Fan fiction is a form of creative writing. It’s written by fans featuring the characters from a certain TV show, movie, book, comic book, video game etc. It’s a huge online community allowing from fans to participate in their fandom while being creative. fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org. Fanfiction.net alone has over 6 million published works of fiction and counting. However there is commonly a lot of misconceptions about what it is.

1. Is fanfiction plagiarism?

This is one of the biggest concerns when it comes to fanfiction. There’s actually a lot of grey areas. In face, author Orson Scott Card, most known for his series “Enders Game” said: "to write fiction using my characters is morally identical to moving into my house without invitation and throwing out my family." He has since changed his mind and has assisted fan fiction contests, arguing to the Wall Street Journal that "Every piece of fan fiction is an ad for my book. What kind of idiot would I be to want that to disappear?”. Mostly authors oppose the entire concept of a some random person using their ideas, and characters is probably an author’s worst nightmare. However, fan fiction authors solemn to never make any kind of money or gain any kind of fame from a fic. In fact, websites that host platforms for writers to post capitalize on the important of never commercializing fan fiction. Writers also frequently begin their chapters with disclaimers giving the proper recondition to the original creator. And according to Plagiarism Today:

“…with fan fiction, the author doesn’t actually hold the copyright to the work they create, in fact, the work itself is technically a violation of copyright law. Since copyright law grants the copyright holder the exclusive right to create derivative works based on an original one, which is precisely what a fan fiction is, the original copyright holder, whoever owns the rights to the original work(s) owns the fan fiction regardless of who wrote it.”

2. Isn’t fan fiction just a bunch of weird porn?

Nope! There is a community for that. But the majority of fanficiton are stories fulfilling a demand for more content. Harry Potter is probably the biggest community for fanfiction. In fact of fanfiction.net’s 6 million works, about 75,000 of them are Harry Potter. Plus an additional 4 (probably more) websites totally dedicated to just Harry Potter fic. The “weird porn” assumptions does come from the small but mighty niche of fan fiction writers who post sexual fictions that have a number of different names including: lemon, lime, slash, femslash, squicks, PWP, or crack fics. While there is that weird stuff floating about, most work is actually very respectable, well-written and thoughtful.

3. Can’t you just come up with your own ideas?

A lot of people might just assume that because fan fiction are using preexisting characters/places etc, that they have no imagination and are not original at all. However there's a lot more to story-telling than coming up with characters. Fanfiction writers are plagued with creating something that rivals the source. The best writers are master at taking a well-known character and putting them in their own unique story and still have the character be recognizable. All while coming up with a unique plot and good dialogue. People will typically begin writing because they have such a creative imagination and are coming up with new ideas about their favorite stories. It’s just a different writing skill set than when you write completely original fiction, and should be recognized as a valid expression.