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Just to follow up on this a bit... there was no "fan fic" community when I was a writer--or if there was, I wasn't aware of it... because there was no internet. LOL. But my early unpublished novels were basically fan fic of Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster series. 1/? https://twitter.com/jeffvandermeer/status/1350589393736790019
Having kind of the structure etc of McKillip's novels and others in my head was instrumental to learning stuff about fiction. Just because it's now a ton of communities and more "formally" riffing off of other work doesn't lessen the usefulness in developing craft. 2/?
Many beginning writers don't really know their strengths and weaknesses. Often, they may think they're bad at one thing but in fact they're inexperienced at a lot of things, which is hiding a full analysis. Having some elements "provided" allows you to better know yourself. 3/?
I do exercises in writing workshops where I give students the plot and characters of a published story and they do their own versions (w/o knowing this) and then compare to each other and the published story. 4/?
What these students sometimes find is they go in thinking they're bad at characterization, for example, but it turns out they're just inexperienced at a lot of things and given a plot or structure, they're just fine with characterization. Which helps them grow and develop. 5/?
Point is, fan fic definitely *can* be of use in developing craft, even tho it's important to realize it can be its own art form without *needing* to be for any other purpose. 6/?
And from doing a teen writing workshop for 10 years, I can tell you I began to develop a smoldering rage toward teachers who derided fan fic and told so many of those students it wasn't worthwhile and made them feel like crap and apologetic for writing it. 7/?
Finally, I've written a Predator tie-in novel and co-written a Halo novella, which sure feels like fan fic to me. I loved both experiences & *constraint* of working w pre-existing elements made me find different narrative strategies & approaches that inform my other writing. 8/8
