July 16, 2021

Fanfiction. Quite a lot of connotations pop up after that word. Some argue that it is copyright infringement. Others argue that it is free expression and engagement with published and premiered material. Still more regard it as a legitimate art-form all its own. And then there are some who see it as the refuse of the art community.

I believe that copyright infringement is terrible. I believe that plagiarism is horrific. And I believe that the rights of original works and the artists that create them should be protected to the fullest extent of the law.

And I believe fanfiction is fantastic.

Before I explain, let me first define fanfiction. Fanfiction, a subset of fanart, is the written artistic creation produced by a fan that uses the intellectual property of an original artist. Within fanfiction, and all fanart, there is no claim to ownership of the creation by the fan artist. Instead, there is just shared engagement.

To illustrate: an author writes and publishes a book wherein the main character’s lover dies and that is what instigates the quest. I, a fan of said book, begin to think about how the story would have shaped out if the lover had not died. I write these thoughts on paper and they become a piece of fanfiction.

These thoughts are mine in that I am the one thinking them into being. But they are also not mine because they did not originate into existence from my intellectual creativity. Is my story different? Certainly, maybe even completely, but I can’t claim it as my own because someone else, the author, created the fundamentals. All I can claim is shared engagement with a story, but that engagement is what makes fanfiction fantastic.

We as writers create stories for many reasons, but I believe that a story hasn’t fulfilled its full purpose until it is shared between author and consumer with love and respect. I want people to read my stories. I want them to form opinions about them. I want them to engage with the story so much that they have to pick up a pen and share the actual act of creation that birthed the story they love so much in the first place. And I want that love to translate into respect for my rights as the original author, so that they do not cross over from engagement with my story into false claims of ownership. Love and respect.

Excerpt from my old Kingdom Hearts fanfic

Fanfiction isn’t just fantastic because it creates expressions of appreciation over art between fans and creators. I think fanfiction is also fantastic because it can be used by writers as legitimate and regular practice to better our skills.

Working within your own fledgling story is an excellent and necessary way to explore new ways of writing, but it is also a very stressful way, and often the lessons are difficult to perceive during the act of writing and must wait for the long editing process to reveal themselves. Hindsight is 20/20, but insight can often be legally blind.

However, if you want to, say, try out different ways of writing prose for a fight scene, you might want to take some time using fanfiction to do so. You can practice your prose with a character whose fight skills you already know, battling an enemy already made for them, in a setting that you didn’t need to think up, and with plenty of examples to show you what it should look like. That makes it much easier for you to focus on the actual prose structure of a fight scene because all the other details are taken care of. If it were your own creation, you’d need to worry about those details: how and why your character is fighting, what kind of environment the fight is in, what weapons are being used, etc. Before you know it, you’ve forgotten the whole point was to learn how to structure sentences and verbs to create engaging action prose. Borrow from something you love, show it the respect is demands, and use it to better yourself so that you can engage with art and become an artist.

At the end of the day, fanfiction, fanart, all of it should drive fan artists to become originals themselves. Hundreds of television writers got their start because they wrote a spec script for their favorite show. The very first story I ever put on paper used characters from another book. If you aren’t acting on the positive inspiration a work of art is giving you, then you aren’t doing your job as a fan or an artist.

I understand that all this is well and good when it is kept inside the private minds and computer hard drives of the fans. But that’s not always the case with fanart. Fanart is shared publicly online, distributed at conventions, sold for monetary profit—all without the explicit permission of the creator. Fans are benefiting from the work of the original artists in both fame and fortune. Is that okay?

It’s complicated. On the one hand, as a starving artist, I would be very upset if someone was making a profit off of my work while I struggled to pay the bills. On the other hand, as I write this, I am staring at a piece of The Hobbit fanart I purchased wherein not a single cent of mine made it into the hands of someone named Tolkien.

Love and respect. If you love something, you give to it; you don’t take away. If you respect something, you honor it in all humility. There is great responsibility in creating art. Not every story should be told, not every picture painted, not every action seen. Original artists bear that responsibility and so do fan artists. Does your fanart give back to the original creator and creation? Does your art publicly acknowledge the original in the manner it not only deserves but is required? Does your act of copy creation seek to better your original art skills? These are questions every fan artist needs to asks themselves. It’s a weighty task, but then again, it is no small thing to create, and that is a fantastic truth.

Some places to check out fanfiction:

FanFiction.net

Archive of Our Own

Wattpad