readable chunks using white space.

Pacing – Balance action with slower introspective scenes.

Setting descriptions – Help readers feel transported with in-depth sensory worldbuilding.

Inner thoughts/feelings – Convey characters’ emotions and interpret events through their lens.

Keep moving forward – Advance the story toward the climax rather than getting bogged down.

Cliffhangers – Insert chapter breaks at tense moments to propel readers forward.

Developing Three-Dimensional Characters

Authentic characterization is vital for impactful fanfiction. Ask yourself:

• Are canon characters behaving “in character” based on source material?
• If evolved from canon, are the changes believable based on intervening backstory?
• Do characters have individualized voices, worldviews, and motivations?
• Are characters proactive drivers of the story rather than passive observers?
• Do relationships and interactions feel organic rather than forced?
• Are characters confronted with difficult moral dilemmas or inner conflicts?
• Do characters experience realistic emotional reactions to events?
• Are supporting OCs seamlessly blended into the canonical ensemble?

Ideally, the characters should take on a life of their own beyond what you initially imagined. Let them guide the process through their authentic motivations and behaviors within the circumstances you create.

Handling Sensitive Topics

Fanfiction often explores mature themes like sex, violence, abuse, discrimination, trauma, addiction, and mental illness. When tackling sensitive subjects:

• Thoroughly research the topic to avoid perpetuating harmful misconceptions. Consult with people who have lived experiences.
• Focus on emotional truth and character agency rather than gratuitous shock value.
• Avoid demonizing or marginalizing impacted groups. Don’t rely on negative stereotypes.
• Provide warnings upfront for triggering/explicit content so readers can opt out.
• Consider whether traumatic experiences are plot devices vs. explored with nuance.
• Be compassionate depicting struggles while not presenting victimhood as destiny.
• Leave room for hope, recovery, understanding, and characters reclaiming power.

Addressing challenging themes requires insight, discretion, and empathy. But don’t shy away from exploring the lived complexities of characters from all backgrounds.

Crafting Immersive Worldbuilding

While fanfiction relies on an established universe, you still need to immerse readers in the world through descriptive details including:

• History, politics, prejudice relevant to the plot
• Daily life, technology, clothing, currency, food, jobs
• Geographic locales like architecture, weather, environment
• Supernatural, futuristic, or magical elements
• Sensory details like sights, smells, textures
• Culture, norms, values, gender roles, hierarchies

Weave in worldbuilding organically rather than dumping dense exposition. Use vivid language that makes the setting feel real, lived-in, and consistent with canon.

Writing believable dialogue

Dialogue brings characters to life. Tips for crafting organic conversations:

• Mimic the diction, vocabulary levels, and speaking styles of individual characters
• Avoid having characters give lengthy speeches – intersperse narrative
• Make dialogues serve the story rather than rattling off pleasantries
• Allow each character’s distinct personality to shine through
• Include subtext and emotional undertones beneath the spoken words
• Vary sentence structures and syntax for different characters
• Use banter and conflict to drive storytelling and reveal relationships
• Incorporate canon vocabulary, humor, and references

Formatting and Polishing

The finishing touches of proofreading and editing vastly improve story quality. Key formatting tips:

• Break text into readable paragraph chunks
• Italicize thoughts, emphases, media names, letters
• Use single quotation marks for quotes and dialogue
• Capitalize character names and titles (no full cap sentences)
• Adhere to grammar rules for punctuation, spelling, syntax
• Cite any referenced material using endnotes or hyperlinks

Proofread thoroughly or use beta readers to locate errors. Refine phrasing that disrupts flow. Format consistently.

Finding Beta Readers

Beta readers provide helpful feedback on fanfiction drafts. Useful traits in a beta include:

• Thorough knowledge of the fandom
• Reading your full work and noting overarching issues
• Eye for plot holes, inconsistencies, pacing issues
• Attention to grammar, wording, spelling errors
• Respectful constructive criticism on weaknesses
• Encouragement about story strengths
• Understanding your overall vision and intent

Listen to beta suggestions while still trusting your creative instincts – you don’t need to implement every proposed change.

Sharing Your Fanfiction

Once your fanfiction story is polished, it’s time to publish! Popular fanfic platforms include:

• AO3  – Archive of Our Own . Organized tags. Downloadable works.
• FanFiction.Net  – One of the oldest fanfic sites. Extensive user base.
• Wattpad  – Broad audience beyond fanfic readers. Multimedia integration.
• LiveJournal/Dreamwidth  – Long-running blogging/social platforms with active fan communities.
• Tumblr  – Fandom hub for sharing fanfiction via reblogging.
• Discord  – Active fanfic reader/writer groups and servers.
• Your own website  – Total creative control but smallest built-in audience.

Choose the platform that best aligns with your fandom, community, and creative vision.

Engaging With Readers

Sharing your writing allows you to bond with readers who feel connected to the characters and world. Ways to engage your fanfic audience:

• Respond  to all comments – be gracious and thankful for reader feedback
• Ask questions  to spark discussion and refine ideas for future stories
• Run contests and giveaways  related to your fic
• Post teasers and previews  of upcoming chapters
• Provide insider commentary  on behind-the-scenes choices
• Answer frequently asked questions  in author’s notes
• Promote on social media  using relevant hashtags and fandom tags

Interacting with supporters will motivate you to continue creating more fanworks. See yourself as part of a creative community versus alone.

Joining Fan Communities

Beyond your own readers, you can connect with the broader fanfic community by:

• Joining Discord servers, forums, and groups focused on your fandom or fanfiction in general
• Following relevant hashtags and participating in Twitter chats
• Attending fan conventions like Comic Con to meet fellow enthusiasts
• Contributing to fanzines that collect fanfiction works
• Taking online workshops or classes on fanfic writing
• Joining a roleplay group to collaboratively write as the characters
• Starting your own podcast, newsletter, or website related to fanfic

The support and friendship of fellow fans will enrich your experience and creativity.

Coping With Criticism

Sharing creative work makes you vulnerable to criticism. Some tips for managing negative feedback:

• Separate subjective critiques of style/content from objective commentary on grammar, etc.
• Consider thoughtful perspectives, but don’t invalidate your creative vision
• Temper emotional reactions before responding to avoid lashing out
• If the source seems biased/unconstructive, moderately weigh the critique
• Discuss debates respectfully – don’t argue or attack others
• If you feel overwhelmed, lean on fellow writers who understand

While feedback can improve your skills, no story will satisfy every reader. Stay true to your own goals and vision.

Avoiding Legal Issues

Fanfiction occupies a gray legal area but is generally accepted if you:

• Don’t directly copy substantial copyrighted excerpts
• Don’t profit from fanfic without permission
• Aren’t outright derogatory toward the source material
• Avoid portraying real people, especially in sexual scenarios
• Don’t include full song lyrics or poetry without permission

Legally, fanfiction generally falls under fair use if it’s free, transformative, and doesn’t harm the commercial value of the original work. Still, comply if rights holders request you remove a story. In most cases you can freely celebrate your fandom!

I hope this guide provided helpful advice on how to write fanfiction. By choosing a fandom you love, brainstorming an original narrative, outlining dynamic characters and events, honing your descriptive writing skills, receiving constructive feedback, and immersing yourself in fan communities, you can craft an engaging fanfic to share with eager readers. Fanfiction offers an empowering way to creatively explore beloved fictional worlds. Now get writing so you can bring your story to life!

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Fanfiction Ideas: 36+ Prompts for Inspired Writing

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on Published: September 8, 2022  - Last updated: October 26, 2023

Categories Writing , Inspiration

Are you an avid fanfiction writer looking for inspiration? Look no further! In this article, we’ll introduce 25 creative and engaging fanfiction writing prompts to ignite your imagination. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting, fanfiction offers a fantastic platform to hone your skills while having a blast. With these prompts in hand, the only limit is your own creativity. So let your favorite characters come alive, and have a great time embarking on new adventures!

Fanfiction has gained immense popularity over the years, and for good reason. It provides a unique outlet to explore alternate timelines, delve into uncharted character development, and even satisfy your inner romantic. With the vast array of fandoms available, there’s no shortage of ideas, from Harry Potter to Doctor Who. Remember, the magic of fanfiction lies in your passion and enthusiasm, so embrace your inner writer and let’s get started!

Key Takeaways

• Fanfiction offers a fun and engaging way to develop writing skills and explore new ideas.
• The 25 prompts provided cater to a range of fandoms and themes, igniting inspiration for your next project.
• The popularity of fanfiction stems from its ability to explore uncharted territory with beloved characters and stories.

23 Fanfiction Creative Writing Prompts

• Antagonist’s Perspective: Write a story from the viewpoint of a character who is usually an antagonist. Explore their motivations and how they perceive the world.
• Unexpected Crossover: Imagine two characters from completely different fandoms meeting and becoming friends. Write a story about their unlikely interactions.
• Fix-it Fic: Choose a major mistake a character made in canon and write a story in which they undo it. How does the story change as a result?
• Alternate Universe Fun: Write a story in an alternate universe where your favorite characters have different jobs, live in different places, or have the opposite gender.
• Superpowered Awakening: What if a character suddenly gained superpowers? Write a story about how they use them and whether they keep their abilities a secret or share with friends and family.
• Metafiction: Write a story in which the characters know they’re fictional and can interact with their fandom, including other characters, ships, and fanworks. Describe the hijinks that ensue.
• Slow-Burn Romance: Write a romance story where the main characters take their time falling in love. What obstacles do they face?
• Love at First Sight: Write a story where the main characters fall in love within 24 hours. Is it true love or just infatuation?
• Ghostly Love: Write a ghost AU story where one or both partners are ghosts who can only interact with the living world through their loved ones.
• Object POV: Write a story told from the perspective of an object belonging to a main character, such as a necklace, car, or book.
• Song Lyric Inspiration: Take inspiration from your favorite song lyrics and use them as a starting point for a story that reflects the characters’ lives and experiences.
• Prompt Exploration: Use prompts from other writers as jumping-off points for your own stories. Search online for inspiration and let your imagination run wild.
• Unlikely Crossover: Write a crossover fic between two unlikely universes, such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time, or Sherlock and Doctor Who.
• Fixed Problem: Write a fix-it fic where a problem arises but is resolved by the end of the story.
• Secondary Character Focus: Write a character study of a secondary character who doesn’t normally receive much attention.
• Non-Human POV: Write a day-in-the-life story from the perspective of a non-human character, like a pet or an inanimate object.
• First Times: Write a story where two characters experience something new together, like their first date, first kiss, or another first-time event.
• Roadmap Fic: Detail events between two canon stories, filling in the gaps for fans.
• What-If: Write a story where a minor change leads to major consequences, such as Harry Potter being sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor.
• AU Twist: Write an AU fic where everything is the same but with one key detail changed, like Katniss Everdeen being born into a wealthy family instead of a poor one.
• Soulmate Connection: Write a story where two characters can see each other’s thoughts and feelings through words written on their skin.
• Redemption Arc: Write a story where a villainous character seeks to redeem themselves for past misdeeds.
• Epistolary Fic: Write a story told entirely through letters, journal entries, text messages, emails, or other forms of correspondence.

Among these prompts, you’ll likely find inspiration, creativity, and new opportunities for your fanfiction writing. Enjoy the process and let your imagination soar within the limits of 582 words or less.

13 Fantastically Fun Fanfiction Prompts For Harry Potter Fans

• Imagine a world where Snape had always been on the side of good…
• Envision Hermione’s life if she had never met Harry and Ron.
• What could have happened if Dumbledore turned out to be evil?
• Picture a timeline without the Triwizard Tournament.
• Think about Ginny’s life without being possessed by Voldemort.
• Contemplate Sirius Black avoiding Azkaban altogether.
• What if Hagrid never faced expulsion from Hogwarts?
• How would the wizarding world be without Quidditch?
• Ponder a reality where the Chamber of Secrets remained unopened.
• What if Voldemort had emerged victorious at the Battle of Hogwarts?
• Imagine Ron and Hermione never becoming a couple.
• Consider the Dursleys being kind to Harry.
• Finally, introduce a new member to the Order of the Phoenix.

These prompts are perfect for exploring time travel fanfiction and creating engaging alternate realities in the Harry Potter universe.

What Exactly Is Fanfiction

Fanfiction refers to stories written by fans about existing characters or worlds. They often explore potential future events or alternative past scenarios as transformative works. Sometimes, fanfiction stories take characters and place them in entirely different situations, known as alternate universe tales.

How Fanfiction Got Started

The concept of fanfiction has been around since Shakespearean times, but its modern form emerged in the 1960s with Star Trek. Fans began to write their own stories about the USS Enterprise, with some even being published in professional magazines. Opinions on fanfiction vary among professional authors, with some, like J.K. Rowling, supporting its existence, whereas others, such as George R.R. Martin, view it as detrimental to good writing development.

Why Do People Write Fanfiction?

There are numerous reasons why you might choose to write fanfiction. For some, it’s an opportunity to delve deeper into their favorite characters and worlds. Others use it as a way to exercise their creativity, exploring new ideas without having to build a new world from scratch. For many, it’s a fun way to pass the time. Regardless of the motivation, it’s clear that fanfiction is here to stay and has a significant presence in the realm of creative expression.

Some Characters You Can Write About In Your Next Fanfiction Piece

Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series is an excellent example of a character to include in your fanfiction. You can explore different aspects of her life, such as alternate romantic relationships or new adventures with her intelligence and courage.

Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy is another strong choice for your fanfiction protagonist. Write about her life challenges and complex love story with Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne through different scenarios or outcomes.

For a lighthearted option, consider Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents . This character often finds himself in wacky situations with the help of his fairy godparents. You can create amusing and inventive plot ideas for Timmy in your fanfiction piece.

Other fan-favorite characters worth considering include:

• Tony Stark – Explore his genius and inventive side, or dive into his personal life and relationships to create engaging stories about this superhero.
• Clint Barton – Develop captivating narratives about this sharp-shooting archer, exploring his missions or providing insight into his personal life.
• Natasha Romanov – Showcase her skills and personal battles while revealing a deeper understanding of this complex espionage agent.
• Steve Rogers – Delve into his honorable nature and the challenges he faces, balancing his personal values with his responsibilities as a superhero.

The best fanfiction stories come from characters you’re passionate about! Think of your favorite characters from movies, TV shows, books, or video games when choosing a protagonist. Consider both original and existing characters, as well as main or secondary ones. Options like Doctor Who offer a rich universe where you can explore every minor character or superpower. Happy writing!

Why Fanfiction Is So Popular

Fanfiction’s immense popularity comes from a variety of factors. One key aspect is that it enables you to explore your favorite characters in new and exciting situations. Imagine Harry Potter being transported to Middle-earth or the cast of Friends meeting the Avengers – the possibilities for crossover fics are endless.

Besides, fanfic writers often take great care in staying true to the original characters and their voices. This dedication makes the stories enjoyable and satisfying for avid fans of those characters.

Furthermore, fanfiction also offers closure for stories that have ended, or even those that never had a proper ending. This is particularly common in TV shows that were canceled unexpectedly – countless fics provide alternate endings or additional closure.

Another factor that makes fanfiction so popular is the exploration of uncharted possibilities. There’s nothing like delving into intriguing “what if” scenarios – for instance, what would have happened if Dumbledore had been killed before defeating Voldemort?

So, as you immerse yourself in the vast world of fandoms and discover new universes, remember that fanfiction’s popularity comes from the boundless creativity and passion of writers and readers alike. Enjoy the adventure!

Is It Illegal to Print Fanfiction?

Caveat: I am not a lawyer, so this cannot be construed as legal advice. In general, it is not illegal to print fanfiction for personal use. However, there are a few things you should consider.

• Terms of Service : Always check the website or forum where the fanfiction was found. Some sites may explicitly forbid the printing of fanfiction without the original author’s permission.
• Author’s Request : Be respectful to fanfiction authors – they may ask that their stories not be printed without consent. Always ask for permission if unsure.
• Copyright Law : While printing fanfiction is generally fine, selling copies or using them for commercial purposes could lead to problems. If you’re giving them away for free, that’s usually okay, but avoid violating anyone’s copyright by plagiarizing their work or using excessive amounts of copyrighted material without permission.

In summary, as long as you’re respectful of the author’s wishes, adhere to the terms of service of the platform hosting the fanfiction, and don’t use the printed copies for commercial purposes, you can print fanfiction without much worry. Remember, when in doubt, ask for permission and enjoy fanfiction responsibly!

How an Alternate Universe Can Complicate Things for a Favorite Character or Couple

You love immersing yourself in fictional universes, but what if your favorite character’s world was turned upside down? Alternate universes allow for thrilling exploration of what-ifs.

Imagine a story where Ron Weasley ends up in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. How would this impact his bond with Harry Potter? Would they remain friends or become rivals? Or consider a scenario where Rey never encounters BB-8 on Jakku. Would she and Finn still form their tight friendship? Could she even transform into a Sith Lord like her grandfather?

Alternate universes can involve time travel, taking characters on journeys through their past or even into different versions of their own lives. Time loops offer additional intrigue, trapping characters in a perpetual cycle of events, forcing them to confront their choices. Also, think about characters finding themselves in entirely new fictional worlds, with their previous lives only existing as echoes.

As you dive into these alternate realities, relish in the endless possibilities. Revel in discovering new aspects of your favorite characters and couples, as they navigate the challenges these alternate universes bring.

The Link Between Angst and Fanfiction

What is angst.

Angst is a feeling of deep anxiety or dread. In fanfiction, it refers to stories that focus on emotional turmoil and intense relationship issues, often with less emphasis on the plot. These stories typically involve misunderstandings, family drama, infidelity, and include a slow build-up that leads to a satisfying, if sometimes bittersweet, resolution.

The Appeal of Angst

You might wonder why angst is so popular in fanfiction. One reason is that it allows readers to explore complex emotions in a safe environment. Angst can provide a cathartic release, helping readers experience and process emotions they might otherwise suppress in reality. Additionally, humans are drawn to drama, and by writing an angst-filled story, you’re tapping into that instinct, giving your readers a compelling narrative.

Incorporating elements, such as a deep relationship exploration or a romantic storyline, can further enhance readers’ understanding and connection to the emotions the characters face.

When Angst Goes Too Far…

It’s important to find a balance within your story, as too much angst can be detrimental. Excessive angst can make your characters’ struggles feel unrealistic or soap opera-esque, which can pull readers out of the narrative. Moreover, continuous emotional intensity can be exhausting and monotonous for readers.

Try incorporating lighter elements like fluffy meet-cutes or even amnesia as a plot device, which can offer exciting twists while keeping the story engaging.

Remember, aim for a balance between emotion and plot when writing fanfiction. A healthy dose of angst can bring depth and relatability to your tale, but avoid going overboard to maintain your readers’ interest and enjoyment.

Further Areas for Fanfic Writers to Research

Explore canon , improve writing skills , and dive into genres like fantasy and science fiction . Experiment with creative concepts such as crossover fics and alternate universes . To strengthen your abilities, practice overcoming writer’s block and enhance editing techniques. Remember, you can use your imagination to change story elements and even create surprising endings . Happy writing!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some popular fanfiction prompts.

• The Coffee Shop Encounter: Your favorite characters from different fandoms accidentally meet in a coffee shop in the human world. What surprising connections are made?
• Old Enemy, New Ally: Two characters who were once enemies must work together when a greater evil threatens both their worlds.
• Time Travel: A character is sent back in time and must navigate their way through a different era.

How to choose a fanfic genre?

• Consider your interests : What story elements are you drawn to—romance, mystery, comedy, or adventure? Choose a genre that excites you.
• Reflect on the fandom : What themes or styles does the original work emphasize? Build on those to create a complementary fanfiction.
• Research popular trends : Join forums and explore fanfiction websites to learn what genres are popular within the community.

Any tips for creating a crossover fanfic?

• Choose compatible storylines : Ensure that the two fandoms you’re combining have some potential for overlap or shared themes.
• Find common ground : Pinpoint similarities between characters or settings to create a convincing crossover.
• Maintain balance : Preserve the essence of both fandoms and give equal importance to their characters and narrative.

What are some ideas for angsty fanfics?

• Character conflict : Create inner turmoil for your protagonist by presenting them with difficult choices or feelings that challenge their convictions.
• Dark secrets : Develop a secret that affects relationships or causes characters to question their trust in one another.
• Loss and grief : Delve into the emotions of characters struggling with the death or disappearance of someone they care about.

Where can I find inspiration for ship fanfics?

• Watch or read your source material : Revisit your favorite scenes or character moments to identify potential romantic pairings.
• Explore fan communities : Connect with other fans to learn their favorite ships, or browse fanart and discussion boards to see which pairings inspire you.
• Consider chemistry : Look for characters with intriguing dynamics, whether it be a slow-burning connection or an opposites-attract dynamic.

How to include ‘x reader’ elements in my story?

• Create a relatable protagonist : Develop a main character (the reader) who can seamlessly interact with the established characters from your chosen fandom.
• Use second person point of view : Write your story in the “you” format, which allows readers to immerse themselves in the narrative as if they were the protagonist.
• Allow for customization : Include choices for the reader’s appearance or personality traits, so they can fully envision themselves within the story.

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What is fan fiction?

Fanfiction is a type of creative writing that involves taking existing characters, settings, or storylines from a particular work of fiction and using them to create new stories. Essentially, it is a piece of writing that is based on or inspired by another writer’s work. Fanfiction can take many different forms, including short stories, novellas, and even full-length novels (or poems about Red Dead Redemption, but that’s probably just me).

Fanfiction is often written and shared online, and it can be found across a wide range of genres and fandoms. Some are simple AUs (Alternate Universes), like if Startrek were set in the Wild West, Name of the Wind if it were in first-person POV, or Game of Thrones if it were written in the contemporary genre.

Table of Contents

Step-by-step guide to writing fanfiction.

The process of writing fanfiction can vary widely depending on the writer's goals and the specific fandom they are working with. However, here are a few tips that may be helpful for anyone interested in getting started with fanfiction:

1. Choose your fandom (source material)

The first step in writing fanfiction is to choose the fandom you want to work with. This could be a TV show, book series, movie, or any other work of fiction that you are passionate about. The key is to pick source material with a world and/or characters that you are very interested in exploring. The more fun you’re having, the easier it is to write!

2. Choose your concept (identify the gap)

Many fanfiction writers choose to focus on aspects of the story that were left unexplored in the original work. Look for gaps in the plot or characters of the story that you can use as a jumping-off point for your own story. Typically the concept for a fanfiction will be some gap you see in the source material’s story—or just something you’d have rather happened.

I have multiple writer friends who have published fanfiction (that was altered out of being fanfiction, so it was published as original work) inspired by their assumptions on how a story would end—when it didn’t end that way, they wrote it themselves.

3. Write what you’d like to read

Fanfiction is a form of creative writing, so don't be afraid to write the stories that you would want to read yourself. Let your imagination run wild and take the story in the direction that you think would be most interesting. Like any form of writing, the more interested you are in the story, the easier it will be to write, and the longer you’ll stick with it.

4. Decide how long it will be

Some fanfictions are one-shot scenes to explore some small concept or premise for a source material. Some fanfictions are multiple lengths of novel. And lots of fanfic writers start writing with no idea how it will end. If you’re a planner, decide how long you want the end product to be. Or just wing it!

5. Choose where to post it (if you will)

If you’re trying to share your writing, you’ll need to choose a platform for sharing. It might be your private blog, fanfiction.net, substack, etc. If you’re trying to build any kind of following for your writing through fanfiction, this step is important because some publishing platforms lend themselves better to building followings than others.

6. Come up with a regular posting schedule

Again, if you’d like to build a following from this fanfiction, posting regularly will help you be discovered. How often will you post? Once a week, once a month, once a day? It doesn’t matter as much how often you post, more that you do so consistently. Once or twice a week tends to be the standard for active fanfic writers.

7. Connect with other writers and fans

Connecting with other fanfiction writers and readers is not only fun, but beneficial! You can find beta readers, co-writers, and an audience through fanfiction, so don’t be afraid to reach out to people writing similar pieces, respond to comments on your posts, and be generally active in the community.

8. Seize the exposure

If you’re interested in writing other forms, dropping something like a newsletter signup at the end of your fanfiction pieces can help you start collecting an audience now! There’s no sense losing that opportunity for exposure, if you’re already putting in so much hard work and getting people to fall in love with your writing. It’s pretty easy to pull fans over to another platform, if, for example, you’d like to publish an original novel one day.

Examples of famous fanfictions

If you’d like some inspiration, here are some of the most famous fanfictions. These are now considered original works, most published traditionally, but they did get their start as fanfiction.

My Immortal

This is the only example on the list that wasn’t actually published, it’s just one of the most famous fanfictions. It’s loosely inspired by the Harry Potter universe, and it’s hilarious. I recommend looking it up, if you’ve never heard of it.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

As far as the most famous published fanfictions go, the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise is probably the most famous. If you’re somehow unfamiliar, this fanfiction made Bella (later named Anastasia) into a college student who interviews a billionaire (Edward, then Christian) on behalf of her friend, who fell sick before she could conduct the interview herself. Christian is immediately interested in Anastasia as a subject of his BDSM fetish. Then that’s the whole series.

It started out as a Twilight fanfiction originally titled Master of the Universe by Snowqueen Icedragon. Now it’s a book and film franchise worth hundreds of millions.

There are actually quite a few published novels that began as Twilight fanfiction, including:

• Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard
• Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren
• Sempre by J.M. Darhower

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

The Love Hypothesis started as a Star Wars fanfiction. If you’re a fan of the fake dating trope, this might be a good book to pick up! It’s about a Ph.D. candidate who doesn’t believe in love, but when her friend pesters her enough, she kisses the first man she sees. And they fake date, then fall in love, spoilers. The characters are based on Rey and Kylo.

For Love and Bylines by Merrin Taylor

This is another Star Wars fanfic, about an undercover reporter who infiltrates a high school and falls in love with the English teacher. This one feels like a crossover fic between the Star Wars universe and Never Been Kissed (1999).

After by Anna Todd

This book started as a One Direction fanfiction, and has had its own film adaptation.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

This book is a mashup of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and a zombie apocalypse, and it (and its film adaptation) has become a cult classic in its own right. Grahame-Smith was able to directly use Pride and Prejudice, rather than obscuring it like the previous examples, because it falls under the public domain (more on that in a bit).

How to turn a fanfiction into a full novel

Fanfiction can be a great starting point for creating your own novel. By taking the characters and world you love and putting your own spin on them, you can create a unique story that stands on its own. But turning a fanfiction into a novel requires more than just changing the names and tweaking a few details.

Start by reviewing your fanfiction

Before you begin, read over your whole fanfiction. Consider the characters, the setting , and the plot. What works well, and what doesn't? What aspects of the story can you build on, and what needs to be changed? During your regular editing process for a book, scan for copyright-protected elements. If you use beta readers or hire an editor down the line, make sure to tell them what it was based on so they can also be on the lookout for anything you should change or remove. 

Sharpen the plot

Fanfiction is a very forgiving genre. Readers of fanfiction are often quite willing to suspend their disbelief, so you can get away with a lot more inaccuracies, silly elements, and inconsistencies.

If you’re trying to turn your fanfiction into a proper novel, though, you’ll need to fill plot holes, nail the pacing, and make it feel like a fully-fledged story. What new challenges can you present to the characters? What new conflicts can you introduce? How can you make the story your own?

Hone the characters

While your fanfiction may have relied on pre-existing characters, a novel requires original characters. Develop new characters that complement the key elements of your fanfiction. These characters should be unique and have their own motivations, goals, and personalities. Make sure you’re not copy-pasting characters and only changing their names. You should bring some originality to each of them.

Flesh out the world

Expanding the setting of your fanfiction is another crucial step in turning it into a novel. Consider the world your story takes place in, and think about how you can build on it. What new locations can you introduce? What new cultures or societies can you create? Expanding the setting can make the story richer and more immersive.

Revise the prose

As you revise your novel, remember that the prose needs attention, too. Your fanfiction may have been written for a specific audience, but a novel needs to be accessible to a broader audience. This means making the writing clear, concise, and engaging. Fix grammar , spelling, and punctuation. Use active voice and vivid descriptions to bring your story to life.

Get feedback

Lastly, get feedback on your novel . Share it with friends, family, or a writing group. Use their feedback to improve your story, and be open to constructive criticism. A fresh perspective can help you identify areas that need improvement and help you refine your novel.

Turning a fanfiction into a novel is a great way to build on a story you already love. By following these steps, you can create a unique story that stands on its own. Remember to develop a new plot, create new characters , expand the setting, revise the prose, and get feedback. With dedication and hard work, you can turn your fanfiction into a compelling novel.

What you do with the novel afterward is up to you! The writers in the examples above mostly went the traditional publishing route, but self-publishing is pretty accessible and can even be free!

Comb for copyright infringement

Obscure the story, world, and characters beyond recognition of the original. Leave no trace of the source material. The characters should be unique, any words that the author made up for their story should be removed, unique settings and plotlines that are recognizable should be chopped. It should stand alone as its own story and be unrecognizable as a fanfiction in its final form.

Is fanfiction legal?

While fanfiction is not inherently illegal, there are some legal considerations that writers and publishers should be aware of.

The primary legal issue with fanfiction is that it often infringes on the original author's copyright. Copyright is a legal protection that gives the owner of a creative work exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and adapt the work. When someone creates fanfiction using characters and settings from an existing work, they are essentially creating a derivative work that may be considered an unauthorized adaptation or infringement of the original copyright.

In general, it is recommended that fanfiction writers and publishers seek legal advice to ensure that their work does not infringe on any copyrights or other legal protections. While fanfiction may be a creative and enjoyable pursuit, it is important to respect the rights of the original authors and to ensure that your own work is legally sound.

If you want to find out if your fanfiction is infringing anyone’s copyright, here’s a lawyer’s guide for the legality of fanfiction .

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How to Write a Fanfiction

Last Updated: May 7, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Lucy V. Hay . Lucy V. Hay is a Professional Writer based in London, England. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucy is an author, script editor, and award-winning blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers, and Bang2Write has appeared in the Top 100 round-ups for Writer’s Digest & The Write Life and is a UK Blog Awards Finalist and Feedspot’s #1 Screenwriting blog in the UK. She received a B.A. in Scriptwriting for Film & Television from Bournemouth University. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 843,466 times.

Fanfiction refers to a type of fiction using the settings or characters of existing work in tribute to it. If you're a big fan of a certain fictional universe, you may choose to write about some of its characters yourself, either expanding the official story or changing it altogether. Although the readership of fanfiction tends to be quite low and niche, the people reading what you'll write are bound to be as passionate about the source material as you are. Fanfiction is a fun and creative way of expressing your love for something, and the possibilities are virtually limitless.

Exploring the Source Material

• The choice of the universe you choose to base your own work on will have the largest impact on your story and the way it turns out. Certain universes also favor certain approaches in fanfic. It's important to note however that your choices as a fanfic writer are limitless. You can do anything you want to the source material, even if that means transforming it into something else entirely.

• In looking for fanfiction to read, you may get the looming impression that a lot of fanfiction lacks quality. Being part of the fanfic community means acknowledging that not everyone is at the same level of skill. Most fanfiction is amateurish. It takes patience to find the great stuff.

Planning Your Own Story

• The shortest fanfics are called "drabbles". [3] X Research source These are usually between 50-100 words long. It is surprisingly challenging to tell a story in such a small space, so it may be a good place to start if you want to test your skills without the time investment.
• So-called "fluff" pieces are short and light-hearted. They tend to be less than 1000 words and deal with a mundane aspect of a character's life.
• More involved fiction can be hundreds of thousands of words long. These tend to be the fanfics that people give most attention to, assuming they're fuelled by a plot that justifies the length.
• Fanfics don't need to be conventionally narrative or prose either. You can write your fanfic as poetry, or write up a tableau of a character's mental state during a given scene.

• Explore the source material more if you are having a hard time finding a creative starting point. Failing that, look into more fanfic. It can be inspiring to see where other people have gone with it.
• Some writers write their own characters, or even themselves into fanfic, where they interact with the characters themselves. Any character created by the author is called an "OC", or original character. An OC meant as a stand-in for the writer is known as a self-insert. [4] X Research source
• First, look for your concept, and then think about how that plot is going to work regarding the structure and the characters.

• An example for one crossover might be putting the characters from Star Wars in the Star Trek or Mass Effect universes.
• It is recommended you try your hand at crossover fanfic if you're torn between writing about two or more different universes for your next fanfic.

• It's a good idea to consider the concept of "canonicity". Put simply, canon states whether something 'is or isn't' in a fictional universe. Portraying Star Wars' Han Solo as a swashbuckling rogue may be true to canon for example, but writing that he is a fan of the 90's sitcom Friends would certainly not be canon.

• The beginning. A beginning should set up the setting reasonably well, as well as establish the motivations and stakes of your central characters.
• Opening conflict. Something will often happen that sets a hero on his quest. This often (but not always) is the doing of the antagonist. The rest of the story will involve the protagonist trying to set things right again.
• The story's middle. The middle of a story may be seen as the meat of a character's quest. This is where the story's world is fleshed out, character relationships are kindled and strengthened, and the stakes are gradually raised.
• The low point. Before the story's resolution, there is usually a point where the character is at his most dire moment, where everything seems lost. You can probably think of many films that match this trope.
• The resolution. A climax wherein the protagonist triumphs. It usually comes shortly after the hero's lowest point and takes the momentum to the very end. There is occasionally a denouement (falling action) afterward where it shows the aftermath of the final conflict.

Writing Your Masterpiece

• In the case of fanfiction, the description is helpful, but there's a tendency to overdo it. [8] X Research source Keep your descriptive writing compact and effective.

• At different stages of your own writing process, you can get a better grasp of how your work matches (or snubs!) the tone of the original by returning to it. Given the thought you'll have been putting into writing your own fanfic, it's quite likely you'll have a more discerning eye for the source material.

• One example where radical character changes work is in the case of 'mirror universe' fics. Generally inspired by the Star Trek alternate universe episode, you could write a fanfiction that takes place in a mirror universe, where characters are an evil twin version of their official selves. Adding a beard or goatee to your characters to signify their evilness can be fun but isn't necessary.

• Many writers find listening to music that fits the tone you're going for is a good idea. For instance, if you're writing a Star Wars fanfic, listening to a John Williams score might put you in the right mindset for it.
• Most fanfics are less than 1000 words long, but it is recommended you try to go for something longer. Longer stories give more opportunity to explore characters, themes, and settings.
• If you're feeling the dreadful writer's block, it's probably due to a lack of confidence. Try pitching your story to friends and family members to get them on board. Brainstorm character motivations, brainstorm character archetypes and plot archetypes. This way, you'll have loads of pages of notes before you even go near the computer, and as a result, you'll be bursting with energy and ideas won't be able to wait to get to the computer to write.

• Showing your work to a friend early on can help. You can get his feedback before you invest the time in editing it. It is possible he'll be able to tell you specifically which things could use polishing.

The revision process is an essential time to elevate your writing. "I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best...once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture."

Getting Your Work Out There

• Quotev, Archive of Our Own, and Wattpad are alternatives if you're looking to publish your story in additional places. [11] X Research source [12] X Research source It is recommended to publish your story on multiple sites if you can, as this will maximize your story's exposure.
• There are certain websites that specialize in fanfiction from a particular source. If you're looking to read or write a fanfic from the Harry Potter universe, for example, there is at least one website specifically dedicated to it. [13] X Research source

• For fanfiction writers with commercial aspirations, you can remove any trademarked names and ideas in your story and replace them with original content. Some bestselling 'original' fiction, like E.L James' Fifty Shades of Grey and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga , began as works of fanfiction.
• If the book you're writing fanfiction for is common domain, it may be published without any name changes as long as your work is only based on the original works that are common domain.

• It should go without saying that you'll receive the most helpful feedback from writers that are fans of the same source material you are using.

Annotated Fanfiction Page and Things to Include and Avoid

Community Q&A

• Some people like to write their fanfictions as they go, but in order to keep from getting writer's block for a while and people giving up on your story, writing it ahead of time and posting it in pieces is a better idea! Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• If you're writing fanfic purely for your own sake, there are absolutely no rules whatsoever. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Fanfiction isn't limited to conventional narrative prose. You could even write a poem from a character's point-of-view. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Fanfiction is unlicensed by nature, so there's next to no money to gain in writing it. If commercial success is a priority of yours, you're better off coming up with creative properties of your own. Thanks Helpful 6 Not Helpful 1
• Fanfiction has to stand up to many rubrics of traditional narrative writing. That includes staying consistent and giving care to basic things like proper spelling and grammar. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 2
• If the original creator doesn't want anyone writing fanfiction of their characters, it is important to respect their wishes so you don't get sued. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 4

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net
• ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/2872/59053629/Writing-Ideal-Chapter-Length
• ↑ https://expressions.populli.net/dictionary.html
• ↑ https://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp98.html
• ↑ https://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/22/why-im-not-going-to-read-your-fanfic/
• ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/
• ↑ https://www.quotev.com/stories/c/Fan-Fiction
• ↑ https://www.wattpad.com/stories/fanfiction
• ↑ https://forums.darklordpotter.net/
• ↑ https://www.wired.com/2014/02/fanfic-and-publishers/
• ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/forum/Tips-Tricks-and-Do-s-and-Don-ts/91554/

About This Article

When you write fanfiction, try to keep the characters the same as they were in the original work so the story makes sense. Aside from that, the plot is completely up to you, and you can choose how close you want your story to be to the original. You can even cross multiple universes by bringing in characters from 2 different works, like from your favorite movie and your favorite book. If you're struggling for ideas, try imagining a fun “what-if” scenario, like what if your main character had their memory erased. For more tips, like how to publish your fanfiction, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Table of Contents

Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process, fan fiction in the composition classroom.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Kimberly Karalius

When faced with a creative writing assignment in your composition class, you may feel a bit nervous at first. How do you write something that’s not a research paper, where your main goal is to tell a story in a clear and inventive way?

Learning to tell a story—or have a strong, narrative voice—is a useful skill both in the classroom and outside of it. You can use storytelling to write a gripping opening to a paper.

Learning to tell a story—or have a strong, narrative voice—is a useful skill both in the classroom and outside of it. You can use storytelling to write a gripping opening to a paper. Later in your college career, when you have to write essays for scholarships or graduate school applications, telling a good story about yourself will make you stand out as an interesting applicant.

But if you’re not used to telling stories, where do you begin?

Getting involved in fan fiction is a great way to start building your narrative muscles. By writing fan fiction, you will learn how to interact with and manipulate ideas—and how best to articulate your story so that readers can understand you. Your tools are the characters, plots, and worlds or preexisting stories.

Fan fiction is basically any form of writing created by a fan using characters and worlds previously created by authors. Of course, this definition is just scratching the surface. Fan fiction is not limited to the literary world; you can write a “fanfic” about popular culture figures like politicians, celebrities, athletes, and musicians as well. People choose to write fan fiction because they like to experiment with their favorite characters and stories and grow as writers in the process.

Just because you’re working with a previously created world, though, doesn’t mean that writing these pieces is easy. There is still a strong level of writer responsibility involved—much like the responsibility you have when you cite sources in a paper. Readers of fan fiction expect that when you write a fanfic based off a given set of characters and plot, you are familiar with the universe in which you are writing. Clearly, you wouldn’t choose to write a fanfic about Doctor Who if you have never seen an episode of it. Doing your “research”—as in reading the books and seeing the films—will make you better prepared to write about the characters and world. You have to stay in character and work with the laws that govern the world you’ve chosen. So if you’re writing a Harry Potter fanfic and Voldemort is your main character and you have him handing out flowers and doing good deeds, you’ll have to come up with a way for that scenario to make sense. If you disregard even the basics of the world in which you’re working, you’ll find that many of your comments will be negative—if you get any feedback at all.

When someone writes a fanfic, they’ll usually post it to an online forum for other fans to read (see, e.g.,  http://www.fanfiction.net). What’s great about this is that readers interact with you directly by commenting on the work as you post it. Sometimes, if you’re stuck and are battling with writer’s block, a comment can help you get back on track. This almost-instant feedback is helpful and enlightening.

Think of this feedback in relation to peer review. In a typical peer review session, you join with two or three other students and exchange papers. You comment on each other’s papers and then discuss overall improvements that can be made on the next draft. Sometimes peer review is useful, and sometimes it isn’t; this usually depends on how anxious students are about sharing their papers face-to-face with another student, as well as how much energy or care students put into giving helpful feedback to each other.

The feedback you receive when you post your fan fiction online may be easier to handle because, unlike peer review, nothing is face-to-face. Comments come from people all over the world interested in the subject about which you’re writing—but oftentimes you’ll never know who they are. This can be a good thing; it means that the people commenting on your writing are doing it because they want to help you improve, not because they are forced to peer review an assignment. You should learn to recognize and welcome this kind of criticism of your writing.

To see what such feedback might look like, consider the following example. Imagine that you have posted your first chapter of an X-Men fanfic. Your first comment may look something like this:

From SilverxxxHugs Posted: 24 minutes ago

I really liked the creativity of this story! I can’t believe you thought of sticking Wolverine in a sewer with Magneto hot on his trail. You have to post the next chapter soon so I can find out what happens to Wolverine! If your goal is length then don’t be afraid to set up the scene more to up the word count. Tell us what the sewer smells like, or even if Magneto’s boots are strained in sewer water. You’re lacking details right now, and so I had a hard time figuring out where the characters were from scene to scene.

While you won’t often find fan fiction readers correcting your grammar, your readers will remark on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of your plot development and characters. These are global issues—”big picture” concerns about the content of your text. These are the same issues your composition course will likely focus on improving through classroom assignments. Grammatical issues can be fixed with a little practice and good eye, but global issues—like writing good transitions, organizing well, and being clear and creative—are harder to learn, especially when no one talks to you about improving them.

Receiving feedback along the way is one of the best ways to improve your writing and, in the process, learn the important skill of taking criticism. Not everyone is going to like your writing. Some people will give you thoughtful, constructive advice on how to revise your chapters, and other people will post flat-out rude comments. It’s important to read every piece of feedback you get and then evaluate the usefulness of each comment. Don’t take harmful comments personally, but don’t discount constructive criticism either.

Remember that, above all things, writing fan fiction is supposed to be fun. It’s the one time when you, the reader, transform into the writer, tugging the marionette strings of your favorite characters to see what happens. Thinking outside the box and still maneuvering through the rules of your chosen world will result in confidence. The blank page will no longer appear so daunting.

Avelin. “Twilight.” FanFiction.net. N.p., 7 May 2012. Web. 16 May 2012.

Pick two characters you like from your favorite book or movie. Both characters can be from the same book/movie, or they can be from different ones. Once you choose, write a story in which these characters meet at a bar. What would they say to each other? How would they act? Try to be as true to the characters’ personalities as possible.

Brevity – Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence – How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow – How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity – Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style – The DNA of Powerful Writing

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What Fan Fiction Teaches That the Classroom Doesn’t

Everyone leaves feedback and reviews for one another, leading to a sprawling, communal learning environment.

N. K. Jemisin, the only author to win the prestigious Hugo Award for best science-fiction or fantasy novel three years in a row, partly credits fan fiction for her ability to draw in readers.

Jemisin started writing fan fiction, in which authors imagine new stories based on preexisting fictional works, while in grad school for counseling. “I was miserable and lonely. I didn’t have a lot of friends, or stress relief,” she told me. “Around then was when I became internetted, and one of the first communities I discovered was a fan-fic community.” Through talking  with other authors and writing her own stories about Dragon Ball Z (among other things), she found friends, got feedback, and, as she put it, “blew the cobwebs off writing abilities I hadn’t used since college.”

For instance, this writing helped her hone her ability to hold readers’ interest. “Fan fiction tends to have a built-in hook because it’s written in a world you’re a fan of; you’re predisposed to like it,” she said. “You have to find a way to make it not just the world that people are tuning in to read, so they are interested in your story.” To this day, Jemisin said, she still writes fan fiction, and treats it as a way to try out new genres and skills, such as using the second person, which she does in the Broken Earth trilogy, which earned her the three Hugos.

It’s common for contributors to fan-fiction websites to see their skills develop like this. In these online communities, writers of all ages and skill levels—from adolescents still refining their grammar to professional adult authors such as Jemisin—are learning and teaching others how to write, and write well.

Read: The fan-fiction friendship that fueled a romance novel empire

A fan-fiction site is a uniquely energetic learning environment. Unlike in the classroom, where a writing prompt is as likely to be met with groans as with enthusiasm, writers on fan-fiction websites are thrilled to be there, excited to write, and passionate about the material—because it’s based on a book, TV show, movie, video game, or something else they already love. “It’s really clear that if you have a genuine interest and a personal identification with the topic that you’re learning about, your learning is going to be more engaging and, as a result, more successful,” says Katie Davis, a professor at the University of Washington’s Information School and a co-founder of its Digital Youth Lab.

Davis, along with her University of Washington colleague Cecilia Aragon, recently spent nine months studying a couple of fan-fiction websites, focusing mostly on young authors writing on fanfiction.net. (Older, more experienced fan-fiction authors tend to prefer the website Archive of Our Own.) They published their observations in a new book called Writers in the Secret Garden , and described their theory that people on these websites are actually teaching one another to write through a kind of sprawling, communal learning that Aragon and Davis call “distributed mentorship.”

Though writers may develop traditional two-person mentor/mentee relationships on fan-fiction websites, the researchers posit that much more often, people are being diffusely mentored by the entire community. An author frequently receives many small pieces of feedback in the form of reviews (sometimes thousands on one story ) that are in conversation with one another and that “are cumulatively much greater than the sum of their parts,” Aragon told me.

One example from their book is how commenters responded to a writer’s question about portraying Princess Luna, a villain from the show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic . One person wrote: “From the limited amount of stories that I have read, Luna is usually portrayed as a gamer or somewhat out of touch with modern culture.” Then another offered their take on that advice: “While I’m picky about the kind of technology that I would introduce into a story, Luna being behind the times is right on the money.”

These communities also “allow for a lot of different forms of expertise,” says Rebecca Black, an informatics professor at the University of California at Irvine who has studied fan fiction (but who wasn’t involved in Davis and Aragon’s project). “Even if you aren’t the best writer, you might know everything there is to know about a certain character in the series.” People can switch between the roles of teacher and student, depending on their strengths and weaknesses.

Generally, fan-fiction writers’ strengths are effusively celebrated, and any feedback on their weaknesses is very gently conveyed. Reviews of fan fiction are overwhelmingly positive—Aragon and Davis found that out of a sample of 4,500 reviews on fanfiction.net, only 1 percent were what they called “non-constructive negative” reviews, or “flames” (such as: “I never thought that human spawn could create such a horrible piece of crap”).

Tamsyn Muir, a science-fiction writer from New Zealand and the author of the new novel Gideon the Ninth , remembers the reviews on her early fan-fiction stories (parodies of Animorphs and long, gritty tales based on the Final Fantasy video games) as almost entirely positive. “You didn’t have to do that well to get a lot of positive feedback,” she told me. In fact, in her early days of writing and posting fan fiction online, she said, she got only one actual critique. “Somebody had said, ‘I think this story is okay, but it feels a bit template. It just feels like a very generic story.’ I was so angry, because it was the first piece of really constructive criticism.” The anonymous review turned out to be from her brother—after he watched her fume all day, he fessed up. “He was like, ‘I don’t want you getting complacent,’” Muir said.

While it probably takes more than unalloyed positivity to strengthen one’s writing, hearing what readers respond well to is useful for writers, and an outpouring of encouragement may well motivate writers to keep writing, which can only improve their skills. “People often discount the positive feedback, but for a lot of struggling writers and English learners, those copious amounts of positive feedback were really important,” says Black, who has studied how fan fiction helps English learners grow as writers in their new language.

Still, constructive criticism (or “concrit”) is a welcome and integral part of fan-fiction websites (although some writers or communities may specify that they’re not looking for concrit). When fan-fiction reviewers offer a specific critique, they often present it in the middle of a “compliment sandwich,” according to Muir and Black, slipping negative feedback between the bread of effusive praise, and often adding a self-deprecating comment such as “But what do I know?” to soften the blow.

Read: The strange world of Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan fan fiction

Aragon and Davis’s research also found that the communal tutoring happening on fan-fiction websites leads to a quantifiable improvement in people’s writing, at least by one metric. They analyzed 61.5 billion words of fan-fiction stories and 6 billion words of reviews from fanfiction.net, tracking the “lexical diversity,” or complexity of vocabulary, of users over time. They discovered that for every 650 reviews writers received, their vocabulary improved as much as if they had aged one year. (The average age of authors in this sample was just under 17, so this may not hold true for older writers—even if they are honing other, more advanced, less measurable skills, such as story structure, pacing, or character development.)

Jemisin said she’s found several trusted readers to share her work with through writing fan fiction, and compared it to the sort of peer workshopping that happens in college creative-writing classes. “Fan-fic is one big giant writing workshop,” she said, “one that’s voluntarily joined and cranks on and on.” Fan fiction, then, is a way to instantly get extensive amounts of targeted feedback in a low-stakes environment where, unlike at school, no one’s being graded.

It also teaches something that schools rarely do: what it’s like to write for a real audience “versus a teacher who’s read the same essay topic 1 million times,” as Black says. Muir, who used to work as an English teacher, has experienced this from both sides. She credits fan fiction with helping her learn to connect with readers, and in the classroom “being a storyteller is something I’ve always struggled to teach. We don’t give kids the opportunity to be writing for an audience.”

Anne Jamison, an English professor at the University of Utah who has studied fan fiction, sometimes tries to apply its lessons to her teaching, both in college and when she works with younger students. For instance,  with elementary-school students, she finds that fan fiction is a way to get them invested in writing. “I go into a second- or third-grade classroom and say, ‘Everybody start writing stories about Minecraft,’” she says. “They ask if they can keep going through recess, they’re so excited.”

“The authors whom we interviewed unanimously and unequivocally communicated their belief that fanfiction had helped them hone their craft,” Aragon and Davis write in Writers in the Secret Garden . Some felt that fan fiction had taught them things they could never have learned in school. And Aragon and Davis think that the sort of distributed-mentoring community that exists in fan fiction isn’t just useful for improving writing. They mention DeviantArt (an online community for visual artists) and Ravelry (a knitting website) as places where distributed mentoring may also thrive. “If you have this basis of interest-driven learning in a supportive community,” Davis says, “that sets the stage for learning pretty much anything.”

25 Of The Best Fanfiction Writing Prompts

With fanfiction , the writer of a movie, TV series, or book has already done the character building.

As the fanfic writer, you get to throw your favorite characters into different “what if” situations. 

Plenty of Doctor Who fanfiction writers, for example, write stories bringing the 10th Doctor and Rose Tyler closer together.

Just how close they get depends on the writer. But a solid ship (i.e., pairing) can generate a slew of spicy fanfic ideas. 

Fanfiction is a great way to build a devoted readership and develop your writing skills.

All you need now is a list of intriguing fanfiction story ideas. 

Time Travel Fanfiction

Alternate universe (au) fanfiction, romance fanfiction, fluffy or “waffy” (warm and fuzzy”) fanfiction, self-insert fanfiction, how will you use these fanfiction writing prompts, 25 fanfiction writing prompts .

Whatever shows or books hold a special place in your heart, you’ll enjoy the following collection of thoughtfully-crafted fanfiction prompts.

Jot down some fun ideas of your own as you work your way down the list. 

So many things could go wrong when your favorite fandom characters go back in time to change things. What could they do to either endanger the human race or make things turn out better than before — but at a price? 

1. Two characters you love are sent to the past and work undercover as flower shop owners to change the outcome at a famous wedding. 

2. A nemesis time-travels to change a superhero’s origin story, changing the course of that hero’s life — and their own.

3. An interesting character with a bit part finally gets a chance to show what they’re made of when an old enemy incapacitates the bigger players to steal a recipe. 

4. A favorite character goes back in time to stop the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr and changes the course of the country’s history.

5. One of your characters is so desperate to change things for someone they care about, they time-travel and save a life — only to erase another. 

How can an alternate universe complicate things for a favorite character or couple? Play with any of the following scenarios or let your mind stretch beyond them to explore other possibilities. 

6. Some of your favorite superheroes sacrificed themselves in the end. The line-up of survivors looks very different in an alternate universe , and you know why. 

7. What would happen if, instead of your least favorite ship happening, one of the characters traveled to an alternate universe and came back with a better match?

8. A superhero visits an alternate universe where their high school crush developed special abilities and became their nemesis — but might not be unreachable. 

9. Two characters that ended up together visit an alternate universe where they seem happier with different (and unexpected) partners. 

10. In an alternate universe, your favorite villain finds their alter-ego leads a very different life — one that has nothing to do with heroes or illegal activity. 

More Related Articles:

51 Of The Best Historical Fiction Writing Prompts

55 Of The Best Young Adult Creative Writing Prompts

75 Of The Best Fiction Writing Prompts For All Writers

You know you’re just aching to get two characters together, and in fanfiction, you can make it happen. Keep your audience in mind when things get serious. 

11. Take a romantic couple that makes zero sense or feels forced (e.g., Joey and Rachel) and shake it up, replacing it with one — or even two — that do. 

12. A favorite couple is kidnapped and drugged by someone who clearly doesn’t know what they’re in for. The drug erases inhibitions, and the results are hilarious. 

13. A favorite character meets a celebrity or a character from another fandom and discovers they have great chemistry. Someone gets jealous. 

14. A favorite character is tricked into drinking something that causes them to fall head over heels for their nemesis, who does not appreciate the attention. 

15. A villain learns something about the hero they love to hate and starts thinking about them differently. When they have a vivid dream, they take a risk. 

This well-established subgenre is all about the feels. Take a break from the high-stakes action to create a special moment for two of your favorite characters. Think of it as a brief oasis where your favorite couples can just enjoy being together.

These tend to be short. 

16. Think Kylo Ren and Rey stopping at an intergalactic spa and checking their lightsabers for an hour or two of seaweed, mud, and taking turns with a talking stick.

17. Han Solo and Leia are having a rough time with baby Kylo, so when Luke offers to babysit so they can reconnect, they take him up on it. 

18. A favorite character has decided to retire from their stressful job and become a retreat master, making candles and living off the grid. S/he encounters opposition.

19. A favorite character stops at a bodega and buys a winning lottery ticket, which they decide to cash and spend in a way that expresses their values.

20. A puppy follows a favorite character home and turns out to be an alien admirer in disguise, who wins your character over and reveals something they need to know .

Plug yourself into any fandom with one of these self-insert fanfic ideas. Or let these inspire story ideas of your own. 

21. You get to take part in your favorite ship finally happening . They might even name their first child after you. Or maybe they’ll just help you get out of their world alive.

22. You are the interfandom “Queer Bait Buster,” going from one series to another and challenging heteronormative and ridiculous ships wherever you find them. 

23. You’re trapped in an elevator with your favorite character for a few hours, and you take the opportunity to help them deal with an awkward personal issue. 

24. You stumble upon a spacecraft and meet a favorite character who, for some reason, knows all about you and your current problems. They offer helpful advice.

25. You’re serving court documents on a character who doesn’t respond well but who then apologizes to you and offers you something. You offer to help them instead.

Fanfic Plot Generator 

One of the best resources for fanfiction writers is a Tumblr account. Not only can you connect with other members of a fandom, but you can also read other examples of fanfiction and share your own. You can do the same on Wattpad . 

You can also find a treasury of prompts and story ideas on Pinterest . And while you’re exploring the options here, there, and elsewhere, get acquainted with the lingo .

Each post you read serves as a kind of fanfic prompt generator . Each captivating idea bears the beginnings of new ones. You could spend hours (it’s not hard) collecting seeds of exciting new fanfic stories. 

If you’re looking for an actual prompt generator, though, consider the following options: 

• The Fanfic Maker  
• Plot Generator: Short Story Generator or 
• Other Plot Generator Options
• OTP Prompt Generator

Now that you’re armed with an assortment of fanfic writing prompts and helpful links, what fanfiction story ideas have begun to take shape in your head? 

Before you share your work, do your due diligence to find out whether the original creators are okay with your writing and sharing fanfiction — which they might be, as long as you don’t profit from it. 

Some authors enjoy the exposure. And while you can’t make money off fanfiction without a signed agreement with the original creator, you can certainly make a name for yourself.

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Fan Fiction Is the Perfect Outlet for Aspiring Writers and Creatives

Fan fiction. When the word is brought up, most people react with some form of distaste . They recall the terrible rumors they hear about that side of fandom: how it appeals to odd kinks, how it oversexualizes it characters, and how much of a disgrace it is to consume it. Even if someone does not like reading fan fiction like this, they are usually too embarrassed to bring up the fact that they enjoy reading or writing it — probably because most will assume the worst as soon as they do. Yet, in reality, fan fiction just shows the influence of an artists’ original work, and engaging in fan fiction as a fan who aspires to write can bring so much to the table.

The reason most fan fiction is made is because the fan creators can’t get enough of the original work. And since the original artist is not going to be able to cater to their never-ending needs, fans just have to make it themselves.

These fans take to online websites like fanfiction.net , archiveofourown.org or Wattpad to share their stories. There, they find their fandom communities and self-publish free versions of the stories they love — but with a twist. Some take their favorite characters and place them in different universes and imagine how they would act. Some create their own characters and place them in the same setting as the original. Some cross over two different pieces. There are short drabbles , one-shots, long 50-odd chapter books, the list goes on. They place these characters in genres completely different from the original just because they want to. Because it is fun.

It helps that these aspiring writers don’t have to create everything from scratch. Writing a story, however short or long, means one has to make characters, give them personalities and give them a setting to be in. It means one has to come up with themes and genres. One has to think of their audience, their style and how detailed the work they are creating must be. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to come up with entire worlds that make people gasp for more.

A fan who just wants to write for fun just might not have time to do all that. A fan who wants to write in the future may not even fully grasp what it takes to create like a professional. All they know how to do is be creative. And how to transfer that creativity into words. They have the characters, the setting, the themes, all that just laid out for them in the original work. All they need to do is use it to ignite their creativity .

Of course, this doesn’t mean outright stealing original stories. That would bring a lot of copyright issues into play. But fan fiction writers know that they are borrowing others’ ideas. What they might not know is that this helps them grow as a writer.

Writing about pre-existing characters that others are familiar with means they are bound to be true to the character. If they don’t, they are just betraying their love for the original work and the interest of their readers. This helps these aspiring writers develop consistency in their work. They have to maintain the characters’ personalities and the setting they inhabit. They have to pay attention to the details they add in, making sure it fits the overall premise.

When they manage to figure that part out, fan fiction writers have another issue to worry about — competition. Coming up with creative plots to draw in readers is another skill they can learn by writing these stories. And it helps that they can immediately realize whether what they are doing works or not, seeing as readers are sometimes more than willing to comment anything that comes to mind on fan fiction sites.

Of all the positives of fan fiction writing , however, there is one thing that trumps them all: the way fans can develop their creativity — the very thing needed to sustain their writing. Whether it’s inventing new scenarios for their beloved characters, or exploring more of the world they have fallen in love with, the many different forms of fan fiction are proof of the passion of its creators. These novice writers think about the smallest detail they find in a scene or paragraph and can create an entire story about it. This very attention to the small and big parts of what makes stories tick will take them a long way if they truly wish to follow the path of a writer.

Writing fan fiction can take you on a creative journey to understand how exactly something came to be, and why you and others love engaging with it so much. Sure, there are bad sides to fan fiction, but following that path can lead to a growth one may not expect from something not-so-highly regarded. So next time you wonder about the ruckus fan fiction causes, whether you invest yourself in it or not, think about all it can do for those with potential, and how fandom can lead to creativity beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

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• fan fiction
• fiction writing

Janani Mangai Srinivasan, Wake Forest University

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Janani mangai srinivasan, wake forest university creative writing.

I am passionate about creative writing and making stories. I enjoy all mediums in which stories are spread around the world — be they fiction novels, animation or movies.

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Expand Your Imagination: Fan-Fiction in Creative Writing

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How Fan Fiction Can Do Wonders for Student Writing

Teachers can ignite students’ enthusiasm for writing with creative assignments based on the books, movies, and TV shows they love.

As a first-generation Latina growing up in a small town in Indiana, Cecilia Aragon often felt very alone. The 10-year-old Aragon found solace in the fantasy world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings , though she noticed a glaring omission: “There weren’t enough female characters in the book, the adventurers that accompanied the hobbit protagonist were all male... This offended my sense of fairness because girls could have adventures too, right?” she recalls.

Bothered by the lack of female characters in the trilogy, Aragon sat down with her spiral notebook and rewrote the story—a writing process we now call fan fiction. “I re-gendered some of the main characters and added some new scenes, like one where a female hobbit devised a clever plan to foil one of the monsters in the story,” adds Aragon, now a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in human-centered data science and co-author of Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth, and New Forms of Mentoring .

While fan fiction as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon of the digital age, the sheer volume of content created by fan fiction writers worldwide is enormous. Aragon notes that in January 2018, one online repository alone, FanFiction , hosted nearly 7 million stories with more than 176 million reviews and over 1.5 million authors—mostly young writers ages 13 to 25. These stories are based on original works ranging from fantasy best-sellers such as the Twilight series to literary classics by Jane Austen to podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale .

So Aragon clearly wasn’t alone in creating stories that spoke directly to her experience and identity. It’s not uncommon for students—even those who struggle with school writing assignments, especially when the assigned topics don’t interest them—to be prolific writers of fan fiction based on their favorite stories.

Seeing that enthusiasm, some teachers harness fan fiction writing in the classroom to help students improve their writing and express their unique perspectives creatively.

Writing Without Constraints

As a medium, fan fiction gives students the liberty to alter existing worlds or create new ones where they can build upon stories or topics that excite them.

The genre also allows students who are still learning about the elements of a good story to “jump right into a preexisting world, and they can really just attend to things about plot and characterization and create new characters without having to do all those other world-building aspects,” says Rebecca Black, a former high school teacher and now professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied the impact of fan fiction on adolescents and English learners.

Writing fan fiction not only helps a writer develop storytelling skills but also requires them to read a text deeply to thoroughly understand the plot and the nuances of the characters while thinking critically about how to generate new ideas out of that foundation, says Abby Kirby, an educator who has taught online classes on writing and fandom—a community of enthusiasts who share a common interest in certain comics, books, movies, or shows—and is now a middle school English teacher in Illinois.

“Let’s say a student really liked the Percy Jackson book and wanted to write a Percy Jackson story, except he goes to Hogwarts and belongs in Hufflepuff,” says Kirby. “I’d say, ‘That’s great. I love that. In order to make that work, you want to have to have a really good understanding of who Percy Jackson is and why you think he embodies all the traits of a Hufflepuff versus why wouldn’t he be, like, a Gryffindor or even a Slytherin. How are you going to show that through his character and tell me that you understood the story that you read? And you have to do the same thing for Harry Potter .’”

A lot of schoolwork tends to be concerned only with right or wrong answers, Kirby adds, but adding a written assignment where students get to reimagine a classic story, like Romeo and Juliet for example, in any direction they like could be a great opportunity for them to demonstrate their understanding of the text in an inventive and artistic way. “So you can say, ‘Why don’t you change Romeo and Juliet and set it in a different country, perhaps the country that you and your family might be from or some place that has really interested you in the past?’” Kirby says. “Or you can say, ‘Hey, the ending of Romeo and Juliet was really quite a bummer. How would we change that ending so that it’s less abrupt? What’s life like for these characters after just about everyone is dead?’”

In order for students to succeed in writing fan fiction, they need to master a host of literacy and critical thinking skills, Kirby says, including close reading, inventing new narrative developments, and mirroring specific sentence structures to resemble the original source—all of which can be tied to core standards in English writing and reading.

Creating Diverse Narratives

Fan fiction also provides students who don’t often see themselves represented in mainstream media with a platform to generate more diverse characters and inclusive storylines that both honor an existing story and expand its limitations, teachers tell us.

“One of the things that my students love the most about it is that it’s a place where some of the more restrictive and more archetypal personality types and relationships are put to the side, and people are free to explore their wildest imaginations,” says Julia Torres, a language arts teacher and librarian in Denver Public Schools. She typically recommends directing students to look into different fandoms online, such as Archive of Our Own , where they can read and evaluate various types of fan fiction as well as different styles and levels of quality of writing. Many students are drawn to fan fiction partly because they’d like to come up with plotlines that “decenter White, cis, heteronormative storytelling,” Torres says.

The genre has a particular benefit for English learners, giving them an opportunity to leverage their home languages and cultural backgrounds in their writing, says Black, who found that sparking conversations around fandoms in languages other than English heightened a sense of belonging as students were more inclined to bring their unique contributions to the classroom.

“I was looking at anime and manga fandoms, and the Japanese writers certainly had a sort of insider cultural knowledge that the people from Western cultures didn’t have,” says Black. “Rather than just being somebody who was learning English, they were somebody who had a lot of expertise in many of the cultural themes and linguistic features of these worlds.”

In addition, writing fan fiction in English benefits these students in their language learning endeavors. “For a lot of students, I have seen their vocabulary grow immensely through fan fiction because they are using the words that they read about in their books that they hear repeated on the screen,” says Kirby, who has taught courses on fandom with international students.

Entering the Fandom World

When Aragon was doing research for her book, she and co-author Katie Davis discovered a new form of mentoring that they called “distributed mentoring,” meaning that fan fiction writers don’t get feedback from just one teacher but from multiple writers and readers online, or their peers in the classroom. With more emphasis on the quality of the storytelling and less on the technicalities of writing, says Aragon, fandom sites can serve as interactive platforms for constructive feedback and encouragement from a large number of writers and fans who care about stories born from their favorite novels, podcasts, or TV shows.

But with those advantages come a few drawbacks that teachers should make sure to address before introducing fan fiction to their students, says Kirby. If a student is putting their writing on the internet, it’s important that they’re aware of the potential risks associated with online communities—like cyberbullying and privacy issues—and think through a few ways to keep themselves safe, she explains.

Yet, Kirby stresses the need to discuss the positives, too, especially with students new to fandoms. Consider asking questions like “What lets you know that this is a community you really do want to be a part of and a place where you want to share your thoughts and ideas?” At the end of the day, fan fiction can teach students not just critical thinking and English writing skills but also safe and respectful ways to interact with people on the internet, adds Kirby.

For language arts teachers in elementary and middle school, fan fiction is one of the ways they can break away from having students work in only a few types of writing, says Torres: “We can just make space for enjoyment, expression, and exploration of well-known tropes and stories without having to quantify it and say what’s either brilliant or not, you know?”

Fan fiction may not be for every student, so it’s important to consult your students first about what interests them and to provide alternatives—such as making up their own stories—if they would like to opt out of writing fan fiction. Torres suggests putting together a questionnaire to get a better sense of what your students are reading and where they might need some guidance, if they are interested writing fan fiction:

• Who are some of your favorite authors?
• What fandoms do you think other people should know about?
• Have you read the books that these TV shows are based on?
• Have you done any exploration into the databases of fan fiction? If so, what have you found? How good is the writing on these sites?
• How true is it to the story portrayed in the movies compared to the books? How much does it matter whether it’s true to the original stories or not?

Writing Fan Fiction Gave Me Community and Creative Freedom

I don't have to worry about writing the perfect sentence or the most impressive scene

When the pandemic erupted, I was in the midst of leaving my lucrative corporate job and transitioning to graduate school. I had returned to my parents’ home, logging onto client meetings from my childhood bedroom during the day, losing hours to fanfiction on Archive of our Own (Ao3) at night. As the terror of the pandemic appeared in push notifications on my phone, scrolling through fanfictions about Draco and Hermione’s imagined lives after Hogwarts soothed me. Escaping into stories that continued the plot of a childhood classic also comforted me as I came to terms with leaving the stability of my career for the instability of pursuing my passion. 

I had always wanted to be a writer, but as the only child of two Chinese immigrants, financial security was a religion in my household. I interpreted part of my inheritance to be the achievement of the upward mobility for which my parents had immigrated. Writing, especially the popular conception of a “starving artist,” did not fit into that framework; I spent my first year post-college trying to see if I could repress and extinguish my literary aspirations for a more stable career path. 

Leaving corporate America, I assumed, would return the creativity and writing drive that I had lost.

After graduating, I thought about writing while working on client presentations, molding my prose into corporate-friendly bullet points and sending out concise, “actionable” emails. I left my job to study creative nonfiction writing 14 months later, folding into storage my blazers and A-line dresses. I had a book inside of me; I was convinced of this. I wanted to write about Chinese culture, history, and society. I wanted to explore intergenerational trauma in a nuanced way that still honored tradition and demonstrated cultural competency. Leaving corporate America, I assumed, would return the creativity and writing drive that I had lost assembling PowerPoint decks and customizing Excel spreadsheets. Yet, despite how many creative writing classes I had taken in college, I struggled to articulate what my project was about in my graduate courses. 

My trepidation was multifaceted. On one hand, the pressure to impress my professors and classmates made me freeze up and second-guess my every submission. Given my relatively young age for my cohort, I expected to feel some imposter syndrome. My previous experience in business had also made me feel like a sell out, as if I no longer belonged in the literary world. On the other hand, my tenure as a consultant had forced me to prioritize precision over ingenuity, and I struggled to switch gears and return to creative writing. My perfectionism had also skyrocketed due to the high-stakes demands of client projects: I agonized over every word I wrote out of fear my prose would be lackluster.  

Fanfiction became my refuge. I sometimes read two books a week for my classes, but I’d gorge on Dramione (Draco and Hermione) fanfictions at night as a way of resetting my brain. The comfort of fandom stemmed from its familiarity. I had first discovered fanfiction in middle school, through a chance Google search about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the aughts, fanfiction was still contentious, straddling the gray area of copyright laws. The work felt subversive then, due to both the explicit content of the work and the disgruntled reactions from various rights holders over copyright infringement. G.R.R Martin and Anne Rice have both famously spoken out against fandom, with the underlying critique that fanfiction writers should stop being so lazy and start creating their own characters instead of “borrowing” existing ones. 

When I finally re-emerged in fandom, I found an entirely new world. Archive of our Own had debuted, creating a more democratic repository for a dizzying amount of fan works. Rights holders such as Paramount Pictures now consented and, sometimes, encouraged fans to create transformative works from source material. AIM and Livejournal had given way to Discord and Tumblr, both acting as central meeting hubs for fandom, hosting book clubs, allowing for direct and instantaneous contact between writer and readers. Quite a few fanfiction writers were going mainstream, locking down six-figure book deals in YA fiction and fantasy . Fanfiction no longer felt taboo; in fact, it almost felt—wait for it—cool. Through Discord, I  made a contingent of friends I described as my “internet friends,” but my IRL friends also openly admitted to reading fanfic and there are multiple pandemic-era text threads filled with Ao3 links.

The increased interactivity between readers and writers was what intrigued me most about this new-era of fanfiction. Amanda, one of my best (and first) friends in fandom, writes under the screenname mightbewriting. Her story, “ Wait and Hope ,” is one of the most kudos-ed Dramione fics on Ao3, but I met her when she was still posting the series. I reached out through Tumblr DM with effusive praise, and she became one of my best friends in fandom, the person who introduced me to Discord and encouraged me to start writing my own stories. We’ve gone on vacation twice together, with a group of other writers; this year, I spent my 25th birthday with her and our friends.

I felt immense guilt for all the time fanfiction was taking from my manuscript and my coursework.

Despite my blossoming online writing community and the joy I derived from it, I felt immense guilt for all the time fanfiction was taking from my manuscript and my coursework. I recognized that fandom was serving as escapism for me, but I only saw the surface-level reasons for this. I wasn’t yet acknowledging how my MFA had affected my identity and confidence as a writer. I had taken creative writing courses in college, and while I was familiar with the workshop model–which can sometimes be vulnerable, contentious, and openly hostile–I hadn’t expected the negative critiques I received in my graduate-level workshop to affect me as much as they did. While I believed in the rigor of critique and wanted honest feedback that would help me improve as a writer, I also was writing a memoir about deeply personal topics. Despite the constructs designed to maintain the illusion of critical distance in workshop–substituting “the narrator” instead of “you” when addressing the writer, for instance–hearing that “the narrator” is “self-indulgent” or “immature” was wounding. Workshop environments are also not impervious to interpersonal grudges, a carousel of writers exchanging barbed critiques as a petty way in which to retaliate for having received a negative critique. 

The situation was compounded by the isolation the pandemic had wrought. I had begun my MFA online, and logistical snafus like a fractured internet connection or distracting background noise would prove irritating interruptions during critiques. Yet, the bigger issue was the sterile nature of delivering criticism through a screen, especially when there was no way to commune together afterwards and collectively shake off the sting of critique. Instead, after hearing a variety of commentary, both negative and positive, on my submission, I logged off and stared at my bedroom wall, my classmates’ statements echoing in my head. 

By the second semester of my first year, I dreaded submitting. Sometimes, I would glance at my Apple watch during critique and see my heart was racing at 100 BPM while sitting. It was not that I blamed the course––having finished my two years of coursework, I know that workshop was invaluable to the progress of my manuscript and my overall development as a writer. My problems were internal and personal. I had fallen into the trap of workshop, the reason critics sometimes deride MFAs as “writing factories” that flatten voice and style: I was writing specifically to please an audience, and every sentence I composed was infected by the question of how will this fare in workshop? It was not a particular class that was wounding or brutal; rather, it was the combination of isolation and my insecurity that made writing feel like a chore. I procrastinated relentlessly during the week and wrote feverishly at the 11th hour leading up to my submission deadline. 

My issue, I decided, was discipline. 

I declared that if by the end of summer I had not finished a first draft of my book, I would shave my head.

I devised a draconian system of daily word counts that would ensure 100,000 words by the end of my first year. “I’m going to get a first draft of this manuscript even if it kills me,” I told one of my professors. I set a minimum weekly word count of 10,000 words a week. “It’s not so bad,” I kept rationalizing to friends. “I don’t necessitate a daily word count. I just need to write 10,000 a week.” I didn’t penalize myself for days that were devoid of words, but I had a drastic system of punishments (all recorded in an Excel sheet) for every week in which I did not hit my goal. At one point, I declared that if by the end of summer I had not finished a first draft of my book, I would shave my head. I wrote the punishment on an index card and stuck it above my desk. 

To accommodate my new goals, I reconfigured my schedule, eradicating my nocturnal writing and forced a 6 AM wake up each day so I could drag myself into the foyer and work in tandem with the rising sun. I deleted my social media and installed SelfControl , a website-blocking app that featured a skull as its icon. I put my Dramione WIP (work-in-progress) on hiatus and centered my day around getting my 10,000 manuscript words in, rushing through dinner and social plans so I could sit at my computer and stare at the (sometimes) blank screen. This lasted for three weeks.

I was writing––that wasn’t the problem. If I had been less Manichean in my thinking, I would have celebrated that I was even hitting 500 words a day, but I self-flagellated every week that I missed my 10,000 word goal. With the threat of a buzz cut looming over me, I decided to loosen the guidelines for what type of writing I allowed in my daily word count. I rationalized that if I could finish both my fanfic WIP and a manuscript by the end of summer, then all the better. 

I could not see the irony in my conundrum, that in leaving corporate America, I had decided to appropriate the very rigidity and inflexibility of my former career into my passion, which had tainted an activity I once loved. I was trying to force writing into a consulting framework, calculating ROI, devising a writing schedule the way I would have made a project roadmap for clients. But reintroducing fanfic–and, thus, pleasure–back into my wheelhouse dramatically changed my output. There were weeks where I was writing 20,000 words without feeling depleted. On Discord, my fanfiction friends and I did writing sprints together, setting a timer and trying to get as many words out as possible within the time frame. We had video chat writing hours that transitioned into wine hours. I now had another contingent of writers whom I could call upon to help edit and read over my work, even if neither of us were being paid to do it. I have, on more than one occasion, directly cannibalized my fanfic, cutting lines from my stories and inserting them into my manuscript. Sometimes, these lines are the ones that are complimented most in workshop.

My fanfiction friends and community are sometimes my first readers for pages of my manuscript and other freelance essays.

Fanfic is still stigmatized within the literary community, and I’m particular about whom in my offline life I divulge my fandom identity, but my writing improved during the months I was most active in fandom. Instead of dissolving into a sentimental mess, my prose strengthened as I worked with a diverse range of editors (whom are known as “Alphas” and “Betas” within fandom, wherein Alphas help with big ideas and overall story flow while Betas are called upon for copyediting and syntactical issues) and learned about my blindspots that my MFA classmates hadn’t flagged before. My fanfiction friends and community are sometimes my first readers for pages of my manuscript and other freelance essays I work on. Once, Amanda left me a comment on my document that read, “Sabrina, I am saving you from yourself. Never use the phrase ‘vertiginous pleasure’ again,” and I still have a screenshot of that advice saved. 

The community of readers has also been invaluable and generous in both their praise and their actions: my work has been translated into Chinese and Russian, chosen as a book club pick-of-the-month, and turned into podfics ; I’ve had bound copies of my work sent to me and fanart created for different stories. I’m far from a famous Ao3 author, but seeing my work recommended in Reddit threads or featured in TikToks is mind-blowing, and every email I receive notifying me about new kudos or comments on my fics still makes me smile. 

Fanfiction gave me two of the most important things a writer can have: community and creative freedom.

To date, I’ve published 117,542 words of fanfiction, comparable to 261 pages of prose. Some writers may balk at that literary expenditure for a medium in which I don’t receive any type of compensation. Others may feel bemused by why someone with a MFA wants to write about another writer’s characters instead of creating her own. But both of those reasons are precisely why I stay in fandom: in my stories, I don’t have to worry so much about writing the perfect sentence or the most impressive scene. I’m not writing on a deadline, for a fee, or to impress my cohort and professors; I write fanfic entirely for myself. The standard workshop questions around “what are the stakes?” of a piece and “why should readers care about your characters?” are null. Readers flock to these stories because we’re united by a lingua franca, our love for Harry Potter , and they comment on fics out of genuine appreciation for the work, not because it is part of an assignment or built into class expectations.

I’m not always proud of the fanfics I’ve published. In fact, I don’t particularly like re-reading my most-read piece. The writing quality noticeably slips in the later chapters because I rushed to finish; the plotlines stop making sense. At one point, I introduce a truly bizarre and convoluted crisis that I didn’t know how to write myself out of. 

Yet, I keep the stories up because I think it’s a mistake, to eradicate the joy and pleasure in its creation. Fanfiction gave me two of the most important things a writer can have: community and creative freedom. It is important for writers to retain a love of their craft, even though the work can often be isolating and emotionally taxing, even though criticism is inherent in this line of work. I write fanfiction for the same reason people join a recreational soccer league or enroll in a pottery-making class: to find a community where I could practice my passion and skills with like-minded individuals. 

I have a few fanfiction WIPs that linger in my drafts, but recently I’ve had to focus on finishing my manuscript to meet a deadline. Still, on days when words seem impossible to grasp, I log onto Discord and ping a friend, “Do you want to sprint together?”  Knowing they’re writing with me, no matter how far they are in the world, makes the words appear just that much easier. 

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Above the Fold: How fan fiction inspired UI creative writing students

Student writers at the University of Iowa share how creating works for fanfiction helped them develop their writing. 

RELATED: UI writers cite fan fiction as inspiration to pursue creative writing

Above the Fold is hosted and produced by Natalie Dunlap. Reporting from Charlie Hickman contributed to this episode.

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