Do you think writing fanfiction will get in the way of a real writing career?

Too lazy to properly capitalize the title, sorry! I doubt anyone's offended though.

Anyways, Do you think writing fanfiction would hinder a real writing career?

Fanfiction and fanfiction writers are commonly attacked for what they write. That people judge them, call them nerds or perverts!

Have you ever experienced this? When you tell people you've written books they look at you in awe, when you tell people you've written a novel-sized fanfiction they look at you strangely and make fun of you behind your back.

Of course this is just a generalization to what people I've talked to feel when they tell people about their fanfiction life.

Even some famous authors judge fanfiction. George R.R. Martin author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, sweeping all over the English speaking world as the popular tv series Game of Thrones , thinks fanfiction is a waste of time and you'll never develop the tools to become a good novelist if you write it.

But I beg to differ. You may be writing in someone else's world but that just means you have to get even more creative about your plots and characters so it doesn't just seem like a ripoff of the original or uninteresting.

Alot of people use fanfiction as a way to get into writing without even realizing it, it's a tool that gets some people writing every single day. And with sites like Mibba around, it's a way to get people to read what you write and get critiqued on your writing style. It's a learning tool.

And it's working! Alot of popular authors have written fanfiction before their writing careers took off and are now very successful published writers:

-> We all know about Meg Cabot from the Princess Diaries series. But did you know the romantic and girly writer used to write Star Wars fanfiction? Isn't that mind boggling?

->Tamora Pierce, Jim Butcher, writer of the popular Dresden Files, and Peter V. Brett, author of The Warded Man series, wrote Lord of the Rings fanfiction.

->Cassandra Clare for instance! (Author of the famous Mortal Instruments series, soon to be a movie franchise) She wrote Harry Potter fanfiction and slash. Though she is a whole different story, she has had problems with a plagiarism scandal where half her fanfictions were found to be stolen from books and tv shows with character names changed.

-> E.L. James author of the Fifty Shades series wrote Twilight fanfiction, her bestselling series even started out as one!

-> For you people who've read books that haven't come out in the last two decades you probably know who S.E. Hinton is, the author of The Outsiders , but did you know she writes Supernatural fanfiction? And that it's Wincest?

Moral of the Story is, don't let people judge you! It's a tried and true method of learning to write and something numerable famous published authors have done and still do(though they aren't allowed to post them online). When someone insults your craft, show them this blog. Maybe one of their favorite authors was a fanfic author!

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Dragons and Wolves (A Song of Ice and Fire/A Game of Thrones Fanfic)
Curse of the Empath (An Inheritance Cycle/Eragon Fanfic)
Into the Wilderness (An LOTR Fanfic)
December 12th, 2012 at 08:58pm