Why write?

[brightly_lit]

I have a question for my f-list (and any passers-by who would like to play):

What got you into writing fanfiction?

And/or, what made you start writing fiction of any kind?

Comments

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

What got me into writing fanfiction? In all honesty, the supernatural kink meme. I'd been reading SPN fic for a while and had checked out the meme, fallen hard for the dark side and said..."why not give it a try?" I found a prompt about werewolf Sam, filled a couple of comment boxes, then a couple more (had no idea how to link from a journal) and just kept adding to the story until it was done. And it wasn't bad and people liked it and I just kept right on going.

That was the beginning of my fiction writing exploits. I never had any interest in it before but now I can't imagine NOT writing!

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! I'd previously always written original fiction (I tried reading fanfiction in the past and had a few bad experiences), but then I got into SPN and there weren't enough episodes in the world to satisfy me so I hesitantly tried fanfic again, and was pleasantly surprised with all the amazing fic out there. I, too, read for a while before deciding to try my own hand at it. There must be as many ways people get into writing fic as there are writers--I like that kink was your door!

Anyway, I'm glad you got into writing fic, because you're so good at it!

[kalliel]

I didn't know there was a culture for it at the time, but I wrote my first fan fiction when I was seven. As did my two bff neighbors, and we shared our stories amongst each other; they were WHAT TODAY IN THE ENLIGHTENED ERA we would call 'crack.' XD But it was a practice that was complementary to play-acting and producing highly narrativized little Barbie/stuffed animal microcosms. They weren't really separate things, and there was no concept of 'this is fan fiction' attached to it, so it feels like a practice very different than fan fiction + the Internet.

My first fic-based Internet forays were for Pokemon. Pokemon, obviously, is a very light-hearted cartoon! XP But I found a really great, fantastically long, dark plot!fic that aged up the characters, expanded the Pokemon mythology into this huge, post-apocalyptic scenario, and ran with it from there. I remember printing it out to read because at the time we were only getting 4 hours per month via dial-up. (PER MONTH. I SPENT MORE TIME ON THE INTERNET THAN THAT TODAY.)

Anyway, the realization that a show you loved could have an afterlife so true to the original yet so wildly, wildly different was truly inspirational. I mean, when you think about Pokemon fan fiction, I can't imagine most people's first assumption is that there are stories that have anything, anything at all to do with russian roulette (immorality, violence, horror) or even like, the interrogation of rape culture and stories dealing with rape recovery.

So I wanted to do that; write to preserve and engorge the core of something I deeply loved, but also to boldly go where canon had never dreamed of going before! Obviously SPN is a little different, because canon goes a lot more places than Pokemon ever did, er, or at the very least explicitly invites us as fandom to do so. But I think the concept is largely the same--extrapolation and interpolation with respect to a deeply loved core. Who wouldn't want to participate in that? :P

Plus I'm a very hands-on person, so if I'm not doing something with an object, or getting my hands dirty, then I won't remember it, I won't REALLY know it, and I certainly won't ever truly love it. So writing fic to something is inextricable from the act of watching for me. (Writing comments to fics is the same. If I don't write a comment, then I didn't really finish reading it; active engagement/response has to finish out the act.)

As for fiction generally, my memory isn't good enough to recall. But I was five. It was illustrated. It was about a little girl named Mika who had her own little house in the forest and it was painted purple, and there was some ind of drama involving the painting of the hose and flies inside the house... I could not begin to say what prompted the impetus, but I suspect, somewhere in there, I was showing off my ability to scrawl letters. XD

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Ha! That reminds me of the first book I ever wrote--only mine was non-fiction, also illustrated, entitled "The Daddy Ages of Football." (I was 4 or 5.) My dad, needless to say, loved it, seeing as how his college football career had been immortalized in the form of a very tiny book full of all the horror stories he'd regaled us with about injuries he'd sustained. ;-) (His delight with the book helped me get over the trauma of learning about his injuries, with which I was obsessed.)

I did "oral history" RPF fanfic (about our favorite rock stars) out loud with friends as a teenager, so I too experienced an antecedent to fanfic in all its modern-day organized propriety! 'Crack,' hee ... ours was angsty romance/porn with plot.

to boldly go where canon had never dreamed of going before! Obviously SPN is a little different, because canon goes a lot more places than Pokemon ever did, er, or at the very least explicitly invites us as fandom to do so.

YES, this is one of the many, many things I love so much about SPN, is that it actively engages with so much of the stuff you usually have to go to the fanfic for! I never did see Pokemon (although one of the very first fanfics I ever saw paired up random fandom characters for slash fics, and Pokemon was paired with some very serious human character, and it was hilarious), but I love hearing about this fic that deepened it so.

[cleflink.livejournal.com]

I've been writing fiction pretty much since I learned how to write; it's always been one of my main hobbies. Along with reading and video games, obviously.

I first started with fanfiction when I was about 11. The Internet had recently become a Thing in the mainstream and I started reading Gundam Wing fanfic (on some wonderful Geocities sites *grins*). Reading translated quickly into 'I want to write some of my own'. I liked the idea of going places that the canon didn't which, considering that it's an anime about giant robots and I wanted to play with the characters, offered a lot of room for play.

I never actually showed my stuff to anyone until about a decade later, though (yay for LJ!), at which point I became more prolific thanks to having an actual audience.

What I like most about fanfiction is that it gives me established characters to play with that my reader already knows, which means that I have free reign to put them in new situations (AU or otherwise) and see what happens; there isn't a need to build the characters from scratch so I can go deeper with my explorations of their motivations/thoughts/etc. and can focus on world building etc. as well.

It's my challenge as a writer to be true to those characters since my readers should be able to trust that they will react in logical, believable ways that fit with the characters as they exist in the original canon. This is, incidentally, why I have no patience for OOC fic: if the characters aren't recognizable as themselves, you should be writing original fic.

</ babble>

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

babble=good!

I love going places the canon doesn't, too, which on SOO many shows is ... you know, everywhere you WISH the show would go. Which is not to say I think shows should do all the shipping the fanfic does (only Revolutionary Girl Utena, of all the shows I've ever seen, consistently beat the fans to the punch in shipping EVERYBODY WITH EVERYONE); rather, that so often, what excites viewers about a show somehow is not something the producers ever pick up on or get around to exploring. Yay for fanfic and fans, for doing it instead!

I couldn't agree more about OOC fic, and in fact that was one of the bad experiences I had when I first tried to read fanfic: I craved more stories in a fandom, and instead I kept finding stories that were "[sibling of main character]'s entire family dies and he has to find solace in the arms of [slashy love interest]." So ... you kill off every important character just so you can write some porn? Just write some porn! You don't have to ruin the canon to do it. Then I would still give it a chance, and none of the characters or situations or circumstances of the fic in any way resembled the show, blech.

And yes, I can't say enough about having an actual audience. The built-in audience for fanfic is so great, as opposed to having to find a way to build up an audience yourself with original fiction ....

I'm loving reading everyone's stories about how they got into fanfic!

[blackrabbit42.livejournal.com]

A friend introduced me to fanfic... I seriously had NO idea this was all out here, for SPN or any genre. She kept telling me she was working on her bigbang, and I just couldn't wrap my head around what it was. Is it a contest? A deadline for publication? I kept asking her. When she finally finished and shared the finished product with me, I had to have more! I was soon completely addicted.

As for writing it myself, I have this habit of making up stories to help me fall asleep. Sometimes they tend to be a bit off the wall and sometimes they turn into my nanowrimo novels. A couple of years ago, I was telling the same friend about one of my stories that involved Sam and Dean TO MAKE HER LAUGH at how stupid it was, and she said... that's a bigbang, right there. You could totally do it.

Let me tell you. 20K is NOT my strength-length. But it was fun, and YAY! ART!! I was hooked.

:)

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

You know, I often have these same kinds of thoughts about contests/deadlines. I never VOLUNTEERED to have deadlines for difficult projects before I got into writing fic!

I have TOTALLY always made up stories to help me fall asleep, which is where my idea for my first fic came from!

I'm happy to hear you're also into nanowrimo--doing nanowrimo was my first inkling that, yes, I might actually be able to finish a novel. I love nanowrimo for making it seem doable, for making it seem like almost this obvious thing everyone can do, if you can just get enough words on the page. My first novel started off as nanowrimo (though I've never come close to "winning" nanowrimo; I finish those projects later, if I like the way they started). I also credit nanowrimo for giving me a good work ethic when it comes to writing, just pounding it out day after day until it's done, because before nanowrimo came along, finishing a novel was something I'd always WANTED to do and never quite got around to, and now I've written like four. Yay for writing!! Are you doing nanowrimo this year?

[deceptivemirror.livejournal.com]

I'm about to go fall unconscious (or go to bed, whichever term you prefer), but wanted to answer this first before I do.

It's my personal opinion that we all are fanfiction authors in our heads long before we put anything onto paper. When hasn't a person watched a show or read a book and then wondered "what if the person/people did this instead of that?" It's somewhat easier to do with other peoples' characters than our own since a person doesn't have to necessarily make anything up, excepting what goes into head-canon (as opposed to canon-canon).

My start in fanfiction, honest-to-God actual getting it out there, was on fanfiction.net. I still have a page there, though nothing I started with is there anymore. My fanfiction start was actually Lord of the Rings, if you'll believe it. I had two stories going; one of which is still going as original fiction (and was RPF, and thus isn't anywhere online anymore even before ff.net made it impossible to use actors), and the other was my slightly (okay, more than) crack-tastic take on how Legolas felt being sexed up by men and women of various species. Contrary to how that sounds, it was more like a self-insertion where I (as one of the mysterious Authors who was capable of writing him into compromising situations) was trying to save him from all the Mary-Sues because there's only so much sexing an elf can take before he decides to go to the Grey Havens to escape it all.

It's still close to my heart, but because a friend of mine decided to help me write it after I was more than halfway through, and then I didn't like where it was going after that, I stopped writing it. It still lives fondly in my head, but I no longer need to finish it where other people can see it.

As to regular fiction that no one has seen yet...I've always liked to read, and that translated into a love of writing. There were always writing projects in school, and I enjoyed them a lot more than some of my peers at the time. It kinda just kept going, and then started spilling over into journaling my life (handwritten). Before this year and the Big Bang for SPN, I actually never used my LJ to post any fiction, except maybe joke-snippets for one or two friends who were here at the time. Considering the positive feedback I received after posting said BB, I might be encouraged to write more of it here instead of using ff.net...though ff.net has my anime fanfiction.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

I TOTALLY tell stories from t.v. shows in my head. I knew SPN was my favorite show when those episodes then got made. :-) In fact, I got so lazy, just assuming any idea I came up with for the show would end up being an episode, that I stopped telling myself those stories! Until the fourth season, when the writers' vision for the show and mine diverged.

hee ... your Legolas fic sounds hilarious! I have this theory that maybe slash has taken over as the genre of choice because it's the only way to completely avoid a female character being labeled a Mary Sue.

I've never tried to write anything with someone else--it seems like between differences of style and vision, it would be harder rather than easier, unless you were incredibly compatible. Am I right in thinking this, or are there benefits I can't see?

Ha, I loved writing projects WAY more than my peers, too! On the first day of high school, in English class, our teacher told us to write some little personal essay and insisted it had to be at least a thousand words. This was the upper-level shmancy English class, so one naturally assumes my fellow students would value education and scholastics and words, right? Wrong. I had turned my piece of paper over and was continuing my essay on the other side, and the stranger next to me gave me that bitchy look and made fun of me for 'writing a novel.' REALLY?? I extend my story past ONE SIDE OF ONE PAGE and this seems excessive?? What is this, fourth grade? And I hadn't even started writing yet for pleasure.

Thanks for telling me your story!

[indiachick.livejournal.com]

Ha, I'm with kalliel on Pokemon being my first real fandom. At the time I was living in a hundred year old house with no Internet in a village/island with no prospect of ever getting Internet so my guinea pigs were my two brothers, and we'd make up Pokemon AUs and play them out and I always won because I'm the girl and stuff. I MADE UP SO MANY RIDICULOUS POKEMON AUs. It embarrasses me to think about it *_* And then after Pokemon I was obsessed with Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and Fullmetal Alchemist (ugh, brotherly love!) and Inu Yasha, and I made up a heck lot of stories about TRC especially, but those were all written down. The first fanfic I ever posted to the Internet was a Harry Potter one, written around the time when Half Blood Prince came out, and I was very active in the Harry Potter fandom (I had some epic long things on FF.net and HPFF) till stuff happened and I deleted all my accounts and gave up on fanfiction entirely, until SPN came along and I couldn't resist :D

There's a lot of reasons to write fanfic, but mine is basically just simple love for the characters, and (in the case of SPN) the possibility of experimentation. Supernatural fanfiction allows so much exploration into so many genres, and some sub-genres can seem like it can only be plausible in the SPN fandom. The potential is limitless, as the rules of the Supernatural universe is not set in stone. The Show frequently breaks the fourth wall and runs headlong from psychological scares to drama to comedy to actual AUs like "It's A Terrible Life", and there is just an infinite amount of stories that can come out from something like it. Done well, I can believe anything in the SPN 'verse. Then I'm also attracted by the insanely awesome quality of writing in the SPN fandom, I mean, seriously, some of the fanfic is better than real books. We have rock-stars. The artists that help us out are phenomenal. And then there's that thing about Sam and Dean honestly being hard to figure out, they're so layered and toxically co-dependent and flawed and genius, that I just need to figure them out. XP

As for fiction-writing, I don't know. I think I started writing around the time I started walking, I don't even remember. The oldest thing I remember writing is something about an Egyptian Goddess stealing eyes, so I guess I was an extremely creepy child. (I still have that, and it's called Eyes of Isis or something stupid like that, and THERE IS A TALKING DOLL and a cave and my main character gets strangled by a CAT.) I blame my Dad for telling me too many horror stories. (Oh wait, now I also have faint recollections of another very old story about a girl named Lily and her very odd mother)

ETA: my brother reminds me that the reason I first started writing was because he wrote a craptastic story about a bus and the temple elephant, and I wanted to show off that I could do better than the smug big brother who thought he knew everything.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Like I told kalliel, I've never seen Pokemon, but YAY Full Metal Alchemist!!

I keep hearing some bad shit went down in the Harry Potter fandom--is that what made you delete all your accounts? :-( Things can get weird online--I've had bad experiences in the past, so now I'm extremely careful who I make connections with and what I reveal about my real life.

Supernatural fanfiction allows so much exploration into so many genres, and some sub-genres can seem like it can only be plausible in the SPN fandom.

YES, YES. Truly, there is no limit when it comes to this show. And yes, the great quality of the writing and art and everything else in fandom!

Sam and Dean being hard to figure out ... I agree, and I think a huge part of the reason so many people are fanatical about this show is that Sam and Dean feel like real people, their history and their relationship to one another and to their dad and mom and everyone seems so true to life, and real people and relationships are so complex that, again, there is another infinite set of stories that could be written about THAT, even leaving all the supernatural elements aside.

I think there are just some people who love horror from day one. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people, so the horror in SPN (and some fic) is hard for me to handle. :-}