confessions : my life as a moderately successful fanfiction writer

The other day, while bored at work (as per usual), I decided to look at Fanfiction.net on a whim. For those who don’t know about the wonderful website, Fanfiction.net is one of the world’s largest fanfiction websites, and covers a huge number of genres. Writers can upload their own fanfics (or ‘fics’ as we called them), read and review other fics, create communities of writers and more.

Now you might be wondering what ‘fanfiction’ is – it’s basically exactly what the name suggests. Fans of certain books, series, movies or TV shows write their own fictional stories about the characters seen in the original form, and either continue the story beyond the ending of the series, or create new storylines etc. Most fics are based around romance, but some become incredibly involved, novel-length depictions of alternate endings or potential finales of series.

As a youngster, one of my closest friends introduced me to fanfiction by way of the Harry Potter fanfiction website, Sugarquill.net. This was right after the fourth HP book had been released, and during those awful few years while we waited for the fifth book. I was 12 years old and desperate for more wizarding world magic – fanfiction was a total godsend.

Being an aspiring writer, it wasn’t long before I started trying my hand at fanfiction as well. By this point I was well-versed in the most popular fics on Fanfiction.net and I had taken a fancy to what were called ‘MWPP’ fics – after ‘Moony Wormtail Padfoot Prongs’, fanfiction about Harry’s parents and their time at Hogwarts.

In a short space of time, my comedic fics about James and Lily Potter became relatively popular – I had tweens asking me to write more chapters, was nominated for some fanfiction award for ‘most funny fic’, and had hundreds of reviews.

In comparison to more prolific writers, I actually wasn’t that popular, but trawling through my old account I was oddly touched at all of the encouraging (albeit misspelt) comments, and the sheer excitement readers got from the anticipation of the next chapter or the next fic.

Now, as (ostensibly) a grown-up, writing has become work, and I can’t remember the last time I felt ‘excited’ about writing a new article or short story. Writing is something I love, that I can’t really stop doing, but also something that I have to do in order to have anything resembling the career I would like. Comments are no longer encouraging, but are often there to point out flaws in your argument, to request more clarification, or to call you any number of bad names. Readers are not automatically ‘fans’, and stories have to be more complex and thought-out than ‘boy meets girl, boy and girl argue, boy and girl discover their everlasting love, hijinks ensue’.

I rarely tell anyone about my secret past as a fanfiction writer, but taking a look at the website again made me remember just how valuable fanfiction was to my development as a writer. Being able to write about a pre-existing fictional world, with pre-formed characters helped me learn how to sustain a plot and create a structured story without getting caught up in the gritty details of character and setting development. I managed to work out my writing style in what was essentially a practice space, and gained a fairly good understanding of the average preadolescent reader’s likes and dislikes also.

And even better, I became part of a very encouraging online community, where people gave constructive criticism, cheered you on when you had writers block, shared their own writing openly, and helped with editing and proof reading when needed.

People often deride fanfiction as the domain of only the seriously socially inept, but I’m going to go ahead and say that fanfiction was one of the best possible things for me as a writer – in fact, it had a strong hand in making me into the somewhat reasonable writer I am today.

If you’re keen to get in on the fanfic action, and kind of enjoyed Harry Potter, try this one. It was the first fic I remember reading!