Hi, my name is laila and I am a talentless hack fanfic author.

Yes, that's right, I said the 'F'-word.

I know, in some respects we have it easy, we fanfic authors. We don't have to create characters - at least not always - or world build. (We do, however, have other worries: staying in character and staying true to the world they move in isn't always easy.) That doesn't mean we necessarily sit back twiddling our thumbs before banging out a quick fic before dinner, then slap it up on fanfiction.net to rot and move onto the next shiny thing. Sure, some fan authors do, but it's by no means all of us, and writing original work is no defense against it.

A thoughtful author is a thoughtful author no matter what they're writing. Fanficcers - at least the good ones - plan their work just as carefully as a thoughtful writer producing an original work would. Fanficcers talk their stories over, they search for plot holes and fill them in. They consult beta readers. They edit their work - and they edit it again, and again, and again.

Fanfiction isn't all shiny Mary Sues and ridiculous buttsex. I've seen a large amount of both in my journeys round the fanfic block, but I've also - sticking my neck out a bit here - read a lot of fanfiction that is really excellent. I would far rather read a carefully-plotted, well-written, thoughtful piece of fanfic than I would a Sue-riddled, deeply clichéd original work. Much of the work I have seen on Fictionpress is every bit as derivative as a lot of fanfiction, despite the 'original characters'. The work I used to post at Fictionpress was derivative.

Speaking of derivative works, published authors aren't exactly averse to dipping their toes in the fanfic pool form time to time. I'm not just talking about published authors who write Stargate fic on the side, either. Want proof?

The Wide Sargasso Sea is Jane Eyre Fanfic. Wicked is Wizard of Oz Fanfic. The Time Ships is Time Machine Fanfic. Devil May Care is James Bond fanfic. Perchance to Dream is Philip Marlowe fanfic. Dorian is Dorian Gray fanfic. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is Hamlet fanfic. Alan Moore's Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics are, at heart, basically a successful crossover fanfic. The movie Van Helsing is also fanfic. American McGee's Alice computer game is based on Alice in Wonderland. Neil Gaiman wrote A Study in Emerald, which is a crossover between the Sherlock Holmes novels and the Cthulhu mythos. Steven Moffat's Jekyll. Pretty much every Disney movie ever made - Hunchback, anyone? Smallville is fanfic.

There are published sequels to Pride and Prejudice and Gone with the Wind. There are Star Trek novels. Doctor Who novels. Buffy novels. The entire Star Wars EU. Every TV tie-in novelization ever published is, yes, fanfiction. The fact that these things got published does not make them any less fanfic. These authors are taking someone else's work and doing exactly what every decent author on fanfiction.net does to it - and there are plenty of decent authors on fanfiction.net. They take a bit of finding, but not much more than finding a decent author on fictionpress does.

Good fanfiction is not an oxymoron. I won't pretend it's all good; a lot of it is indifferent at best and a lot more of it is frankly terrible. A lot of totally original fiction written by amateurs, though, is also indifferent at best.

Why do I write fanfiction when my time would be better spent writing original works? Well, I do it to keep my hand in while I wait to have a workable original idea instead of all the derivative nonsense I used to dream up, I do it because it's taught me a fair bit about characterization and plotting, I do it because people are far more likely to actually read and comment than they would that Generic Vampire Fantasy Story #3,417 I toyed with writing many moons ago and abandoned because it was derivative nonsense, and I do it because, you know, I really like the show and I wish there was more of it. I do it because, quite honestly, I don't give a wet slap if I can sell my writing or not.

But most of all I write fanfiction because it allows me to meet like-minded people and because it happens to be a lot of fun.


Non TL;DR version: Fanficcers are not all talentless, imagination-free hacks without an original bone in their bodies. Not all fanfic sucks.