Reblog if you think it’s a good way to practice writing.
Reblog if you have made friends because of fanfiction.
My sister called it a waste of time and I want to prove her wrong.
Fanfiction makes people happy. Both writers and readers. How could that ever be a waste of time?
Fanfiction is not a waste of time. I repeat. Fanfiction. Is. not. A. Waste. Of. Time.
Fanfiction has built my writing skills. If you look at what I wrote last year, it’s a HUGE difference. Sometimes I look at my fanfiction through the ages and it just gets better and better. It makes me look at characters in ways I’ve never seen before and helps me find ways to bring characters to life in ways that I could never manage before.
Fanfiction. Is. not. A. Waste. Of. Time.
Because I’ve been writing fanfiction, I have found a way to write angsty things that make me cry and make my own writing more touching. I have found out how to write fluff so that I can bring relationships to life and I have worked with a variety of characters so that I know how to shape different personalities and have a distinction between my characters.
Fanfiction. Is. Not. A. Waste. Of. Time.
Fanfiction has brought me closer than ever to publishing a book and if anyone, for one moment doubts that, I can show you cold hard proof of how much I’ve grown. Don’t you dare tell me to stop wasting my life with fanfiction, because it does more than you could ever see.
PREACH!!!!
I would like to point out that Sir James Barrie, author of Peter Pan, used to write fanfiction with the encouragement of his mother when the serial stories he followed as a child weren’t updated fast enough. And I doubt he was the only recognized author to have done so.
So yeah, fanfiction is important.
Heck, fanfic is millennia old. Jason and the Argonauts is pretty much just a crossover fanfic of all the favorite heroes of some unknown ancient Greek ficcer. Most people’s entire experience of narrative prior to the invention of the printing press was oral storytelling, and storytellers would tell their own versions of well-known tales or make up new stories about popular characters all the time. Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy are Bible fanfic, so successful that people often forget they’re not canon. (Literally!) Most of the 20th century’s most famous horror writers got their start with Lovecraft fanfic (which Lovecraft actively encouraged). Neil Gaiman is pretty much “just” a professional fanfic writer. And practically every writer, even if they’re not writing what we’d consider fanfic, start out emulating the style of their favorite writers.
Fuck, if you buy Campbell’s Hero’s Journey nonsense (which, in case “nonsense” didn’t make it clear, I don’t), everything ever written is basically Epic of Gilgamesh AU fanfic.
