Why is Most Fanfiction Bad?

If you have ever written both a fanfiction and an original story, you know there is a vast gap between the two. Frankly speaking fanfiction is easier to write. You already have most if not all the main characters created, an established universe, and often a general story arc and themes from the source material. Compared to creating your own characters and universe it’s practically child’s play. Why then is most fanfiction such unadulterated crap?

The easy answer is that most people don’t know how to write-- technically or creatively-- But I don’t think that is the heart of the problem. The challenge for the fanfiction writer is to accurately reflect the original characters.  Even the professional writers sometimes fail at this when working with someone else’s characters. How much harder is it for an amateur writer, perhaps doing their first public work, to capture the spirit of another person’s creation? 

It’s a difficult task to capture the essence of something, but the challenge does not stop there. And author who does not desire to make a character their own is doomed to failure. Writing that doesn’t involve the self is without passion. Such a work can only be a failure. So a fanfiction author must balance out their own creative thoughts with the source material. It is a frustrating dilemma.

The low quality of most fanfiction as lead many famous authors to attack it, and express their wishes that people not write fanfiction of their work. I can understand this, but I wonder if there isn’t an element of possessiveness in the sentiment: The notion that your characters and stories are only yours to play with and imagine? But this is not how culture works. The moment you release something to the public they will begin reimagining it, and the more popular it is the more they will reimagine. If I ever wrote something so popular that a fan community started putting up their own work I would be extremely flattered, even if most of it was crap unworthy of attention. I also believe that a strong fan community is important to the success of any media work. 

Most fanfiction is terrible; I shied away from writing any based only on its horrible reputation. But there is good fanfiction. I have even read a few works which I believe are of professional quality, even better than what sometimes passes as professional quality. So don’t be afraid to write, to grow the fandom. Because fandom is an act of love and it opens the doors to even greater creativity.

-Gedaemon