Episode 453: Fanfiction (Patreon)

Fanfiction. Is it a writer's best friend, the fruits of which should be widely shared? Or is it a secret shame that should be suffocated in Windows folders and smothered at the bottom of socks drawers? Is there any scholarly benefit to telling kids to write about the weird crap Steve and Alex got up to in their Minecraft world? Well, yeah! Plenty! 

Fanfiction is packed alongside some long-enduring baggage. It's associated with theft, creative bankruptcy, poor writing, and Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII entangled in a forever-embrace. Yet the act of writing fanfic is as old as literature itself. What is Paradise Lost but Bible fanfiction everlasting?

Thankfully, fanfiction is becoming a more accepted activity. At the very least, media studios and authors no longer chase down 13-year-old girls for writing it. But fanfiction should be regarded as more than a jumble of words that's only fit for pointing and laughing at. Writing fanfic is arguably the healthiest thing an author can do, especially for young writers who can use it to build up their vocabulary, their sentence structure, and their world-building skills. And, let's face it, no one else is going to write that alternative universe Super Mario coffee house fanfic. You must make it happen. And you should.

Recover your fanfiction.net account password and listen as Nadia Oxford talks with authors Laura Mauro and Sarah Blair about fanfiction's benefits and how it built them up to become professional writers. Gasp in amazement as you learn Nadia became a writer partially because she wanted to make Mario characters swear.