Fanfiction, or ‘fanfic’ as it is affectionately known, is no
recent phenomenon, but it continues to grow. Heck, everyone’s at it and they
aren’t ashamed to admit it either. Researching fanfic, I was expecting to just
find crazed One Direction fans dreaming up a scenario where the curly haired
one falls in love with them. And believe me there are more than a few of these
ones, so much so that One Direction fanfic is quickly overtaking Harry Potter
fanfic in popularity. I looked at three main sites: Wattpad, fanfiction.net and
Archive of our Own. Searching Wattpad’s fanfiction section, it is hard to find
fanfic which isn’t centred on One Direction, which left me disappointed. Too
much One Direction can be a bad thing, you know. From this, one piece advice I
would give aspiring fanfic writers is that it appears that the less popular the
fandom, the easier it is for your work to get recognised. Although there are
stack full of stories about Harry (of the Styles, Potter and even Prince
variety) there seem to be a select few that are popular, such as “He’s No Good”
centred around Zayn Malik from One Direction, and currently has 7million hits.
If the thought of being dominated by Directioners trying
their hand at literature puts you off, there is still hope. Websites such as fanfiction.net and Archive
of our Own has a fandom for everything from Buffy the Vampire slayer to
Degrassi. Who knew? These sites are great for those who want to branch out to
even the most obscure of fandoms. Sign up is free, although Archive of Our Own
requires you to be ‘invited’ like some kind of secret society.
I only planned to read a few fanfics but it got strangely
addictive, and before I knew it, I had spent 3 hours reading and had added a
One Direction fanfic to my Wattpad library. And I’m not even a 1D fan. It was
official, fanfic had become my guilty pleasure.
Reading fanfics from
all walks of fandom I noticed two trends that seemed to be occurring. Writers
would either use the characters from the TV programme/film etc. and mould them
into a completely new storyline that they had conjured up. For example, one writer had made a bizaare
fanfic hybrid out of Breaking Bad and Wizards of Waverly Place. I’m not sure
how a programme about Disney wizards and a programme about cooking crystal meth
could possibly be a match made in heaven, but it apparently seems to work,
getting 358 hits since it was published three days ago. Although the storyline
seems bizaare, with this method you can literally let your imaginations run
wild. An alternative method was
following the original storylines, making alterations here and there. This was
true of a Gossip Girl fanfic I found, one of my favourite TV programmes ‘back
in the day’. The author of ‘Once Upon a Chairytale’ had used the original
storyline of Chuck and Blair’s relationship and had altered it slightly. Hell,
there was even a girl that had written and altered every single episode. Now that’s dedication. I wasn’t so much of a
fan of this method but if you chose to do it this way, be warned- you have to
know your fandom inside out or you get other members of the fandom verbally
attacking you for being inaccurate. Another point, the fanfic world can be
harsh.
I’ve read a lot of fanfics today; more than one person
should be able to stomach. I’ve read some surprisingly good ones, some frankly
disturbing ones, and some ‘meh’ ones. With this in mind, it is difficult to
establish ‘how to’ write fanfic because there appears to be no rules. I think
the one great thing about fanfic amongst all its hype is that it is fun, to be enjoyed by the author and
other members of the fandom, rather than being scrutinised for poor grammar or
lack of extended metaphors like ‘normal’ novels. And that’s what fiction should
be about- enjoyment, and however much fanfic may get laughed at and mocked, I
think it sets a pretty good example for the rest of fiction writing, and sites
like the ones mentioned only make fanfiction easier to be a part of.
Happy writing!
Love Georgia x
If you’re interested in writing or reading fanfic, these are
great fanfiction sites:
If you fancy a read of the fanfics I had a look at,
check out the links below:
“He’s No Good” by MalikIsSexy (One Direction)
“You Make Me Feel Human” by
3mmaRawrs (Vampire Diaries)
“The Disappearer” by Porkchop_Sandwiches (Breaking Bad and Wizards
of Waverly Place hybrid)
“Once Upon A Chairytale” by
rayj829 (Gossip Girl)
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