Patricia Eimer | Why FanFiction is a Good Place to Start

I have a confession to make. It's deep and dark and some writers would even call it shameful or deviant. And I wouldn't tell you except we're all friends here. Right? Okay, so here it goes. My name is Patricia Eimer and I'm a fangirl. My addiction to shows like Life on Mars and Doctor Who are so strong that I've even delved into the world of *gasp* fanfiction.

I know, I know, it's something I shouldn't talk about. I could tell you I was young and stupid. Or that I was impressionable and in with a bad crowd of rabid television watchers. But that wouldn't be true. I was a grown up when I wrote fanfiction (most fanfiction writers are) and the people I met are some of the most wonderful, caring, people you'll ever meet. And, if I'm being brave, I can tell you that everything I learned about how to write came from the four years I spent diligently typing away at stories that went no further than a fansite.

Some people might call that stealing from another author -- in my case all television writers—I call it the working woman's MFA in Creative Writing. For me, it all started with a girlfriend who asked all her broke friends to write her short stories, all based on the same characters, as birthday presents. A pretty clever idea for a group of broke, overworked grad students with too much stress and not enough hobbies besides beer. Which brought me to a story based on BBC America's Robin Hood. It was all of 4 pages and looking back at it now wasn't very good. Okay, it was  terrible. Really terrible. But it served a good purpose. That story got my fingers on the keys and suddenly, I remembered why I wanted to be a writer when I was in high school. You know that time back before college when you weren't worried about having a career and how you were going to pay back your student loans? Suddenly that pure joy was back and I was hooked.

That first story took a savaging. It was brutal. The story was a snippet. The characters didn't work quite right. My use of the English language bordered somewhat on a crime against humanity. Hadn't I ever heard of a beta reader? Well no, I hadn't actually.  That was my first take away from that story. Get a beta reader. The second, buried in all of those reviews was this: "the story sucked for x&y reasons but you know, it was pretty funny." That was my second take away -- other people thought I was funny.

With that, the fire was lit. I got a good friend of mine to act as a beta reader and new stories started to spin out of my fingers and onto the screen. With each one my writing got a bit better and new readers started to follow me. I learned how to study a character. What elements were essential to a plot. How to build a backstory and add all those little psychological tics a character needs to seem real.

I started to write Doctor Who fanfiction and began to delve into watching the way a master layered story. And don't let anyone tell you different -- Russell T Davis is a master storyteller. I watched David Tennant build a nuanced, layered character on screen who was filled with insecurities and flaws. And I ruthlessly deconstructed what took place on screen to build my technique.

The most important thing writing fanfiction did though was give me confidence. It gave me a place to explore and grow as an author. It was a virtually anonymous place where the "real" people in my life didn't know me because I worked under a pen name. Online I was a screen name and if that screen name wrote horrible fiction the women at the PTO couldn't stare and point at her. That screen name was someone else. And having that freedom to fail and not be laughed at was liberating.

After four years of anonymity I finally felt like I knew enough to try writing my own characters. To try living in my own imagination instead of within the constraints that someone else set for me. That didn't mean it wasn't scary because, trust me, it was terrifying. But the best thing I'd gotten out of all that time writing fanfiction was the support system of other writers I'd created who made me laugh, listened to me cry, and held my hand the whole way. And when Luck of the Devil was accepted for publication by Entangled Publishing my friends online celebrated along with me.

So, some people may call writing fanfiction stealing, or a waste of time, or even compare it to brutal crimes against women. I call it the best four year learning experience of my life. Sort of like college but without the crippling student loan debt afterward.

Patricia Eimer
"Devilishly Funny Romance"
PatriciaEimer.com