Half of Your Favorite Authors Started by Writing Fanfiction

Half of Your Favorite Authors Started by Writing Fanfiction

Here's a dirty little secret the literary establishment doesn't want you to know: fanfiction isn't the embarrassing cousin of "real" writing. It's the boot camp where some of the greatest storytellers in history learned their craft. Before you scoff, consider that Shakespeare himself was essentially writing fanfic of Holinshed's Chronicles, Plutarch's Lives, and old Italian novellas. Romeo and Juliet? A retelling of Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet from 1562. Let that sink in for a moment. The most revered playwright in the English language built his career on other people's characters and plots.

Every year, thousands of aspiring writers hide their fanfic accounts like teenagers hiding cigarettes. They write under pseudonyms, clear their browser histories, and never — ever — mention it on their MFA applications. Because somewhere along the way, the literary world decided that writing stories set in someone else's universe was a shameful, juvenile hobby. A waste of time. Not "real" writing. And that judgment is, to put it bluntly, complete garbage.

Let's talk about what fanfiction actually teaches you. First: finishing things. The number one killer of writing careers isn't lack of talent — it's the graveyard of abandoned first chapters sitting on hard drives around the world. Fanfiction communities, with their comment sections, kudos buttons, and readers literally begging for updates, create something no creative writing class can replicate: an audience that cares whether you finish the story. That pressure — gentle, enthusiastic, sometimes hilariously demanding — teaches you to push through the middle of a narrative, which is where most beginners crash and burn.

Second: fanfiction is a masterclass in character voice. When you write Sherlock Holmes or Elizabeth Bennet or a grizzled space marine from your favorite video game, you have to internalize how they speak, think, and react. You have to study the source material like a method actor studies their role. That skill — getting under a character's skin — transfers directly to original fiction. Neil Gaiman, who has openly praised fanfiction, once pointed out that writing in someone else's sandbox forces you to understand the mechanics of character in a way that staring at a blank page never does.

Third — and this is the one nobody talks about — fanfic teaches you to handle criticism while the stakes are low. Post a story on Archive of Our Own, and you'll get comments ranging from breathless praise to brutal honesty. Sometimes in the same paragraph. That feedback loop is invaluable. You learn what works, what doesn't, what makes readers stay up until 3 AM hitting "next chapter," and what makes them click away after two paragraphs. Professional authors pay thousands for this kind of workshop experience. Fanfic writers get it for free.

Now, let's drop some names that might surprise you. Cassandra Clare, whose Mortal Instruments series has sold over fifty million copies, got her start writing Harry Potter fanfiction — specifically, a wildly popular Draco Malfoy trilogy that drew both devoted fans and fierce critics. Naomi Novik, who won the Nebula Award for Uprooted, was deeply embedded in fanfiction communities before publishing her Temeraire series. E.L. James turned Twilight fanfiction into Fifty Shades of Grey, which — regardless of what you think of the prose — became one of the best-selling book series of all time. The Brontë sisters? They spent their entire childhood writing elaborate fanfiction set in imaginary worlds populated by characters inspired by their toy soldiers and Lord Byron. Juvenilia, scholars call it. I call it fanfic with a posh name.

And it's not just a modern phenomenon. Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 as essentially Jane Eyre fanfiction, telling the story of Rochester's first wife. It's now considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? Hamlet fanfic. Gregory Maguire's Wicked? Wizard of Oz fanfic that spawned a billion-dollar musical. The literary establishment loves fanfiction — it just refuses to call it that once it becomes prestigious enough.

Here's what the snobs get wrong. They see fanfiction as derivative, as if derivation is somehow a crime. But all fiction is derivative. Every story borrows from other stories. Joseph Campbell mapped the same hero's journey across thousands of years of myth. Every detective novel owes something to Poe's Dupin. Every dystopia tips its hat to Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell. The difference between "inspired by" and "fanfiction" is mostly a matter of how much time has passed and whether the original author's estate still has lawyers.

What fanfiction does — and this is its real superpower — is remove the most paralyzing obstacle for beginning writers: the blank page. When you already have a world, characters, and a set of relationships to work with, you can focus on the craft itself. Dialogue. Pacing. Tension. Point of view. You're not trying to build the house and learn carpentry at the same time. You're practicing carpentry in someone else's house, and that's not cheating — it's smart.

Does every piece of fanfiction deserve a Pulitzer? Obviously not. Sturgeon's Law applies: ninety percent of everything is crap. But ninety percent of workshop submissions are crap too, and nobody calls MFA programs a shameful hobby. The difference is that fanfiction is accessible. It's democratic. A fourteen-year-old in a small town with no writing mentors, no money for workshops, and no connections to the publishing world can post a story online tonight and have readers by morning. That's revolutionary.

So if you're writing fanfiction right now — or if you used to, and you stopped because someone made you feel embarrassed about it — I want you to hear this clearly: you are doing exactly what writers have done for centuries. You are learning by doing. You are practicing your craft in front of a live audience. You are building the muscles that will carry you into whatever kind of writing you want to do next, whether that's original novels, screenplays, journalism, or more fanfiction, because there's nothing wrong with that either.

The only shameful thing about fanfiction is pretending you never wrote it once you get a book deal. Own it. It's where you learned to tell stories. And telling stories, in any form, is never a waste of time.