Maybe you have friends who read fanfiction, maybe you've heard of it but never really seen in before, or maybe you're just that much of a fandom nerd and you want to dive in. Good for you! Embrace the nerdiness and love what you love. I'm not going to lie though, figuring out the major online fanfiction sites can be a little confusing at first. There's a lot of terminology, and the user interface can be a little weird. So for all the excited fanfiction novices out there, here is a primer on all things fanfic related.

So where do you go to find fanfiction?

There is such thing as print fanfiction, which are books written by authors in universes that already exist. There are especially a lot of books in the worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. If you're new to fanfiction, get some from the library. Honestly, those are more likely to be good because they actually have to go through a publisher before they get out there. Online, almost anything goes, and finding a good online fanfic is kind of like wading through a sea of mud in search of a diamond. The most popular fanfiction websites are Fanfiction.net, Archive Of Our Own, and Wattpad. There are some great ones out there, and if you want to go looking for them, there's some terminology you need to know.

A quick glossary of terms

AU - an acronym for Alternate Universe, refers to a story that includes the characters from a certain fandom, but in a very different situation than that which exists in the source material

A/N - an acronym for Author's Note, refers to a parenthetical aside the author uses to explain something, usually before the story begins but occasionally during the action

OC - an acronym for Original Character, refers to a fic including a character the author has made up

OOC - an acronym for Out of Character, refers to a fic in which a character has to act in a way that is somewhat inconsistent with the source material for the sake of this story

R&R - Read and Review

Lemon/Lime - refers to a story which contains explicit sexual content. Yes, there's a reason why it's called that, and no I don't have time to go into it now. Google it if you really want to know.

Non-Con - refers to a story that contains non-consensual sexual content

Songfic - refers to genre in which the author uses song lyrics to generate the theme

Fluff - refers to a non-serious story, just one with nice warm and fuzzy scenes

How to find something you want to read

Most of the popular websites have pretty simple tags you can search to find a fic in a fandom you know about, and creators usually tag their works with different plot elements, which character relationships the story contains, and other characteristics, so you can look for something you prefer. Pro tip: if the author claims that "the summary is terrible but the story is better" I can almost guarantee that it isn't. Happy nerd reading!