What is Fanfiction?

Fanfiction isn’t as strange of a concept to many people as it once was. The term has become more mainstream these days thanks to popular books that were once fanfics. There are many people who have an idea in their head of what fanfiction is, but that idea might be simplified or leave some questions unanswered.

If you’re someone who wants to know a bit more about fanfiction and the culture surrounding it, read on for a quick look at some of the basics about this important part of fandom culture.

What is fanfiction?

‘Fanfiction’ is a term that everyone seems to have heard, but for many, it’s a vague, mysterious thing that they only kind of understand. Merriam-Webster defines fanfiction as “stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet” while Lexico describes it as “Fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, film, etc.”

The Merriam-Webster definition doesn’t fit everything that fans call fanfiction since the characters in a fanfiction don’t have to be popular. And what’s popular can be hard to define anyway. Many people in fandom have at least one favorite character who it’s quite hard to find fic for because they’re just not popular, but if just one fan writes about them, it’s still fanfiction.

The idea that fanfiction has to include characters from the media it’s based on, which Lexico’s definition claims, is also flawed. Original characters are popular in fanfiction, and you can easily find fanfics that are set in an established fictional universe but populated entirely with characters who the fanfiction author has created themselves.

So, what’s the best way to define fanfiction?

Fanlore, a wiki committed to documenting fandom history and culture, describes fanfiction this way as of the time this is being posted: “a work of fiction written by fans for other fans, taking a source text or a famous person as a point of departure.”

That’s an excellent way to describe it. Fanfiction doesn’t have to include characters from the media it’s based on, and it doesn’t have to be about something popular. It just has to be written because the author was a fan of something which inspired the work.

But though that’s the simplest way to describe fanfiction, nothing is ever simple, and the lines between what’s fanfiction and what isn’t can get blurry.

The origins of fanfiction

Fanfiction goes back further than many people think. Most consider the first use of the term ‘fanficion’ in its current sense to have appeared in the Star Trek fandom back in the 1970s, but depending on how you think of it, fanfiction goes back even further.

Remember, fanfiction is just stories inspired by other stories, and in that sense, fanfiction is something that humans have been doing for millenia. Much of old mythologies came from the telling and retelling of stories. Greek mythology, for example, has a wide variety of stories about different gods that originated at different times, and even Roman mythology heavily borrowed from Greek and other mythologies for its own stories. Even today, there are a multitude of works that are based on Greek myths, from Percy Jackson to Wonder Woman.

It’s not just Greek mythology either. We retell and play with all kinds of stories. Modern retellings of Jane Austen novels or William Shakespeare plays are all over the place. These are a form of fanfiction. The only difference is that the copyright on the original works have expired, meaning it’s fanfiction that can make its writers money. (Though one can easily find fanfiction for both Austen and Shakespeare that are posted for free online in fandom spaces.)

In a very real sense, the history of fanfiction is the history of storytelling itself. It’s something we have always been doing, even if the modern idea of it as its own form of writing is new.

With the rise of the internet and the ability of anyone to post what they write for the world to read, it’s no wonder that fanfiction would explode in popularity. It’s a continuation of what humanity has long been doing.

Who reads and writes fanfiction?

The fanfiction community primarily exists online these days, which makes figuring out its exact demographics a difficult task. Information like age, location, and even gender often isn’t shared by fanfiction readers and writers, who prefer anonymity for a wide variety of reasons. (Some might be a little embarrassed to have their writing found by their friends and family while others live in places where there could be legal and/or safety consequences if they were discovered to be writing a gay romance, for example.)

That being said, fanfiction in its current form has been widely considered a community dominated by women. This is acknowledged widely enough that the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit that works on protecting fan works, includes it in its mission statement.

What we do know is that fanfiction is enjoyed by people of all genders and ages. Many people join fandom at a young age and stick around for the rest of their lives. However, the exact demographics can vary widely depending on the fandom or online platform. The demographics of Wattpad, for example, will look different from Archive of Our Own which will look different from FanFiction.Net.

What kind of stories are there?

There’s a stereotype that fanfiction is only porn. If people know that isn’t the case, then they might expect fanfiction to mostly be stories about self-insert main characters (a type of character where the author portrays a, typically idealized, version of themselves).

Both of those kinds of stories do exist and can be easily found if readers want them, but they are far from the only fanfiction that exists. Fanfiction covers any form of storytelling that’s created based on an existing work. There are no limits to genres or other storytelling conventions.

There are many common tropes in fanfiction. Alternate universe, or AU, is one. An AU means that the story takes place in a universe that is different from the universe of the original media, which could mean changing the setting entirely or just changing one plot point. For example, an AU in the Star Wars fandom could include anything from writing about the Star Wars characters in an everyday high school to writing a story set in a galaxy far, far away but where Luke was raised on Naboo instead of Tatooine.

As you can see, just that one fanfiction convention covers a lot of ground. Essentially, if there’s a type of story you want to read, you can find fanfiction for it. There are no limits. That’s what makes it so fun.

Fanfiction’s influence on wider pop culture

Many people became aware of fanfiction through books like Fifty Shades of Gray, which was a Twilight fanfiction that was later reworked into published books. In many ways, books like Fifty Shades became synonymous with fanfiction in people’s minds despite fanfiction encompassing a wide array of stories.

There are other ways in which fanfiction has influenced pop culture, too.

Writing fanfiction is an excellent way to practice telling stories. Because of this, there are many published authors who were once fanfiction writers. These authors vary in how open they are about discussing their history of writing fanfiction, but many have, including Meg Cabot and Lev Grossman.

Popular fanfiction tropes have also migrated into other forms of fiction. One of these examples is Alpha/Beta/Omega fic, which originated in the fandom for the TV show Supernatural. Essentially, these stories center around characters who are biologically alphas, betas, or omegas, and these designations affect the traits and behaviors of the characters. There are many elements to this genre of fic, and authors vary in how loyal they are to the genre’s norms. Many fanfiction writers will break the usual rules and experiment.

Recently, Alpha/Beta/Omega has grown as a subgenre of published romance books as well. Who knows if it will continue to get more popular, but no matter what, its origins are in fanfiction.

It’s safe to say that fanfiction’s influence isn’t going away any time soon.