Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Fan Fiction 101

This is a bit of an odd chapter, but I've always been the type to throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks. Most of us have heard the word fan fiction, but unless you're part of the fan fiction community, you probably know very little about it. This chapter introduces you to the idea of a fan fiction, if it's something you've heard in passing but are not particularly familiar with.

Most of my stuff is written on the idea that you're writing an original fiction. I will state right now that I am NOT a fan fiction writer. I don't really see the point in fan fiction when you can create something unique and original. However, I also know that fans are fans for a reason, and fan fiction is a way they express their fandom. There are also many benefits to fan fiction that may not seem apparent to original work authors.

So let's start at the beginning...

What is Fan Fiction?

Before I go into how to write it, I suppose it's a good time to point out what fan fiction is. Simply put, fan fiction is any work of fiction written with the express purpose of displaying an already existing identity or intellectual property. Since fan fiction almost always displays copyrighted content, it is usually free and would be considered quite illegal to sell.

However, don't let fan fiction confuse you with homages, satires, parodies, metaphors, or similarities. Just because you possess a character that is supposed to be someone else's intellectual property does not mean you're creating a fan fiction. For it to be a fan fiction, the fiction A) needs to infringe upon the intellectual property and B) be about the contents of the intellectual property.

Fan fiction works because fan fiction cashes in on the fandom around the source material. You attract readers that you might not have attracted otherwise. Many authors on here will sometimes get angry at the idea that a One Direction fan fiction explodes in popularity with millions of reads after being typed on a cellphone, while some clearly QC'd original work is otherwise ignored. They'll complain about the injustice in the world. They'll complain about how society is getting dumber or how intellectuality is dead.

In truth, a One direction writing isn't good because of the writing, but because of the one direction (although being well written certainly wouldn't hurt either). It's the fans coming to the site looking to read something involving their fan crushes, and they found what they wanted to find. They never would have been interested in YOUR romance story, because they were drawn by their love of One Direction. That One Direction story is popular because One Direction was popular.

This is the advantage of a lot of fan fiction. It brings in an audience. I've experienced this first hand. I've started translating a novel written in Japanese. It's not my original work. It's essentially a fan translation. Because this story is popular, people come to read it. I have over 1 million views on my wordpress because of that translation. That's far more than I'd ever receive from my own original works. In essence, I'm borrowing the popularity of that novel written by someone else in order to bring attention to my own works. That is the power of fan fiction. The more popular the subject you write fan fiction off of, the more of an audience you can expect...

This often takes one of three different forms.

Celebrity Fan Fiction, World Fiction, and Plot Fan Fiction.

Celebrity/Character Fan Fiction

This isn't an official division of fan fiction, by the way, merely a division I'm making up on the spot from person experience. A "celebrity" fan fiction usually creates a unique story, but inserts a person into the story. Yes, a person is an intellectual property. 5 Seconds of Summer is an IP (Intellectual property), yes... but so is Luke Hemmings. Luke Hemmings (or at least his studio) owns his own likeness. They can sell Luke Hemmings shaped dolls if they wanted to. You can't.