On Fan Fiction

I’ve been writing fiction since 1999. Seventeen years (and a lot of life experience) later, I started my journey toward becoming a full-time freelance and fiction writer. 2016 saw a big milestone, for after four years of trying, I was finally eligible to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). I’m happy with what I have achieved so far and look forward to what the future holds.

Let's not forget about the copious amount of Evangelion fan art. Image by Yoshiyaki.

But every writer's journey has to start somewhere, and for me, it was writing really (tremendously, monumentally, bigly) awful Neon Genesis Evangelion fan fiction. One Evangelion story became two…then three…then twenty. Within six months, I had a whole ‘book’ of Evangelion stories that I showed off to my 8th-grade peers. Most of these stories were full of my teenage angst, but hey, I was proud of myself. I had finally found a creative endeavor that I actually enjoyed.

Dabbling in Evangelion was fun, low-pressure practice for everything that came later. Only in my early twenties did I find a proper explanation as to why I stayed in that universe for so long, rather than creating universes of my own. In On Writing, Stephen King explains that for him, being a writer is a great joy because it’s like he gets to play in a sandbox all day. For me, and I bet a lot of other writers out there, writing fan fiction is a similar experience. But instead of anything resembling work or struggle, it’s Christmas morning. Someone else has built the sandbox, poured the sand, and even provided a few plastic shovels and buckets. Established intellectual property is a playground for the novice writer. For teenagers, especially, writing fan fiction provides an much-needed outlet for a chaotic period in life.

Another way to think about it is that fan fiction is like walking up a small hill. There's a little effort, but it's easy. Writing an original story is like climbing Mt. Everest. For an original story, you have to not only build the sandbox, but also chop down the trees, cut the lumber, grind rocks into sand, and invent your own toys. And oh yeah, that only comes after you conjure all those atoms into existence. For young or inexperienced writers, this can seem like an insurmountable task. Maybe that’s why it took me years to write my first original story after starting to write fan fiction. Now my stories come easier. But without the practice and reassurance that fan fiction provided me, who knows what I'd be doing today.

Teaching high school creative writing a couple of years back, I had my students to write some fan fiction of their own. Their writing may not have improved much after a single story, but it seemed that their words flowed easier than before. For some of them, it was the first story they had ever written – a small, but significant victory. Let the struggle of creating, editing, and literary rejection (and there is so much of it) come later. It’s good to let children play. 

I still read fan fiction, especially if a TV show, movie, or video game has had an emotional impact on me. These days there’s a lot of talent out there, and it's always refreshing to see a new take on an old idea. To my surprise, fan fiction has entered the mainstream, earning not only publication, but acclaim.

After all, even for award-winning writers who have forged their own paths, it’s nice returning to an old sandbox after a long time gone.