Fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF or fic) is a broadly defined term for fiction about characters or settings written by admirers of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Fiction is the telling of stories which are not real More specifically fiction is an imaginative form of Narrative, one of the four basic Rhetorical modes. ^[1] The term usually applies to works that are not commissioned and unauthorized by the owner/creators and publishers of the original and usually (but not always) works which are not professionally published. Fan fiction is defined outside of original fiction, which exists within its own discrete, professionally published universe, and therefore outside of canon works within that universe. This article is not about Literary canons of influential works of fiction but about the concept of a canon which defines the world of a particular fictional series ^[2] Most fan fiction writers assume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe (created by a professional writer) in which their works are based.

History

Before about 1965, the term "fan fiction" was used in science fiction fandom to designate original, though amateur, works of science fiction published in science fiction fanzines, as differentiated from fiction that was professionally published by professional writers, but this usage is now obsolete. Science fiction fandom or SF fandom is a community of people actively interested in Science fiction and Fantasy literature, and in contact with one another An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit study or science without formal training or pay A science fiction fanzine is an amateur or semi-professional magazine published by members of Science fiction fandom, from the 1930s to the present day Modern definitions of the term exclude such entirely original writing from the genre. Today, fan fiction writers use characters and situations already created by other writers in order to develop their personal and preferred views of the story. ^[3] For example, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has spawned a lively fan fiction genre, in which the characters make choices and enjoy an afterlife that Rowling herself did not create. Harry Potter is a series of seven Fantasy novels written by British author J Joanne "Jo" Rowling OBE (born 31 July 1965 who writes under the

The magazine, Spockanalia, is the first known contemporary form of any type of fan-written stories.

Fan fiction as it is now understood began at least as early as the 17th century, with unauthorized published sequels to such works as Don Quixote. es '''''Don Quixote''''' (, see spelling and pronunciation below fully titled es '''''El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha''''' ("The Ingenious Hidalgo Don ^[4] The earliest known form of fanfiction was written in 800 AD, when various versions of King Arthur's tale spread around Europe. The 8th century is the period from 701 to 800 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. King Arthur is a legendary British leader who according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against the Saxon invaders ^[5] The turn of the 19th century also saw parodies and revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland by authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett and E. Nesbit. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (ˈdɒdsən (27 January 1832 &ndash 14 January 1898 better known by the Pen name Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ was an English Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865 is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known under the Pseudonym Lewis Frances Hodgson Burnett, ( November 24, 1849 - October 29, 1924) was an English – American Playwright and Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 - 4 May 1924) was an English author and poet whose children's In addition, there were several fan-authored versions of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930 was an Anglo-Scottish Author most noted for his stories about the Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in Publication in 1887 In the 1920s and 1930s, fans of Jane Austen wrote stories based on her characters and published them in fanzines. Jane Austen (16 A fanzine (see also Zine) is a nonprofessional publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre for the pleasure In 1945, C. S. Lewis adopted certain elements from J.R.R. Tolkien's then largely-unpublished legendarium (mostly Númenor, there spelt Numinor, probably because Lewis never saw it written out) and incorporated these into the last novel, That Hideous Strength, of his Space Trilogy. Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963 Tolkien's Legendarium (ISBN 0-313-30530-7 is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F That Hideous Strength is a 1945 Novel by C S Lewis, the final book in Lewis's theological Science fiction Space Trilogy. The Space Trilogy, Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy is a Trilogy of three Science fiction novels by (Given that Lewis and Tolkien were personal friends, this could be seen more as an "homage").

However, the modern phenomenon of fan fiction as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was popularized and defined via the Star Trek fandom and fanzines published in the 1960s. Trekkie (or Trekker) is a term used to describe a fan of all or part of the Star Trek Fictional universe. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, was published in 1967 and contained some fan fiction. A fanzine (see also Zine) is a nonprofessional publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre for the pleasure ^[5]

In 1970, Mary Ellen Curtin, a Princeton University graduate^[6] researched the authors of various Star Trek fanfics, and her results showed an outstanding 83% female as opposed to 17% male writers. Year 1970 ( MCMLXX) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Princeton University is a private Coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ^[5]

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. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks

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. Lucasfilm Limited' is an American Film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco California This is a list of characters from the Star Wars franchise Note Characters are organized by first letter of name or title Pornography or porn is the explicit depiction of Sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer ^[5] 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 their upholding these guidelines. ^[5]

The 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. For other uses see Gopher. Gopher is a distributed Document search and retrieval Network protocol designed The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet.

Fan fiction has become more popular and widespread since the advent of the World Wide Web. ^[7] Many archives such as The Gossamer Project were created, hosting specific sorts of stories, or stories for specific fandoms. The Gossamer Project is a group of specialty archives that combined contain the vast majority of X-Files Fan fiction on the Internet In 1998 FanFiction.Net came online. } FanFictionNet (often abbreviated as FFNet or FFN) is an automated Fan fiction archive site ^[5] At the time of its initial creation, it accepted any sort of writing, original or fan fiction. It has since separated its original fiction section to another website 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 lyrics). The Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system is used in the U Real Person Fiction (RPF is a type of Fan fiction featuring Celebrities or other real people 'Copyright infringement' (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by Copyright law in a manner that violates ^[8] This ability to self-publish fan fiction at a common archive, and the ability to review the stories directly on the site, became popular quite quickly.

Teenagers born between the years 1985 and 1992 make up the majority of fanfiction authors. Year 1985 ( MCMLXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar) Year 1992 ( MCMXCII) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar)

FanFiction. net now hosts millions of stories in dozens of languages, and is widely considered the largest and most popular fan fiction archive online. ^[7] LiveJournal (founded in 1999) and other blogging services 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 archives, it would be impossible to tell whether more or less fan fiction today is posted directly to blogging services than to fan-fiction-specific archives. LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a Virtual community where Internet users can keep a Blog, Journal or Diary. A blog (a contraction of the term " Web log " is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary descriptions of A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients

Writer Statistics

From a research conducted by Laura Hale on the age of teenage writers on Fandominion. net, she concluded that teenagers born between the years 1985 and 1992 make up the majority of fanfiction authors. Year 1985 ( MCMLXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar) Year 1992 ( MCMXCII) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar) However, the age can range from ten-year-old children to sixty-year-old seniors. ^[9]

Despite the fact that fan fiction ranges from stories based on masculine shows such as Naruto or more feminine ones such as Hannah Montana, fan fiction writers are 80% female, according to Mary Ellen. is an ongoing Japanese Manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto with an Anime adaptation Hannah Montana is an Emmy Award-nominated American Television series, which debuted on March 24 2006 on Disney Channel. "Dudes only appear occasionally," she says, and after studying fan fiction since 1960, she just "can't understand why boys aren't doing it. Year 1960 ( MCMLX) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. "^[10]

Style of Writing

Fanfiction is easily distinguishable within 5 different types. A "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 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 drabble is traditionally a vignette exactly 100 words in length. A drabble is an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length although the term is often misused to indicate a short story of fewer than 1000 However, when a story is referred to as a drabble, it often is a short scene or idea that does not tell an entire story, or a story at all. It is simply a reflections of a moment in time, somewhat similar to a character sketch. ^[11] Other short forms of fanfiction include oneshot or twoshot, in which the story is only one or two chapters long, respectively. ^[12] Oneshots can also be expanded into longshots, which are one-chaptered stories that are considerably longer than most chaptered stories. ^[13]

The fourth style of fanfic writing is known as a songfic, 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, while writing original pieces relating to the nearby lyrics. ^[11]

The last, and final major form of writing is known as alternative universe (often abbreviated as AU), in which the author deliberately alters the original setting of the story, thereby creating an entirely new world. An Alternative Universe fan fiction (also known as Alternate Universe or Alternate Reality) commonly abbreviated as AU, is a type or form of Fan fiction This happens when a story transplants familiar characters into situations totally different from canon. ^[11] The purpose of creating alternate universes are to answer potential "what-if" questions. These can be created by using one of the following techniques: a crossover,^[14] and an alternate timeline,^[15] among others. A fictional crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete Fictional characters, settings or universes into the context of a single

Reviewing and interactivity in the online era

Unlike traditional print publication, the internet offers the option of giving and receiving instantaneous feedback. Feedback is a circular causal Process whereby some proportion of a system's output is returned (fed back to the Input. ^[16] Reviews can be given by both anonymous and registered users of most sites, and sites are often programmed to notify the author of new feedback, making them a common way for readers and authors online to communicate directly. Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ανωνυμία, meaning "without a Name " or "namelessness" ^[17] This system is intended for a type of bond between the reader and the writer, as well as helping the reader improve his or her writing skills, enabling him or her to produce a better work next time. ^[18]

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. Flaming is the hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community such as an 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. The word critic comes from the Greek el κριτικός ( el-Latn kritikós) "able to discern" which in turn derives from the word ^[8]

Recently fan fiction has seen greater use of the forum format. An, or message board, is a Bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site ^[19] Built around message board systems, stories are posted on threads with feedback interlaced and immediate. This style of fan fiction is more interactive but also can be a distraction since the stories and comments are between each other. Additionally, blogs, which typically allow entries to be sorted by topic with the additional option of receiving commentary on each entry, are also a somewhat popular choice for fan fiction postings. These communication methods make fan fiction sites and blogs useful affinity spaces as writers are able to take readers' feedback and improve their skills and abilities as writers. Affinity spaces are places where Informal learning takes place This informal learning is a side benefit for many fan fiction authors, some of whom eventually attempt or go on to writing professionally. Definition Combs (1985 defines informal learning as "the spontaneous unstructured learning that goes on daily in the home and neighborhood behind the school and on the play

It is often considered wise in fan fiction circles to acquire the aid of a "beta reader", sometimes shortened to "beta", whose responsibilities are roughly those of a professional editor to a commercial author—with the exception that the "beta" is most commonly a volunteer who works without pay and on a casual basis and communicates through E-mail or private message systems. A beta reader (also spelled betareader, or shortened to beta) is a person who reads a written work generally Fiction, with what has been described as "a Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving A personal message or private message, often shortened to PM, is like an E-mail sent from one Internet forum or Bulletin board system ^[20] Writers are discouraged in some circles from posting fan fiction that has not at least been checked for grammatical, spelling, consistency and plot errors by a beta reader. ^[8][21] In late February 2008, FanFiction. net set up an area of their site that contains a list of authors willing to "beta" other authors' "fic". ^[20]

Legality of Fanfiction

Main article: Legal issues with fan fiction

Due to the modern definition of fan fiction as derivative works, there are many legal issues involved with fan fiction, most prominently (but not exclusively) arising under United States copyright law. Due to the modern definition of fan fiction as Derivative works there are many legal issues involved with Fan fiction, most prominently (but not exclusively In Copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major basic copyrighted aspects of an original previously created first work United States copyright law governs the legally enforceable rights of creative and artistic works in the United States. ^[22]

Technically, Fanfiction is illegal because it is a derivative work, and therefore, a copyright violation. ^[23] However, several prominent authors have given their blessings to fanfiction, notably J.K. Rowling. Joanne "Jo" Rowling OBE (born 31 July 1965 who writes under the Rowling said she was flattered people wanted to write their own stories based on her characters. ^[24] However, Anne Rice has consistently and aggressively prevented fan fiction based on any of her characters (mostly those from her famous Interview with the Vampire and its sequels in The Vampire Chronicles) or other elements in her books, and she formally requested that FanFiction. Anne Rice (born Howard Allen O'Brien on October 4, 1941) is a best-selling American Author of gothic and religious-themed Interview with the Vampire is a Vampire Novel by Anne Rice written in 1973 and published in 1976 The Vampire Chronicles is a series of Novels by Anne Rice that revolves around the Fictional character Net remove stories featuring her characters. ^[25]

Major sites such as fanfiction. net claim fair use,^[26] since Section 107 of the Copyright Act allows for fair use claims of copyrighted material. Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders such as use for According to their interpretation of the law, fanfiction may legally fall under "fair use" because it is the "productive addition of creative labor" to copyrighted materials. Additionally, it does not act as a substitute to the original copyrighted work, because the author does not profit from fanfiction. This interpretation is not supported by traditional interpretations of the relevant statutes. ^[27]

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"). Shipping, derived from the word "relationship" is a general term for fans' emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in 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, see the sub-article Fan fiction terminology. The community surrounding modern Fan fiction has generated a considerable number of unique subgenres and literary terminology over the past several decades

See also

• Collaborative fiction
• Fan character
• Glossary of fan fiction terms
• Canon (fiction)
• Legal issues with fan fiction
• FanFiction.net

References

Further reading

• Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse. Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the Internet: new essays. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. , 2006. ISBN 0786426403.
• Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Studies in Culture and Communication). New York: Routledge, 1992. ISBN 0415905710.
• Pugh, Sheenagh. The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend, Wales: Seren, 2005. ISBN 1854113992.
• Karen Joy Fowler. Karen Joy Fowler (b February 7 1950, Bloomington Indiana) is an American author of Wit's End. Puntam, 2008. A novel about a mystery writer who constantly battles fan fiction about her famous detective.

External links

• The Fan Fiction Glossary
• Fanfiction.net the largest fan fiction gallery on the internet