Why I Started Reading and Writing Fan-Fictions.

When I was younger, I had a friend who loved to read fan-fictions. She never wrote any of her own but would talk repeatedly about fan-fictions of her favourite anime “Inu-yasha.” I was one of those skeptics who thought nothing could beat the original series, and would dismiss her encouragement to read fan-fictions.

About three years ago, I had just finished the manga (japanese graphic novels) +Anima (about people who would inherit animal genes from a near-death experience) but I couldn’t believe it was finished I felt there should have been more to the story and so I looked up fan-fictions of +Anima. I found a fan-fiction whose summary compelled me to read and I have been hooked ever since.

Perhaps if I had not clicked on such a well-written fan-fiction I would have turned away, but that one was amazing. I love reading other people’s interpretations of original work and even reading about pairings I like.

It took me awhile before I felt comfortable uploading my own works of fan-fiction. My main reason for uploading them wasn’t even about it being a fan-fiction; it was actually because I wanted to know if people would like my own writing. Also, I could hide behind a username and no one would know it was me.

It turned out a lot of people did like my writing and the fan-fiction I started. It felt good to get encouraging and constructive feedback. But I also got flamed for missing minor details about a certain character’s appearance. It is very discouraging to get an anonymous review of how awful of a writer you are putting you down in every sense. But I continued to write, because the good reviews far outweighed the one bad review I got. Most fan-fiction writers' responses to flames about how their story doesn’t match to the original are: “It’s a fan-fiction, and I am God and can change anything I want.”

I don’t write nearly as much fan-fiction as I did when I first started. I would update a new chapter once a week. I have been focusing on my own original work more, especially now that I am in college, but I still roam the fan-fictions to find good ones to read.

One thing about online fan-fiction that used to bother me is that many users don’t do active updates. That is one thing to remember, sometimes it's months before an author will update a 1000-word chapter. If this really bothers you, look under complete stories to avoid waiting for updates.

Overal,l I love fan-fictions and will probably continue to read them for a long time. My personal favourite website for fanfictions is, fanfiction.net.

My fan-fiction account is something private that I keep just for myself and no one knows who I am. I remain anonymous.

Role-Playing

Today I would like to talk about, “Role-playing.” I never participated in one before, until the other day; I never really had an opinion about them. I started role-playing through msn with a couple of friends and we used our own original characters from different stories and comics we had made. It turned out to be fun and I learned stuff about my characters I never knew before.

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Fan-Fiction Must Haves and the Have Not's

When publishing a fan-fiction online; there are a few must-haves to make sure everything is right. The first and far most important is a ‘disclaimer’; a disclaimer protects you against copyright infringement. Here’s an example, ‘I do not own or take any credit for the original storyline or characters from the books and movies of Harry Potter.’ Disclaimers are simple and do not take up any time. You should make sure to have one at the beginning of every chapter of your fan-fiction.

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Fan-Fiction Lingo

To completely understand the fan-fiction world you need to know the lingo; so when you’re surfing through the list of summaries you can easily pick and choose what you want to read. The same goes for you when writing a proper summary or warning. Fandom/Universe/Verse: The object/world that the piece is written for (ex: the Harry Potter fandom)

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What is Fan-Fiction Exactly?

A fan fiction is a piece of writing that expands, adds onto or takes the original characters from an already published work of a writer. Some examples would be if someone wrote their own story about the Harry Potter Universe, or decided that they wanted Sam from the show Supernatural to be in love with the demon Ruby. Because fan fictions are based off original work, they are hardly ever officially published; instead there are online sites that allow people to post their twists and views for others to read.

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