There seem to be two types of people: those who know what fanfiction is and those who have no idea. The former type can be broken down further into two more types: those who write and/or appreciate fanfiction and those who criticize and mock it, whether they write it or not. I fall into the group that knows what fanfiction is. I used to write it, and I still appreciate so much of it. I’ll go into that more in a moment.

Before that, I want to say that I understand why the other group makes fun of fanfiction. Some of the ridicule is rightly deserved. It’s now common knowledge that the atrocious Fifty Shades book and movie trilogies came to be because of a terrible Twilight fanfiction story. People trashed the mediocre quality of the writing and laughed at how ridiculous the premise was. At the time, while I wrote fanfiction, I also had (and still have) aspirations to write and print a book. When I saw that a book publisher had picked up a freaking fanfiction, then a movie studio decided to capitalize on that, and THEN many people actually ate it all up, I wanted to be sick.

I think that’s when fanfiction really received a bad reputation, although it didn’t get positive treatment before that either. Anyone can write fanfiction pieces about any fandom, from anime, movies, and TV shows to books and video games. I can tell you with absolute certainty that, as with many things, there are a lot of bad fanfiction authors and stories. The writing is poor, and the plots make no sense at all. The characters, ones that readers know and love, are wildly out-of-character. If there are original characters, then they are usually incomplete and ill-conceived. Romantic pairings and sex are added for no apparent reason other than the author’s wish fulfillment. Fanfiction has even become an insult to use when, say, a TV show has severely declined in overall quality. I’m sure you can come up with a few examples, so I won’t do that here.

I continue to appreciate fanfiction, I promise. While there are a ton of crappy pieces of fanfiction, there are truly incredible pieces as well. There are authors out there who are not only great writers, but they love and understand the fandoms that they’re writing about. Sometimes, they can emulate the original writers to a T, or they use their own, exceptional writing styles. They respect the source material and add interesting and wonderful details on top of that, details that make sense in that fictional world. They write in the voices of beloved characters, or they create unique characters that are believable and three-dimensional. These original characters can conceivably exist in that world.

In quite a few instances, fanfiction can improve on the source material in a big way. If an anime didn’t end the way you wanted it to, you can write an alternative ending. If a TV show was cancelled way too soon, you can write about it and resume the stories, revisit the characters, and increase the world-building all in your own way. If a romantic couple really does seem right to you, yet the movie ended without those two getting together, well you can write a different ending for that. Just, please, have a good reason for it, and don’t overindulge. There are even crossover stories in which authors merge multiple fictional worlds and have different characters interact with one another across various genres. I feel like there’s a fine line to cross in those stories; however, I respect the people who tackle them.

Most importantly, I think that fanfiction can help amateur authors improve their writing through direct and almost immediate reader feedback. On fanfiction.net, registered and anonymous users can leave reviews, and the author can learn who their audience is and what their writing strengths and weaknesses are. I wrote fanfiction for ten years. Of course, growing up and staying in school made my writing better. The more education I received, the more techniques I could apply to my writing.

But I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the constructive criticism and compliments I’ve gotten over the years. I’ve read reviews that tell it like it is: people haven’t been afraid to say what they disliked about my stories while also remaining very polite. Others weren’t as pleasant. They hated what I did to their adored fandom, and I understood their passion.

For the most part, I’ve been praised for my writing. I remember reading an awesome review in which a person commended how I treated the source material and characters. They even pulled a detail that I had written regarding the height difference between two characters and how that would affect their relationship. I couldn’t believe that they took away such a small detail, yet I was so happy that they did. It encouraged me and showed me that my writing was truly good. When I realized that there were people who wanted to read what I wrote, it gave me the confidence to put it out there.

I continue to write and keep in mind the lessons that I’ve learned, no matter where they came from. Most of them come from my personal life and came from school. Some of them came from fanfiction.