Episode 16: Taking the Leap – From Fan Fiction to Original Fiction

Show Notes for Episode 16: Taking the Leap – From Fan Fiction to Original Fiction

Alone in a Room with Invisible People is a podcast focusing on topics related to writing, revising and publishing fiction.

This week we’re changing things up! Today, I (Rebecca) am in the hotseat and Holly discusses with me the topic chosen by a listener: fan fiction and how to make the move over to original fiction.

A decent portion of us start off with fan fiction – or move into it early on while building our skillset – and are thrilled with the results. If your goal is to break away, the pros of writing fan fiction can make getting out difficult.  It was my goal to write my own fiction and hopefully the discussion of what I did to begin creating original work will help you build your own path.

Even if you have never written a word of fan fiction I believe this episode could still be of service to you.

Also, just as a warning… cats may or may not take a small part in this episode.

The Notes on Fanfic and Internets stats I promised in the podcast:

– Also, I forgot about this but ALL NC-17 stories – which were the most popular typically – were removed. I think they still exist on one of the Livejournal pages.  

The numbers on my FF.net page are close to the original numbers of ratings, reviews etc but I have heard from other writers that they feel that accounts get deleted and with that their likes and reviews, etc.  I have no knowledge on this whatsoever.

To this day I still get one to two new notifications a week from FF.net, sometimes likes, but usually people tagging my stories or author account with a subscription where they are signing up for author or story alerts.

I shared in other places but Fanfiction.net was the main go to at the time.

For 17 years ago, 2001, with such a bunch of small niche slash fiction for and for a 17 year old writing and posting her first things ever, this was a huge response.  I had many, many fanfic friends and know that even this small level of response was huge.  In this day and age of things going “viral“ (which didn’t exist back then) these numbers seem small and the impact doesn’t seem to be there.  But times have changed.  2001 6 to 7 percent of the world’s population used the internet. 54 percent of the world used it in 2017. (numbers from https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm).  Nearly 90 percent of adults use the internet in the US now.

We take a look at the following:

  • Fan fiction and what it teaches you
  • The pros and cons of FF
  • Brief legal statement (see links below for more details)
  • Why FF has such a huge draw for writers
  • Fan fiction as a drug
  • How to break away (if this is your goal)
  • How to ease into original fiction
  • And what to remember as you move forward in your writing career

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Mentioned in the Podcast

 

And the legal links:

LINKS

Credits: Producer – Rebecca Galardo.  Sponsor – Holly’sWritingClasses.com.  Intro written by Holly Lisle and performed by Mark Hermann. Our podcast is 100% free and sponsored only by Holly’s Writing Classes.