Reading And Writing FanFiction

When it comes to reading fanfiction your choices really are endless. Simply put, all you need to do is type in your favourite fandom (eg tv show) and put fanfic or fanfiction at the end of it in your search; for example typing in Lost Fanfic to google search will bring you thousands of results.

Of course you may decide you want to narrow that down a little, so instead of just bringing up all the Lost Fanfic you might instead want to find character related relationship stories in which case just type in for example Jack/Kate fanfic.

When it comes to fanfiction remember too that your not limited to the relationships found within the series (known as cannon) you might decide that as much as you loved Buffy and Angel together you'd really rather see Angel/Xander fics (male/male relationships are known as slash fics) or you loved Star Trek Voyager and to your eye Janeway and Seven made a compatible pairing, no doubt others thought the same so just type in Janeway/Seven fanfic into Google and again you'll be inundated with sites that will keep you reading for hours (female/female relationships are known as femslash)

Within all these fanfiction stories you'll also come across a variety of genres and ratings, from the general stories to those that are more explicit.

You'll find short stories and novels, virtual seasons and random scenes, you may also discover stories from authors who have now had other books published.

If you're not sure where to start this Fanfic site has links to a variety of different fandoms all of which have several multi-author archives to get you started. It's regularly updated with new links and fandoms. There is also a brand new Fanfiction Archive site that is just waiting for new submissions, as well as others multi-author/fandom sites such as FanFiction.Net and FanLib etc

There is also a fanfic reviews page where some (and soon to be more) fanfiction stories have been reviewed by readers to help you decide where to start. If you're already a reader of fanfiction and would like to submit reviews for your favourite stories or fandoms take a look at the submission page or the fanfic reviewers group

No matter where you start and what fandom you start with once you find that one story that hooks you, you'll quickly finding yourself addicted to reading fanfiction (and perhaps wanting to write your own - see below)

People write fanfiction for a variety of reasons, some are unhappy with the direction a particular tv season is heading, others have fallen in love with certain characters and want to see their lives, loves and adventures continue, while others still use fanfiction as a stepping stone for writing more mainstream novels etc, and some just write it for their own pleasure.

Because the characters, settings and situations are already known writing fanfiction can often be a lot easier than say starting from scratch, you only need to build on what you already know through the show or book etc

No matter what reason you get into writing fanfiction, not only will you find great joy in it, if you publish it to one of the many fanfiction archives - either multi-author (such as the Fanfiction archives) or fandom specific sites, you may quickly find yourself building a loyal following of readers.

When it it comes to writing fanfic there are a few standard things you'll want to remember:

1) Make sure you have a reasonable understanding of the show and its characters, unless you're writing an Alternative Universe type thing, your readers expect your characters to remain reasonably consistent and loyal to the characters they themselves have grown to love.

2) Make sure you at least run a spell check, and take the time to make sure you've spelt characters names etc correctly. Unfortunately, when it comes to fanfic, there are a great many wonderful stories out there but because the writer hasn't taken the time to at least run it through a spell checker they don't get read so don't receive the feedback etc they probably deserve.

3) If possible us a beta-reader. A beta-reader in the world of fanfiction could be used in many ways. They can be someone that has a great understanding of the chosen fandom so can point out to the writer if a character is acting in a way contrary to their original depiction. Many beta-readers will also be able to double check things like spelling and grammar (like proof-readers) while others can be used to bounce ideas off of.

Once you've written your fanfic and either proofed it yourself or have had someone do it for you, don't be afraid to submit it to the different sites (while the first time can be a little nerve-wracking it will get better each time :) ) there's thousands of readers out there just waiting to read what you've written and to offer you their thanks, encouragement or other feedback.

If you're taking the plunge for the first time, and have a fanfiction you're ready to submit the Fanfiction Archive is waiting to hear from you. For all first time authors that submit to the archive and let the admin know either via the contact form on the archive page or through the Fanfic Updates blog you're story will be linked to from a new First Timers page where it will hopefully help to garner you even more feedback and reviews etc.