Why I Read Fan Fiction

My To Be Read (TBR) pile of books is starting to reach swaying heights that violate all manner of OSHA rules. I’ve got list of books on hold at the library; more in a stack by my desk; and I regularly download “great deals” onto my Kindle.

But lately, I’ve given chunks of reading time over to fan fiction. For those who are don’t know, here’s the definition of fan fiction.

Back in my halcyon* days of fulltime, grownup employment, I read a lot of fan fiction. What else what I gonna do? Work? (*As in days of wine and honey and health insurance.) Once I started writing my own original fiction, I drifted away from fan fics, in part because of the bias among certain sectors of the writing community. Every so often, in between the regular author vs. reviewer scuffles and other Internet scandals, the fan fiction controversy pokes its head out of water like Nessie, and there’s a general freakout from folks on both sides of the issue. The issue isn’t anything I want to deal with here, but the angst is derived from the fact that fan fiction may not be entirely legal. Fan ficcers are essentially appropriating other people’s intellectual property.

I’m in the “It’s harmless so long as it’s done for fun, not profit” camp. Obviously. I read the stuff. But there’s a segment of authordom that sees fan fiction as a practice akin to skinning cute kittens and wearing their fur as hats. Insert a teenage, “What-ever.”

Anyway, I stopped reading fics because, as an exercise in learning the craft, it just made more sense to read published, edited and polished fiction. Recently, after the topic of fan fiction was showcased over at Dear Author, I started poking around fic sites again. And reading.

You get what you pay for and the quality of fan fiction varies, with a propensity toward “awful.”  The policy on a lot of fic sites is to request “reviews,” where the term is defined as “tell me how awesome my story is.” Some stories do benefit from beta readers, but most posted “in the raw.”

For some writers, fan fics are a kind of therapy, a means of working out their own emotional issues in the pre-existing confines of an established universe. For others, just a means of writing a sexy slash story featuring pairings like Hermione and Tonks. For some, English isn’t their first language, and fan fic is a way to practice writing in English.

So if it’s all dreck, why do I read it? Because it isn’t all bad–some of it is wonderful–and even the bad stuff is filled with a kind of joie de vivre. Quite simply, it reminds me why I started writing in the first place. Writing is fun.

A writer in my critique group, when I noted that his story read like he enjoyed writing it, said, “I don’t find writing fun.” My response was, “Whuh-huh?” I mean, I don’t think doing dishes or laundry is fun. That’s why the laundry pile is taller than my TBR pile. I do (or don’t do) a lot of crap that isn’t fun. Why on Earth would I want to write if it was a chore?

I need to put my characters and their stories on page. It’s a kind of catharsis that is ultimately rather joyful. If it turns into a chore, it’s time to find another way to not make money.

Of course, if you have any interest in writing for publication, you should be actively learning all you can about the craft of writing. This is where all those “writerly” things become important: plot, characterization, pacing, point of view, word usage, etc. But somewhere in the process–“Oh, dear god, everything I just wrote was in passive voice, kill me now!”–it’s easy to forget just how much fun it was to just…fucking write.

The fics I’m reading express that perfectly. Maybe it’s because they are borrowing someone’s universe and characters and it’s easier to write in an established milieu. Maybe it’s because the writers and I both love the characters they are “using.” But the stories, even the ones with wobbly prose and weird point of view shifts, exemplify what it is to sit down and write a story from the heart, to simply, pardon the schmaltz, feel the love.

Truly. It’s muse food.