For and By the Fans

Do you ever wonder what happened to your favorite characters after the last chapter, the last episode or after the credits roll? Do you ever wish the story had gone on longer?

Of course you do – if you’re really a fan. Sometimes we have this insatiable need to know what happened after the characters’ last bows. But most of the time, we’ll never know. The book ended, the television show ended, the movie ended. The authors, writers and creators don’t go back.

So instead, the fans do. And thus we have the wonderful world of fan fiction.

Google “fan fiction” for just about anything – Harry Potter, Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars – and you’ll find an endless number of websites, forums and communities where like-minded people ban together to write new pasts, presents and futures for some of their favorite characters.

Fan fiction writers are ordinary folks, just like you and me, who like to spend their free time writing stories about characters they already know and love. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, and most of it lines somewhere in between. Fan fiction writers take their stories seriously – sometimes as seriously as an author takes his or her unfinished manuscript. They pour time, energy and emotion into their work just like any other author. In spite of this, though, the question still remains:

Is fan fiction literature?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines “literature” as “imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value.” Fan fiction is certainly imaginative and creative writing, though I suppose its artistic value is open to debate. But if we think of literature as that which lines the shelves of bookstores and libraries, then fan fiction comes up short.

Fan fiction authors don’t own the copyright to any of the characters they write about. The vast majority of them can’t take legal or financial credit for their work and therefore, the vast majority of fan fiction will never be published anywhere but the Internet. (The rare exception to the publication rule is if the original source material is in the public domain; authors who write “sequels” to books such as Pride and Prejudice can be published and receive monetary compensation.)

Still, I think there is some literary value to fan fiction. If nothing else, it gets people reading and writing – and in a world where every digital gadget is fighting for my attention, I’ll take the reading and writing where I can get it. It also, as I said before, involves a great deal of creativity. It opens imaginations up to endless possibilities and gives us a chance to think about the path not taken.

Fan fiction isn’t going to replace real fiction, obviously, but I’m not sure I can dismiss it as complete fluff anymore. It may not qualify as “literature” but there is something about it which is literary – “Of or relating to writers or the profession of writing.”

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