Fan Fiction

Wikipedia defines Fan fiction as a broadly-defined fan labour term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.

Some people, including authors, look down upon fan fiction. Some, like for example Robin Hobb, do not even allow fans to use her story as a basis for fan fiction. The most common argument against fan fiction is that a writer has to learn to create their own worlds, characters and stories. I agree with that, but I am also in favour for fan fiction.

I have read a lot of fan fiction and written a couple of stories myself. Most of them were set in Harry Potter universe. While there is crap among them, some of the stories are brilliantly written. Sometimes I did wonder why such skilled writers would waste their time on fan fiction, but I dreamt of becoming a published writer as well when I wrote fan fiction. I wrote fan fiction because I enjoyed it so much. I loved working with the character I knew so well (or thought I knew so well) and expand the stories we already had. I knew that nothing would be as good as the original, but that didn’t matter to me. Fan fiction gives characters and settings an entire new life. And I do think fan fiction is a great flattery. If people like your work so much that they want to create their own stories with them, you should be happy. I would be thrilled if someone would do this with my work someday. As long as they do not own money from it, or do not claim the original idea to be theirs, I see no problems.

Fan fiction makes writing swift. You do not have to do any world building and often you do not have to flesh out characters. It is a great way to teach yourself to write without having to put months’ worth of work into it. But you will never become a good writer when you stick to fan fiction. You are missing the whole process of world building and character creation, which is as important as the plot and the writing itself. I do think it is important to understand when you write a fan fiction that you limit yourself to certain aspects of writing. Now that I finally found an original story that I cannot stop working in, I have given up fan fiction for now. I’m not saying that I am never going to write any again, but original stories have my priority. 

Cassandra Clare and E.L. James are two well-known authors who stared their careers with writing fan fiction. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey started off as a Twilight fan fiction while Clare wrote Harry Potter fan fiction. There are probably other authors around who did the same, but these two are the ones that came to mind. It is not because you write fan fiction that you will never become a good writer. It is writing only fan fiction that will hold you back from becoming a great writer.

Fanfiction.net is, I think, the largest fan fiction site on the internet.

Review: Clockwork Angel - Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare is the first book in the Infernal Devices series and a prequel the the Mortal Instruments series. The review might contain small setting spoiler, but I will not give anything away about the plot.

The book cover. Source: google

I do not often read Young Adult, but wanted something 'easy' to read during the exams and decided to start to read this book. It's the first book I've read by Clare and certainly not the last.

"When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray arrives in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Friendless and hunted, Tessa seeks refuge with the Shadowhunters, a band of warriors dedicated of ridding the world of demons. Drawn even deeper into their world, she finds herself fascinated by - and torn between- two best friends and quickly realizes that love may be the most dangerous magic of them all."

Summary on the back of the book.

In the beginning of the book I wasn't sure what to think of it. Half the prologue shouldn't be a prologue but just a part of the first chapter. Also the feeling of the main protagonist disturbed me. She enters a whole new world and learns something shocking about herself, but she almost immediately seems to be fine with this. Later in the book she has some more emotions about it, but nothing major. If the author had spent some more attention to this, the book would have been better. What is really good about the book is that it manages to spread the action very well. There are enough slower scenes in the book but when I got the feeling it was starting to go too slow, an action scene appeared. Clare's writing style is, as is appropriate for a YA novel, simple without being childlike. She describes only what is necessary to set a scene or create a certain feeling so the story isn't slowed down by this. Two of the characters play around with poems and more then once fictional characters from well known books were mentioned. As a literature fan and student, I really enjoyed this. It might be a bit annoying if you have no clue what they are talking about but luckily those references never last longer then a couple of sentences.
The plot could use a bit more polishing and character development as well. I really enjoyed this book and was quite annoyed when the epilogue ended with a cliffhanger since I shouldn't be spending money on books right now though I'm dying to know what would happen next. Due to the Clare's writing style and the constant wonder of were the story would be going, I finished this book rather fast even though I did not have a lot of time to read it. I will recommend this book to people who like the supernatural, aren't annoyed that most of the characters are young (under 25, though they all are rather mature)  and don't get upset by the lack of character development. While the back of the book seems to emphasis love it is, at least in the first part of the series, a minor part of the plot.

If I had the rate this book, I'll give it a 3/5.