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As long as you approach it with good writing practices and treat it as you would your own real writing project, it can help you practice the art of putting words on paper. What it will not prepare you for, however, is world-building, which is the other half of the battle when you write, and is just as important as your ability to write. You can be a ...

In general, I feel that fanfic is a crutch that keeps a lot of people from honing their craft and moving on to original fiction. After years of NaNoWriMo and some side work with an editor, I've only seen one person start with fanfic and graduate to doing their own, thoroughly original work. It's like they're just too scared to ever leave their comfort ...

I promise you, if you do it without permission and get published nonetheless, they will sue the shit out of you. You have to ask for permission, there will be legal contracts, because the world's "owner" wants money, your story must really fit and must not disrupt anything the owner wants to do in the future. So, if you have a name and are already ...

If you are writing it to make money: don't. If the world created gives you inspiration and makes you sit down and write for hours, then go ahead and do it. It's your mind, and you can write whatever you want as long as it's not published. Let people/editors/whoever read it, and if the feedback tells you it is really, really good, the you can contact the ...

Some writers will tell you that writing fan fiction is lazy, uncreative, a fruitless endeavor, and a waste of time. Personally I don't think that's true. Fan fiction is great practice for writing, learning how to plot, and learning how to characterize, etc. There are plenty of fan fic writers who are highly praised as "being better than the original", ...

The problem with fan fiction is that it will always be tied down to the source material, and can't really become more than what it is. They're a sidetrack rather than a stepping stone. Okay, to reword that first paragraph: If you are going to draw from a source material, be aware that you are creating a branch of the source material. You're creating ...

I have encountered numbers of excellent fanfics out there which could stand out on their own, and be excellent works by themselves if the author just didn't constrain himself into the pre-created world. I'm not saying that you should always create your own worlds, but when you're confident about your work and people start to appreciate it, it might be a ...

It's a crutch. The scariest thing about writing is the idea that nobody will like (or even understand) the stories and characters you create. Writing fanfic is an attempt to dodge that risk by using stories and characters that are already well liked and well understood instead. The problem is that you never learn anything without taking a risk, and so by ...

I know many people who started out writing fanfiction and then turned this into the basis of a professional career. Off the top of my head, both Paul Cornell and Una McCormack both started by writing fanfic and are now professional authors. Unfortunately it can be all too easy to spend all of your time there. If you think you'll enjoy it, write fanfic by ...

Normally this kind of statement would appear by itself at the beginning of your material. With a print magazine, there are a couple of options. One option would be to place it as small print in a footer on the cover. Another would be to place it by itself in regular print on the very first page inside the cover. The latter would probably be the best option. ...

I read recently (I think in a review of CBS's Elementary) that technically every adaption of Sherlock Holmes after Conan Doyle is "fanfiction" in a sense, and it's easy to see that some are really excellent stories. (::cough::BBC Sherlock::cough::) Those movies and TV series may be "continuing someone else's story," but you can't argue that they aren't ...

Keep in mind that Doctor Who is not written by one man. The list of screenwriters is actually very, very long: List of Doctor Who writers. You might argue that, to a certain degree, most of them actually wrote fan fiction, since they were not the original creators of the series, but fan fiction that became canon once the episodes were filmed and aired ;) ...

Generally, the acceptability of fan fiction depends on the original story. As another post stated, some origianl authros are fine with it, while others are not. In the case of Dr. Who, apparently the producers are okay with it because I found at least a dozen different fan sites and such that contained hundreds of fan fiction articles, including one that had ...

It is not a crutch. Writing is writing. As Jeff Atwood put it: The process of writing is indeed a journey of discovery, one that will last the rest of your life. It doesn't ultimately matter whether you're writing a novel, a printer review, a Stack Overflow answer, fan fiction, a blog entry, a comment, a technical whitepaper, some emo ...

I think fanfic can a very good training ground. They have provided characters, settings and most importantly audience. That lets you focus on hone your other skills. The biggest advantage is that it has a built in audience that tends to review what you've done. You get feedback and that is the most valuable thing you can get. Think of it as a form of ...

If you're creating this for a Quark tutorial, it's reasonable to assume that it will most frequently (if not always) be seen in the context of "someone learning Quark" rather than "accidentally winds up on newsstand or coffee table." So I don't think you need to put it on the cover. If you are parodying a magazine, then a magazine has a colophon, which is a ...

Most books have this page with small-print at the front or back which usually goes like (example from the book nearest to my bed): © Dan Simmons 2004 Hyperion copyright © 1989; All rights reserved This means that the book has specific copyright claimed to it. In most countries (I am not a lawyer, don't blame/believe me, yada...) copyright ...

Someone asked in reddit whether fan fiction can be "taken seriously". Here's what I said - much of the same points as others are saying: Go ahead and try. Simplest advice I can give is just that. But if you really want to get ahead with writing, go ahead and try some more stuff. The only big problem with fan fiction that I've seen is that you're always ...

I am a bit of an amateur writer and I have always considered fan fic to be the bottom of the barrel. The people who write it are generally those who have obsessed over some one else's work. They may re-arrange the concepts and plot, but they are creating nothing really new. Most are also so inept at writing that in truth they detract from it. As some one ...

In theory I have no problem with fan fiction, however the fact that the fan fiction community's standards are absymally low is enough to dissuade me from ever associating my work with them. Using another writer's characters, setting, and themes is perfectly reasonable though and has been used by professional and accomplished writers throughout history. I ...