Welcome to An Introduction to Fanfiction.

The first thing I wish to be clear about is the target audience of An Introduction to Fanfiction. The first target audience for An Introduction to Fanfiction is in fact those who are not familiar with fanfiction and are looking to have certain misconceptions about fanfiction cleared up. The second target audience is parents who have had no involvement in the fanfiction community but happen to have children who are interested in writing fanfiction as well as teachers. The third target audience is the newbie fanfic writer whose tired of blundering around not knowing the ins and outs of the fanfiction community.

The target audience for An Introduction to Fanfiction is not fanfic writers and readers who have been around the fanfiction community for some time. Chances are said writers and readers already know most of what I have to say, though there may be some things I say that are new concepts to them and others will be things they disagree with. The essays encompass what I feel people need to know to understand the fanfiction community, nothing more and nothing less. Everything is going to be basic and bare bones, or at least that is the plan.

The second thing I wish to make clear is that there are going to be certain biases on my part that I can't avoid. One of the biases I can note in the introduction is that I will have certain biases to lean towards examples from fandoms I know the community of well. I personally don't think this is something that can be escaped by any writer as the fandom community is vast and very complex. Let me emphasize that this is basic and bare bones.

The other bias happens to be a bit harder to explain. I am very aware of how certain people within a particular group view their “niche” group within their fanfic community and the way I present their “niche” group may not add up to how they see their group and may end up ruffling some feathers. This may be because my attempt to present a particular “niche” group will end up not being as unbiased as I would like, but it also may be because I present something that said “niche” group doesn't like talking about or even pretends doesn't exist.

The third thing that I wish to bring up is my credentials. While there are some people who would love to know whether this group of essays are written by someone with a doctorate or someone who has no college experience and dropped out of high school I'm not going to give people any such information. Fact of the matter is nobody in the fanfiction community knows who I am off line. This is due to the anonymity of the web and I wish for said anonymity to be respected.

The credentials I will give will instead involve my experience within the fanfiction community. I have in fact been a member of the fanfiction community for over ten years now. I spent a bit of time lurking before I actually created an account and started publishing stories. I have no personal experience with the fanzines or the mailing lists that were the precursor to fanfiction archives so my knowledge on these is limited to the research I've been able to do. On top of doing a lot of research, I've written quite a few fanfics as well as critiqued a lot of other writers works.

Despite this I make no claim to having perfect knowledge of the fanfiction community. My reasons behind writing An Introduction to Fanfiction are the following. First and foremost it has always bothered me that while there has been a ton of essays on fanfic writing out their on the net I have never, ever found a guide that explained fanfiction to parents and teachers.

The second reason comes from the fact I've come across a comment claiming that there are no “official” works dealing with the fanfiction community. Even this piece will not be considered “official” by this person because it is not published for profit nor is it published by a university press or professional magazine that yet again involves making some kind of profit off the work. On top of this the “official” work I would consider to be the most well known paints a picture of the fanfiction community that myself and other writers feel is inaccurate and instead represents a personal platform by the writer of said work that is detrimental to the fanfiction community as a whole.

For those looking for an “official” work like the above person wants, let me make it clear that what counts as an “official” work in the fanfiction community is different then what counts as an “official” work in the regular publishing industry. Since fanfiction itself is not published through the same channels as the regular publishing industry publishes stories it stands to reason that the “official” essays and writings dealing with fanfiction will also not be published through the same channels.

A lot of the resources we use within our essay writings in regards to fanfiction are primary sources involving our personal experience within the fanfiction community. While it is true that essays published in the usual manner try to stay away from primary sources that give personal testimony and instead use primary sources that give concrete evidence, the essays written in regards to fanfiction break the trend and use a lot of personal testimony from the writers.

This doesn't mean that the essays aren't reliable. There are many reasons why we don't bring up names and direct examples. One of these reasons happens to be that our examples are now “gone” from the web because a particular writer up and left. Another reason comes from the way “flamers” operate in the fanfiction community. I'm planning on discussing “flamers” in more depth later so I'll simply say we have enough trouble with them when we write up critique for individual works, so when we can leave out a name we do. This said, there are times that we will use names or examples.

Let me also say that I'm choosing to publish this for “free” because I believe in the philosophy of not profiting off another writers copyright. I think I could publish it for “free” on Amazon or some where else... I'm honestly not sure if I can do that without paying some kind of “fee” for publishing... but I want this to be easy for anyone to access when they need it.