What is fan fiction?
Posted by Alvina
Over the years I've written a lot of fan fictions. Sometimes I'll even mention one of my stories here. But before I do I wanted to tell you what fan fictions actually is.
Fan fictions, (also referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, ff or fic,) is fiction written by fans of a particular book, tv show or film. These work or rarely authorized by the original work's owner, creator or publisher. Pieces range in lendth from drabbles (1000 words or less) to short stories to full blown novels (50.000+ words).
Although fan fiction has been around for many years, fan fiction has started to spread since the 1990 when Internet became a big hit. It even moved from its tradition genre subject (like SF, Fantasy, Horror) to unconventional ones (Sitcoms, Medical Dramas even Soap Operas).
There are many websites dedicated to fan fiction. Probably the most known is FanFiction.net and now hosts millions of stories in dozens of languages, and is widely considered the largest and most popular fan fiction archive online. In the Harry Potter fandom a known website is HarryPotterFanFiction.com, which host over 58,000 stories. If you are Dutch you might want to check out this little website: Fanfic.nl. If you are interested in reading my fan fictions go to DeepInMySoul.net.
While most original work author's tend to turn a blind eye to fan fictions, it is considered to be a legal violation of copyright. J.K. Rowling is one of the author's that said to be "flattered" that people wanted to write their own stories based on her characters. While Anne Rice has consistently and aggressively prevented fan fictions based on any of her characters. While writing fan fiction is at your own risk I'd like to point out the following quote:
"And while some TV and film producers have threatened legal action against slash authors, Paul Gross pointed out that a fan's fantasies are not an area into which his copyright extends. 'I suppose the character is public ground,' he said. 'If you're willing to bring it into people's houses every week, the fans are entitled to certain liberties, wherever their imagination is carried by those characters.'" (from an interview in 'Toronto Globe & Mail', August 8, 1998)