A Guide to My Fan Fiction

Today is eight years since I started writing fan fiction. As per tradition (and as promised in my previous post), let’s do a little deep dive into the specifics of that.

What is Fan Fiction?

Fan fiction (or fanfiction, or fanfic) is simply fiction written by fans. It’s stories written in the universe of their favourite movies or shows or books or games, sometimes using the characters from ‘canon’, sometimes with original characters, sometimes both.

Generally speaking, fanfic is written and shared without the exchange of money, as the writers can’t profit from someone else’s intellectual property. The exception to this is when the source material is out of copyright, or if the copyright holders commission someone to write novelisations.

All those literary “retellings” of fairytales or Shakespeare or Jane Austin? They’re fan fiction. Though publishers don’t want you to think of them like that, as per the taboo surrounding fanfic that I discussed last time on this blog.

What Kind of Fanfic I Write

I haven’t done the math on this to confirm the figure exactly, but I’d say about 95% of my fanfic is set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel universe, and of that, it’s all romance stories between Buffy and Spike. But the romance is sometimes comical, sometimes dark, a lot of the time angsty.

I’ve written fanfic that’s actually poetry. I’ve written love stories that are 300 words, and ones that are 50,000 words. So there’s still a lot of variety there.

The other five percent is mostly epilogues I’ve written for various things that left me wanting a little more.

Which Fandoms I Write In

Outside of Buffy, I’ve written:

And also a story in which characters from Once Upon a Time crossover with characters from Buffy.

How Much I’ve Written

According to official stats, I’ve written 648,000 words of Buffy fanfic, but that includes a 30,000-word story I co-wrote with someone else. All of the other words in all the other fandoms, listed above, total maybe 10k.

Where the Words Live Online

The place I originally shared fanfiction to, and still continue to use, is a site specifically for Spike and Buffy (Spuffy) love stories called Elysian Fields. Then, after a while, I started archiving my work on Fanfiction.net, and later again, Archive of Our Own (Ao3).

FF.net and Ao3 are huge, open to almost all fandoms (excepting ones where copyright holders such as Anne Rice have threatened to sue if people write their characters). I used to have my non-Buffy fic in both of these places, but have recently removed most of my work from fanfic.net as it doesn’t have the community that Elysian Fields does, nor the infrastructure of Ao3.

Some Other Stats

As of right now, over 200 people have me marked as a favourite author on Elysian Fields (meaning they get notified every time I post something new). It was 165 last year.

I have 118,000 hits on Archive of Our Own, 5,900 kudos, 488 subs, and 821 bookmarks.

Anything Else? 

If you have any questions either about my fanfic or fan fiction in general, please leave a comment. Also let me know if you’ve ever written fic and what fandom it was for.

Happy eight-year anniversary to me!

Just FanFic Thoughts

I’m having mentoring with Jo Zebedee at the minute (courtesy of funding from the University of Atypical), and in our most recent check-in I caught her up on what I’ve been writing recently. Which is––some of you who know me well will be unsurprised––primarily fan fiction.

When I said this, I wasn’t sure if Jo was going to wag her finger and tell me I should be working the sequel to Full Term (which I’d initially scheduled for this month). But of course Jo is lovely and not at all finger-waggy, so I think the mild fear came from my own subconscious.

I told Jo I felt a little guilty for writing fanfic instead of “original” fiction, but when she asked why, I found the answer hard to pin down.

“I just generally always feel guilt,” I said, which is true, but in this specific case I also think it’s because fanfic is looked down upon in some circles. As ‘not real’ writing. As cheating. And no matter that I know that’s nonsense intellectually, I’m not immune to feeling chastised by such opinions.

So why am I working on fanfic instead of my novel this month? Because this month has been hard, and I find fan fiction easier in a lot of ways than “original” fiction. I needed something easier––something that would make me happy without taxing my already overworked brain too much. Also because despite my self-appointed schedule, I have almost a year to write Life Lessons. It’s not like I’ve set up pre-orders, have the book coming out in under thirty days, and still haven’t written the damn thing.

So it’s fine. I need to chill. Which is, in fact, what I’ve been doing. And although I just went ahead and did it anyway, I don’t need to justify the writing of fan fiction. Any and all writing that gets done is a good thing. And I’m actually having my best writing month ever. I signed up to do 50,000 words for this round of Camp NaNoWriMo and I’m over halfway there.

But here’s the other thing Jo asked me: if writing fanfic is a big passion for me and I put all this time and effort into it, why don’t I talk about it more? That one had me stumped a little, because I’d been under the impression I talk about it too much. Though in going back through old posts, I can see the last time I made one about fan fiction specifically, it was almost two years ago.

I used to do yearly posts, collating stats on the anniversary of when I started writing fic, but skipped 2020 because, well… we all know there were some other things going on. But a main yearly post and vague mentions elsewhere do not indeed constitute talking about something a ‘lot,’ so I’m back to thinking that was my irrational guilt talking. An internalised sense of shame that I talk about it at all. I know some published authors have fanfic writing pasts that they think of as dirty little secrets, but that’s not me and will never be me.

So this internalised sense of shame acknowledged and unceremoniously shown the door, I next wondered if the topic was moot. If anyone outside my existing fanfic circles wanted to hear about it. I had assumed no, but Jo challenged that assumption, so I decided to put up a Twitter poll and get the actual answer…

And so, here I am, sharing these thoughts. And later this month, on the anniversary of when I first started writing fanfic (28th July), I think I resurrect the tradition of posting my yearly stats.

In the meantime, if you are one of the people who fell into the curious category, you can find my stories free to read online here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieRose101