Fan Fiction?
So how many of you folks out there have written fan fiction? Come on, it's nothing to be ashamed of :) A lot of very successful writers have gotten their start that way. I'm not into the 'very successful' category yet, but that's how I got my start. Unlike many writers out there, I was not 'born eager to write'. I had very little interest in writing when I was younger and even modest English Class assignments in school seemed a major pain. I DID do some creative writing as a D&D dungeon master and related gaming activities, but never had any aspirations as a writer.
That changed when I started reading David Weber's Honor Harrington stories. I liked them a lot and eagerly awaited the release of each new book. Then, back around 1998 (I was 43!) or so, he released the next book in the series and I found I didn't like the way he ended it. In my opinion he'd left way too many loose ends and the book was about three chapters too short. After fuming about it for a week I was suddenly inspired to write those missing chapters. I'd never done anything like that before, but a month later I had about 20,000 words of prose, something I would have once considered a huge chore. And not only did I like the process of writing, but the other fans I showed the chapters really liked them a lot. Thus inspired, I wrote two complete fan fic novels set in the Honorverse, but using primarily my own original characters. It was fun, and people liked them, too.
That led me to writing some original novels, which led me here, but I never gave up entirely on fan fiction. In addition to the Honorverse stories I also wrote a number of stories set in the Avatar universe (the greatest SF movie of all time, BTW). More recently I've written a number of stories and novels in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan and Chalion universes. If you are interested, they can all be found on fanfiction.net
I consider fan fiction a great way for a new writer to get started. Instead of having to create everything from scratch they can focus on character and plot and not have to worry about world-building right away. As their skills develop, they can do more and more. It's like a set of training wheels for writers :)
That changed when I started reading David Weber's Honor Harrington stories. I liked them a lot and eagerly awaited the release of each new book. Then, back around 1998 (I was 43!) or so, he released the next book in the series and I found I didn't like the way he ended it. In my opinion he'd left way too many loose ends and the book was about three chapters too short. After fuming about it for a week I was suddenly inspired to write those missing chapters. I'd never done anything like that before, but a month later I had about 20,000 words of prose, something I would have once considered a huge chore. And not only did I like the process of writing, but the other fans I showed the chapters really liked them a lot. Thus inspired, I wrote two complete fan fic novels set in the Honorverse, but using primarily my own original characters. It was fun, and people liked them, too.
That led me to writing some original novels, which led me here, but I never gave up entirely on fan fiction. In addition to the Honorverse stories I also wrote a number of stories set in the Avatar universe (the greatest SF movie of all time, BTW). More recently I've written a number of stories and novels in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan and Chalion universes. If you are interested, they can all be found on fanfiction.net
I consider fan fiction a great way for a new writer to get started. Instead of having to create everything from scratch they can focus on character and plot and not have to worry about world-building right away. As their skills develop, they can do more and more. It's like a set of training wheels for writers :)
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Pretty much all of it is in alpha state though.