to learn the same craft as the professional writer. The writer must hone that craft even in today’s online marketplace where readers don’t have to pay printing and postage. But readers still expect value for their time even if they don’t pay for the stories.
As a result, writing fan fiction is the ideal way to master the craft of writing for those people who have been struck through the heart or had their soul awakened by some TV show.
Readers of fan fiction respond first and foremost to the payload the author is delivering—to the sharing of the vision, experience and emotions of that personalized fictional universe. Even a badly crafted piece can deliver that payload.
A new writer can use fan fiction to master one writing technique at a time. The world has been built, the characters are fleshed out, many of the visual effects are established, and the readers know it all. Writing for readers who share so much is like learning to ride a bicycle with training wheels. Just as you can fly down the driveway on your new bike, you can please your readers before you’ve mastered all the techniques necessary out on the road.
Once a new author gets a fan letter from a delighted reader—the addiction sets in. The will to write the next story even better ignites, and there’s no stopping until the craft is mastered and the subject plumbed to its very depths.
It is a heady thing, connecting with an audience that shares values and vision and speaks a special language. Family and friends may consider that the fan writer has gone completely nuts and try to stop this wasteful activity. But it’s not wasteful.
Learning to write is hard. It requires the writer to pass from being a recipient of stories and ideas to being a generator of stories and ideas, from being a passive follower, to living the heroic life of leadership.
That transformation requires the mastery of organization, presentation and articulation of ideas, the mastery of concrete things like spelling, punctuation and grammar, the use of a word processor and perhaps even HTML coding. It requires learning not only how the world actually works, but perhaps more important, learning how the readers think the world works so that story events seem plausible.
The energy, determination and maturity required to attain mastery in so many areas of life is more than any one person has inside them. It has to come from outside, from divine inspiration and from the readers who want the stories.
Fanfic readers mold and reshape the writer to provide what they must have, ever correcting characterization, suggesting growing relationships, and refusing to read expository lumps. The readers work hard to teach the writers how to please them.
Readers of fan fiction find in it a refreshing energy, an affirmation that they aren’t alone in how they view the world. Fellowship, community and teamwork in the fan fiction world provides the strength of spirit necessary to tackle the mundane world in everyday life.
Being part of this process is so much fun, how can a fan writer know if it’s time to shed the training wheels and fly right off the end of the driveway into mainstream traffic? What’s the difference between fan and pro writing?
Professional fiction writers must first engage the readers and entice them into the new universe whereas fanfic writers work for an already engaged reader.
The professional writer must do the whole job of creating and presenting a fictional universe with engaging characters and an original theme. Beyond that, there is only one other difference.
Audience size.
Fan fiction is only for those so enamored of a particular universe that they know it by heart. Even the most popular TV shows have a limited few thousand who are that committed.
When a writer has become famous writing pastiche from TV shows for those few thousand readers but is now brim full of ideas for original universes, then it’s time to try to reach an audience that might be as large as the TV show’s whole audience.
There is one tried and true test to decide if an original story is fan fiction. “If you can take the [TV Show Name] out, and still have a story, it wasn’t a [TV Show Name] fan fiction story to begin with.”
When the writer discovers that her new stories don’t belong in that fan fiction universe, then it’s time to go pro.
The writers in this anthology are all known for their fanfic. They all share a love for shows like Forever Knight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, Hill Street Blues, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., White Collar, Burn Notice, Leverage, Psych, Stargate SG-1, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc. all shows belonging to the Intimate Adventure genre.
We’ve asked each author to tell us about the place of fanfic writing in their lives.
1 See www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html
CURSED BLOOD, by Penny Ash
Prolog: Louisiana 1733
Sheldon Jefferson rammed his shoulder against the boudoir door with a strength born of desperation. It barely shook with the impact. He put all his heart and soul into ramming it again. He felt it give. Backing up he took a deep breath and ran at the door a third time. It burst open tumbling him into the tiny silken suite.
He fell, took a shoulder roll and came up slipping his pistol from his belt. Shel leveled the pistol at the woman who held his niece.
“I told you what would happen if you tried to harm Kitty.” He prepared to fire.
Movement to his side distracted him for a brief second. Isabel emerged from the corner, only the gold locket Shel had given her visible among the shadows. She hurried toward him, warily circling Madeline.
Using the distraction, Madeline threw the skinny child she held directly at Sheldon. He raised the pistol even as he fired, managing to miss the girl. He grabbed Kitty and shoved her behind him where she wouldn’t see the Vampire’s fangs, the feral rage on the beautiful woman’s face as she prepared to feed. The oil lamp on the table made Madeline’s fangs glisten. He began backing toward the door. Sheldon shoved Kitty out into the hall. “Run!” The child’s footsteps echoed from the hall.
“And I told you cherie, love is costly.” With a smile, Madeline plucked a small leather bound book from the table and gestured with it toward the door. The distant footsteps ceased. She tucked it into her reticule as if packing the last item for a long journey.
Shel pulled Isabel close to him and faced Madeline, comparing the two preternaturally beautiful women. “I thought you cared, Isabel. I thought I could trust you.”
Isabel shook her head, her hands to her lips. “She has stolen my book…” Isabel’s whisper went straight through him. She had endangered Kitty for a damned book.
Madeline mused, “Trust is such a fragile thing is it not?” Madeline smiled a parody of sweetness. “Give me the child. Your own free will choice. And you can have Isabel. Or do not and I will kill Isabel. Choose.”
Cold seared Shel’s heart. This was no choice. It was a trap. “I will never let you have Kitty.”
“So be it.” Madeline snapped her fingers. Horror and fury choked him.
A wave of black pain drove Sheldon Jefferson to his knees. His pistol tumbled from cold, numb fingers. What has she done to me? Madeline La Rouge stepped closer. He grabbed the shimmering
