Fan fiction, very simply, is the genre of stories, poetry, novels, filk songs, and top ten lists written by fans of a particular series, be it television, literary, or what have you. If you've ever written a story about something you like, involving characters created by someone else with a legal right to them, you've written fan fiction. Welcome to the fold. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to limit myself to fanfic on the Internet, as it has found a welcome niche in the growing world of virtual reality. For some reason, the heroes we see on tv become more tangible when we ourselves can become the fiction.

Fanfic writers on the Net are a motley bunch. The youngest author I've met was ten. The oldest (that I know of) was in her sixties. The one thing they, and all of us, have in common is a fierce love of a particular series, so much that they wanted to let everyone else have a piece of the particular reality they had built up around it. That is the first requirement of writing fanfic. You must love your subject. This becomes especially important when you're in the midst of a 200k+ story, you know vaguely where you want to go, and writer's block hits. At that point, it is frighteningly easy to give up and delete everything you've written, and without a burning passion for your subject material, you might find yourself tempted to do just that.

Now, I could be noble and claim that my respect and adoration for a particular series is the only reason I write fan fiction. I would be lying. There are two real reasons why I write this stuff, and from what I've heard from other authors, they do the same. One reason is that story lines get stuck in my head until I can't concentrate on anything other than a particular plot or scene. In this case, writing is a means of self-defense. It either gets written, or I get carted away by nice folks wearing white.

Really, though, there is one single overriding reason that I and most everyone I know writes fan fiction for the Internet: FAN MAIL! Yes, I will admit to being a slut for fan mail. One letter will put me on Cloud 9 for the entire day, and I've seen the same effect on my associates. Of course we write for the series, and for our own piece of mind, but nothing beats getting a letter in your INBOX stating "This is the best story I've read in ages!" Well, maybe getting a story dedicated to you from a new author who was inspired by your work can qualify, too. [Hi Proteus!]

In a way, that's what this entire essay is geared to: getting you fanmail. (Somehow, I seriously doubt I'll be getting any for writing about writing.) I can't guarantee that you'll be getting more, but I can guarantee that the people who read your work will appreciate it more. I've also found that people who really enjoy a particular piece will take the time to spell out both the good and the bad points, and one good, honest critique, no matter how hard it might be to swallow, is worth twenty "I liked this a lot"'s.