Why I Write Fan Fiction

09.11.09 / Writing in General / Author: admin0
Tags: characters, fanfic, Star Trek, Star Trek novels, Van Helsing, writing fan fiction

The simple answer is because it’s fun. But it’s more complicated than that. I write about the characters who seemed to me to need to live beyond whatever media they first inhabited.

I started out writing Star Trek fan fiction when I was around 9, I guess. I wish I still had those furiously penned things so I could laugh and reminisce. I only remember that they focused on my favorites: Spock, Kirk and McCoy. And boy oh boy were they dramatic. I was the Queen of Dramatic Openings and Dire Circumstances for All if Kirk could Not Once Again Pull the SUPER Dramatic Solution out of His Ass.

I remember one that I particularly liked involved Kirk and Spock on the bridge. The turbolift whooshed open (and I’m pretty sure I used the word whooshed), Doctor McCoy stepped out and opened his mouth to no doubt make a smart-ass remark about something, when he immediately collapsed in agonizing pain. He was going to die, and everyone knew it. They didn’t know why, because of course I had no clue. But they had to save him and time was running out–Dundundun DUUUUNNNNNNN.

I wrote those stories because I’d watched every episode of Star Trek long before reaching that age (apparently Dad indoctrinated me very early by holding me on his lap while he watched them semi-obsessively) and it just wasn’t enough. Those characters were too big for that short-lived series. I wanted them to live again. Then the Star Trek novels appeared under the Timescape label, and I clutched The Entropy Effect from the small grocery store next door to my not-yet-developed chest and thought, OH MY GOD YAY OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS, TOO.

Well, modern’ net lingo has crept in. This was almost 30 years ago–I probably actually thought something like GEE WHILLICKERS OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS, DANG THAT’S SUPER SWELL!

Once I got online in the late 1990s, while still a die-hard Star Trek fan, I was at the time quite taken with a show called Forever Knight. The Internet not only introduced me to Star Trek fanfic of every stripe, but a pretty active FK community of writers and readers and general appreciation of the actors and the show. I again thought excited thoughts in capital letters and devoured what I found, and soon began writing fan fiction again. I paused now and then, but have written fairly steadily since then, mostly in Forever Knight, and then about 6 years later I discovered Van Helsing and found Carl and Gabriel didn’t really fit into a small little movie. Just Carl’s weapons alone needed more room than that.

I’ve only dabbled in a few other fandoms, but when an idea strikes or a character seems like he wants to break free, at least in my head, I let him go.  He might not do or say things that everybody likes, and in fact might be playing for an audience of one, but since the whole reason I write fan fiction is to get the characters to act out the stories I think they belong in, that’s all right with me