“Ever watched a television show and wished the plot had gone in a different direction? Or wanted desperately for two characters to get together? In the realm of fan fiction those characters can get together and plots can twist into new and exciting ways that the original writers may never have even thought of.”
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Ever watched a television show and wished the plot had gone in a different direction? Or wanted desperately for two characters to get together? In the realm of fan fiction those characters can get together and plots can twist into new and exciting ways that the original writers may never have even thought of.

For those that are not who may not be familiar with fan fiction it is stories written by fans, based off of TV, movies and books. Fan fiction has existed for many years, but just in the last few years fan fiction has gained attention as a rapidly growing medium. It’s hard to define fan fiction’s place in of literature. Does it have value as a written work or is it, like a lot of other information on the internet, just junk?

While it’s debatable where fan fiction sits as a form of quality writing, there can be no argument that it is popular. There are hundreds of sites devoted to just one television show or movie. One Web site, Fanfiction.net, is one of the biggest sites for fan fiction on the internet. It has categories for stories based on anime, TV, books, cartoons, movies, games and comics. Stories are submitted and updated almost everyday. Some of the categories have thousands of stories written about them. Law and Order SVU has over 6,000, Smallvile has over 9,000 and, believe it or not, Power Rangers has nearly 10,000 stories.

Fan fiction has the ability to change things in a TV show or movie. It can also help a series survive cancellation. Fan fiction has resurrected shows that fans believed went to an early grave. Shows like Gilmore Girls and Crossing Jordan lived on through fan written virtual seasons. This allows for shows to continue on and bring closure that the fans didn’t feel when the show went off the air.

Even as these stories allow for interesting and creative twists to occur to favorite characters from a show, movie or book, if you have ever spent any time reading fan fiction you can attest that there is bad fan fiction out there. Stories that have no plot and are filled with grammatical mistakes cloud this genre, but raw talent and quality writing can be found. Some published authors, such as Meg Cabot, have said they enjoyed writing fan fiction early in their careers. There may be terrible writing floating around out there, but in the infinity of cyber space there is potential for this underappreciated form of expression to become a respected form of writing. Some sites have started raising the standards for quality stories submitted to sites. Editors have been instituted to check over a story to make sure it meets standards.

Fan fiction allows for creativity and fantasy. It bridges the gap between what happens in our favorite shows and movies and what we wished happened. It started out as form of fantasy fulfillment by devoted and imaginative fans, but as it grows in popularity it has potential to become a true and respected genre in its own right.

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