{"id":10321,"date":"2022-02-06T14:53:06","date_gmt":"2022-02-06T14:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/06\/what-is-fanfiction\/"},"modified":"2022-02-06T14:53:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T14:53:06","slug":"what-is-fanfiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/06\/what-is-fanfiction\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Fanfiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fanfiction is one of the biggest phenomena on the internet, with entire websites and communities dedicated to it. Keep reading to discover what fanfiction is, where it comes from, and why millions of people read and write it.<\/p>\n

Fanmade Stories<\/h2>\n

Fanfiction, or \u201cfanfic,\u201d is a type of fictional story based on another work of fiction. These stories are published on the internet by amateur writers who are fans of the existing property. There are also fanfics written about non-fictional settings and people, such as celebrities and historical figures.<\/p>\n

The length and content of these stories can vary wildly. Some fanfics are barely a few paragraphs long, while others have hundreds of thousands of words and span the length of multiple novels. Fanfics incorporate various existing story elements, including the setting, characters, story elements, and even writing style.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest reasons fanfiction remains so popular is how it brings communities of fans together into self-identified \u201cfandoms<\/a>.\u201d We previously discussed \u201cships<\/a>,\u201d which are romantic pairings of particular characters that frequently have dedicated fanbases of their own. Fanfiction is a way for fans of specific ships to create stories centered around their preferred pairing and share that work with others. These fans will often congregate in community-driven social media websites like Twitter, Tumblr, or Reddit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> What Is a “Stan,” and Where Does the Name Come From?<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A Brief History of Fanfiction<\/h2>\n
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While the idea of \u201cfanfiction\u201d came to prominence in the internet age, the actual genre predates the web by over a thousand years. Authors have been writing fanfiction since the 19th century. For example, Anna M. Richards released A New Alice in the Old Wonderland<\/em> in 1895, based on the Alice in Wonderland<\/em> books that Lewis Carroll wrote several decades earlier.<\/p>\n

The modern iteration of fanfiction began during the 1960s in the Star Trek<\/em> fan community. Fans of Star Trek would publish and share around \u201cfanzines\u201d that contained amateur works based on the world and characters.<\/p>\n

Eventually, with the rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, fans started to create websites that could host fanfiction. One of the biggest communities in the early years of the web was the fandom of Harry Potter<\/a>, the enormously successful series of fantasy books. Harry Potter was instrumental in the rise of fanfiction authorship and readership, and it remains one of the biggest fandoms to this day. Other massive fandoms include Marvel, Twilight, and Supernatural.<\/p>\n

Types of Fanfiction<\/h2>\n

As fanfiction has developed into a literary genre of its own, various subgenres of fanfiction have emerged. Here are some common types you can find in fan communities:<\/p>\n