There seems to be a stigma surrounding fan fiction. People assume that it’s either pornographic extensions of books or just plain bad writing (and yes, all of that is plentiful out in the wonderful world wide web). But every once in a while when I finish a book, I’m not quite ready to leave the world inside, and so I boot up my computer and head on over to sites like fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own (unfortunately, there’s not a place like Pottermore for every book). In my mind, there are three types of people to be addressed with regard to fan fiction:
1) For people who just want to read fan fiction, some wading through bad writing is unavoidable. The best way to learn is by imitation, and lots of times budding writers are just testing the waters and trying to copy their favorite authors. Fan fiction is a great way to do this because it’s an opportunity to publish work to an audience of peers and critics who are either in the same stage as you or have been in the same stage as you.
However, in the mess of beginners, there are always writers with the skill and originality to truly add to a novel. The best kind of fan fiction is the kind that makes you forget you’re not just reading a sequel online, and that isn’t quite so hard to find as you might think. Depending on the popularity of the book, there could be as much as one to two good pieces of fan fiction on every search page of fifteen links.
2) For people who want to actually write fan fiction, I would encourage you to do it. Maybe you’re afraid of criticism, maybe you’re self-conscious about your work, but at the very least, write something. Maybe you don’t publish it at first, but the more you write the better you’ll get. And if you do publish, remember that you are among thousands of people on the website that are just like you: writers trying to express their appreciation and inspiration from books they love.
3) And finally, for people who look down upon fan fiction: don’t. Maybe you just haven’t read enough of it or maybe you’ve read too much not-so-good writing, but I think it’s really a great thing. Writing is a wonderful skill to have, but people aren’t born knowing how to write. It comes with practice. And what better way to practice than writing about your favorite book(s)?
Give fan fiction another chance and you might be surprised at the ideas you find people come up with. There are more than just fifty shades of creativity when fans take it upon themselves to expand a universe.
Media Cyborgs 
I’m really sad that this is the last post of yours that I’ll ever get to read! I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog this past eight weeks.
Sentiments aside, I like what you have to say about fan-fiction. An inherent flaw of mine is that I steer away from fan-fiction at all costs because it’s just not the same. BAD thinking on my part. Remember that erotic novel series “Fifty Shades of Grey”? It started out as a Twilight fanfiction series. And now it’s one of the best selling series ever. Not that the “Fifty Shades” books are critically groundbreaking, however, but they do sell well.
I think the point I’m getting at here is that there always needs to be room for creation. Fan-fiction provides exactly that. Great post.
Aw Jack, thank you, that means a lot! (and I’m glad that you’ve maybe changed your mind a little bit about fan fiction)
Great post! I’ve dabbled in fan fiction (reading and writing) and I’ve been judged pretty harshly for it. There were a few friends of mine who teased me MERCILESSLY for it.
But like you said, it’s not all smut, and it’s not all awful. There’s actually some rather excellent literary quality out there to be found. And in some ways fan fiction is a great exercise for writers who produce their own original work. It gets the imagination flowing, for one, and it allows you to try out new writing styles, because fanfic writers often try to mimic the voice of the original author. So if you usually write in the first person, but are writing a Harry Potter fanfic, you might have to step out of your comfort zone and try to adopt JK Rowling’s third person, semi-omniscient narrative style.
(And by the way, if any of you DO read fan fiction, or are interested in reading some, and like Harry Potter (which I’m sure you all do), then you should check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It’s an absolutely mind blowing fanfic, with a huge following. It is also incredibly long, and still unfinished.)
I agree! And I will look for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
I agree that fanfiction is definitely a great way for new and aspiring writers to judge others and be judged themselves on their writing. The one thing that I will point out in speculation is taking criticism the wrong way and fanfiction fights. No creative outlet is perfect, and fights over comments and who knows what happen all of the time. Some people don’t take criticism well, and it could cause problems for them on the site. I still would encourage them to try it out though, because in the professional world you need to be able to handle constructive criticism, and fanfiction is one way that people can improve on that while being a part of something they love.
That’s very true–I think a side effect of a majority of fanfiction being written by 12-15 year olds is that fights tend to crop up about minutia and people take criticism too much to heart. Hopefully it eventually helps them to better their work!