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File:The Simpsons Fan Art.jpg
An example of fan art.

Fan fiction (also commonly spelled as fanfiction and frequently abbreviated to fanfic or occasionally just FF or fic) is a broadly-defined term for fiction about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Fan fiction usually describes works which are uncommissioned by the owner of the work, and usually (but not always) works which are not professionally published. Fan fiction is defined against original fiction, which exists with its own discrete universe, and against canon works within the universe. Most fan fiction writers assume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe in which their works are based .

There is some debate over whether or not published novels based on an original work can be considered fan fiction. Some view them as a form of fan fiction because they were not written by the original creator, most especially when they are 'unofficial' or not considered part of canon by the work's fandom; however, debate rages on due to the fact that unlike most other modern works accepted as 'fan fiction', they are written for profit and published professionally. Also borderline on the issue are fan contributions to shared universes created by authors or a group of authors for anyone to add to, developing a whole fictional universe. A famous example of this is H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which has seen both professional and fan contributions over more than fifty years.

One of the broadest definitions of fan fiction is simply unauthorized written work based on a published one. In this interpretation, works such as the books of the Biblical Apocrypha are sometimes used as an early example of fan fiction, and unauthorized print sequels to popular novels such as Robinson Crusoe are also considered a form of fan fiction, albeit an often illegal one.

Fan fiction is also seen by many as a modern equivalent of the oral literature tradition of shared stories. In this view, retellings of fairy tales or mythology can be considered fan fiction, especially if they significantly alter the original version of the story; in this view, the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys could be considered a form of fan fiction based on the original Greek myths about Hercules.

Before about 1965, the term fan fiction was used in science fiction fandom to designate original amateur works of science fiction published in science fiction fanzines, as opposed to fiction which was professionally published. This usage is now obsolete. For the purpose of this article, 'fan fiction' will be used in its current modern context, to refer works deliberately based on a particular original work, usually without the original creator's expressed permission and usually not (legally) published professionally for profit.

History

Fan fiction as it is understood now began at least as early as the 17th century, with unauthorized published sequels to such works as Don Quixote; the turn of the 19th century also produced parodies and revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland by authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett and E. Nesbit. There were, additionally, several fan-authored versions of Sherlock Holmes stories at that time. In the 1920s and 1930s fans of Jane Austen wrote stories based on her characters and published them in fanzines. In 1945, C. S. Lewis brought in elements (mostly Númenor, there spelt Numinor, largely because Lewis probably never saw it written out) of J. R. R. Tolkien's then largely unpublished legendarium and incorporated it into the last novel, That Hideous Strength, of his Space Trilogy.

The phenomenon of fan fiction as part of fandom and fan interaction was most popularized, however, through the Star Trek fandom and fanzines published in the 1960s. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, was published in 1967 and contained some fan fiction. Many of the early zines were produced by chapters of the Leonard Nimoy Association of Fans, and included fan fiction based not only on Star Trek but on Mission: Impossible, in which Nimoy co-starred for several years after Star Trek was cancelled.

Most of these fanzines were reproduced via mimeograph, and a few (such as Babel) by offset printing. Although the first commercial photocopying machine had been invented in 1959, the cost was relatively high until the mid-1970s, when reduced prices and bulk rates at local shops allowed fans to improve the quality of their publications.

The 1970s saw an expansion of fan fiction distribution and further laid the foundations of the modern subculture surrounding the genre. Grup, the first Trek fanzine oriented toward sexually explicit fan fiction, was first published in 1972. File Transfer Protocol was also created during this time, allowing for a hosting of early electronic fan fiction archives. In 1973 Paula Smith identified and named the original character trope Mary Sue in Star Trek fan fiction, giving rise to a term that became so ubiquitous in the modern fan fiction community that it has now begun to earn a foothold in the wider English lexicon. Additionally, in 1974 Grup #3 published "A Fragment Out of Time," the first known "slash" story to be published in a fanzine, although there is speculation that the Kirk/Spock story "Ring of Soshern" was distributed privately in Britain earlier than that.

In 1975 "slash" fan fiction, and fan fiction in general, were recognized academically in a Grup article by D. Marchant. The book Star Trek Lives!, edited by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, was published by Bantam and distributed to bookstores and newsstands. An analysis of the Star Trek fan phenomenon, it contained an entire chapter on fan fiction. David Gerrold's The World of Star Trek (1974), included fan fiction in its chapter on fan activities. Neither book mentioned slash.

The late 1970s also saw the creation of more Trek fanzines as well as fan fiction for other fandoms, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Space 1999 and Star Wars. This time also saw the first fanzine convention in Japan and the creation of Star Trek fan clubs in Australia. In 1977, the publishers of the Star Trek fanzine Dreadnought Explorations received a Cease and Desist order from Paramount Pictures, however, the case was dropped when Paramount realized that the fanzine was not a professional publication.

Both Listproc and Usenet were invented in 1980, allowing public Internet-based gatherings of fans, and wider distribution of fan fiction; the internet as a whole would later become the most widely-used method of publication of fan fiction.

In 1981 Lucasfilms Ltd. sent out a letter to several fanzine publishers asserting Lucasfilm's copyright to all Star Wars characters and insisting that no fanzine publish pornography. The letter also alluded to possible legal action that could be taken against fanzines that did not comply. Later that year, the director and legal counsel of the Official Star Wars Fan Club sent fanzine publishers a set of official guidelines. Lucasfilms supported fan publications contingent on them upholding these guidelines.

Gopher protocol was invented in 1991, and hosted some early fan fiction archives. But it has since been replaced by the World Wide Web, which was created a year later.

1992 also saw the publication of Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. The text explores the nature of fan interaction with canon sources and the advent of fan fiction, slash fan fiction and the culture of fandom. Henry Jenkins has said, "Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by folk." His work has had a strong influence on the academic study of fan fiction, and also has lent to the view of fandom and fan fiction as analogous to the oral folk tradition.

Fan fiction has become increasingly more popular and widespread since the advent of the World Wide Web. Many archives were created hosting specific sorts of stories, or stories for specific fandoms, and in 1998 FanFiction.Net came online. At the time of its initial creation, it accepted any sort of writing, original or fan fiction, though it has since separated its original fiction section to another website called FictionPress and banned several subgenres, including explicitly sexual stories (referred to as "NC-17" before the Motion Picture Association of America chose to enforce its ownership of the MPAA ratings system), Real person fiction and stories featuring song lyrics (the latter two in order to avoid legal problems, including copyright infringement for unauthorized use of copyright lyrics). This ability to self-publish fan fiction at a common archive, and the ability to review the stories directly on the site, became very popular quite quickly. FanFiction.net now hosts literally millions of stories in dozens of languages, and its status as the single largest, most wide-ranging, and most popular fan fiction archive online is indisputable.

LiveJournal, founded in 1999, played a large part in the move away from mailing lists to blogs as a means for fan communication and the sharing of fan fiction; although much fan fiction today is published to FanFiction.net and similar archives, it would be impossible to tell if more or less fan fiction today is posted directly to LiveJournal and other blogging services than to fan fiction-specific archives.

For a more detailed timeline of fan fiction see Fanfic Symposium.

Formats of fan fiction

There are three usual distinctions of fan fiction based on length, which are common to most fan fiction archives. Chaptered "fic" is written in a similar manner to traditional serial stories, with each chapter released separately as it is finished. Chapters may take anything from a day to several months to be updated and often remind readers of their place in the story with each new installment. Most archives allow two authors to upload individual chapters sequentially under a single title with a main link to the first chapter, and each chapter easily linked to via a drop down menu. A subgenre of this is seen in fan fiction groups frequently organised by comic book fan fiction writers which not only feature series starring certain characters but create a full shared universe much like a comic book company.

These stories are a form of webserial, although that term is not common in fan fiction circles. They are often described as ‘epics’ or ‘series.’ Until they are finished, they are referred to as Works in Progress (WsiP or WIPs). On message boards and mailing lists, where the chapters are not easily consolidated, the chapter is usually marked as a number of the total chapters expected: 2/4, or 13/?. Authors will also often leave a link in each part to previous parts for readers who may not have seen the previous chapters updated.

Single-chapter stories of any length are usually referred to as one-shots. Stories with two chapters are sometimes called two-shots, although this can also refer to a one-shot and its sequel. There are various terms for different lengths and they are sometimes used interchangeably. These include "flashfic" for stories under 500 words, and short-short for stories between 500 and 1000 words. The term "ficlet" is also commonly used for stories under approximately 1000 words. A piece of fan fiction is usually considered ‘long’ if over 1000 words, although it can still be considered a short story up to about 20,000 words in terms of professional publishing, and a novella or novelette can describe a story between 20,000 and 40,000 words.

A drabble is traditionally a story exactly 100 words in length. In fan fiction writing circles, many fandoms have a drabble community which sets a weekly prompt for authors to use in a drabble. A prompt can be a motif such as ‘faith’ or ‘mothers,’ a specific situation such as ‘someone is bleeding,’ an object, a line of poetry, an instruction such as ‘only dialogue,’ or ‘from the point of view of a minor character,’ etc. Some authors also regularly ask their friends to give them a prompt, or a specific pairing for them to write a story from. The resulting stories are more and more often referred to as drabbles, and the meaning has extended in some places to include anything that is less than 500 words.

In manga-based fandoms, textual fanfiction and fan produced manga can also come under the term dôjinshi (also sometimes romanized as doujinshi). This is a Japanese term for self-published works, usually manga, novels, fan guides, art collections, or games, often sold in small runs for a minor profit. While most dôjinshi featuring fan fiction is not technically legal under Japanese copyright law, the general practice of most copyright owners is to allow it, on the grounds that it keeps fans interested in the original work and fosters the talent of amateur artists and writers who may choose to go professional, such as Clamp.

Fan fiction is also occasionally written in script format, although Fanfiction.net has banned all these stories. There are several sub-genres of "scriptfic." Some are written in the style of screenplays. While most are not written in the format of professional scripts, most do have the basic structure and are written in the present tense. Others are "chatfics", stories which are written like an instant messaging or chatroom conversation between characters, usually as a comedic exercise; "chatfics" are somewhat similar in this sense to an epistolary novel, though usually much shorter.

Another more unusual format of fanfiction is the songfic format, where authors take the lyrics of a song and, with the song as inspiration, construct a piece of writing around the lyrics. Usually this is done by quoting lines of the lyrics in order and inserting original writing in-between. However, this format is controversial, due to copyright complications. FanFiction.Net has banned songfics because of this reason, but there are still many songfics on the site.

Fan fiction is occasionally produced in an audio theatre format and released in the form of a podcast.

Reviewing

Unlike traditional print publication, the internet offers the option of giving and receiving instantaneous feedback. As such, most fan fiction archives feature a "Review" system where readers can post comments about the story via form, to what's sometimes referred to as the "review board" (reviews page) of a story. These systems often are programmed to notify the author of new reviews, making them a common way for readers and authors online to communicate directly. Some original fiction archives, such as FanFiction.net's sister site FictionPress, also feature similar communication systems.

Since many such sites do not automatically moderate these systems, on such sites the systems are often abused and used to send flames, spam or trolling messages. For this reason, many such unmoderated systems allow the author the option of receiving only "signed" (non-anonymous) reviews, and many sites that sport such systems feature the suggestion to reviewers that they take the opportunity to give the author some constructive criticism.

Recently fanfiction has seen greater use of the Forum format. Built around systems, stories are posted on threads with feedback interlaced and immediate. This style of fanfiction is more interactive but also can be a distraction since the stories and comments are between each other.

Terminology and subgenres

Fan fiction is now found in a variety of genres with sites specializing in each. Sites can be found by star, by TV show, by books (such as the Harry Potter Fanfiction forums), and by style of story such as Mystery, Crime Shows, Crossover, or Romance (for the 'shippers' - 'ship' here being short for 'relationship'- those who like stories about their favorite couples). A growth in part due to the internet, it is expected that these specialized sites will only continue to grow in popularity.

For common terminology relating to fan fiction, including some specialized subgenre terms, please see the sub-article Fan fiction terminology.

Legal issues with fan fiction

See Legal issues with fan fiction

References

  1. Rana Eros, When Size Matters, www.trickster.org/symposium/symp162.html

See also

External links

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