Fan fiction, also called fanfic, is a type of writing created by fans. It is not approved by the original creators but uses characters, settings, or other elements from an existing story. Writers may keep the original details, add new ones, or mix both. Fan fiction can be very short or as long as a book. It is based on stories from many types of media, such as books, movies, comics, TV shows, music groups, cartoons, anime, manga, and video games.
Most fan fiction is not officially requested or published by the original creators or their publishers. It may break copyright rules, depending on the laws in a certain place and whether it is considered "fair use." Some original authors support fan fiction, while others do not care or oppose it. In some cases, legal action has been taken.
The term "fan fiction" became common in the 20th century as copyright laws started to separate stories that used characters with permission from those that did not.
Fan fiction is connected to the original story's universe. It may follow the original story's rules or create a different version of events. This means that what fans believe is true about the story (called "fanon") is not the same as the official story (called "canon"). Fan fiction is usually shared among fans and may not be easy for people who are not familiar with the original work to understand.
Definition
The term "fan fiction" was first used in print as early as 1938. At that time, it described science fiction stories written by amateur writers, as opposed to "pro fiction," which refers to stories written by professional writers. The term also appeared in the 1944 Fancyclopedia, a dictionary of terms used by fans of science fiction. In this reference, "fan fiction" was defined as "fiction about fans, or sometimes about professionals, and occasionally including famous characters from science fiction stories." The Fancyclopedia also noted that the term was "sometimes improperly used to mean fan science fiction; that is, ordinary fantasy stories published in fan magazines."
History
Before modern copyright laws existed, it was common for writers to use characters or stories from other works. For example, many of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, As You Like It, and The Winter’s Tale, were based on stories written by other authors during the same time period.
In 1614, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda wrote a story that continued Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote before Cervantes had finished writing his own second volume of the book.
Some people debate whether Dante Alighieri’s Inferno can be considered a type of fanfiction that includes the author as a character from the Bible.
In the 19th century, some books were adapted without the permission of the original authors. For example, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was changed in a translated version called Powers of Darkness. Jane Austen’s books, like Pride and Prejudice, are often used for unauthorized stories, such as Old Friends and New Fancies. Many stories about Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, were written by others, including The Adventure of the Two Collaborators by J. M. Barrie. Other examples include The Space Machine and Morlock Night, which are based on H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine; A New Alice in the Old Wonderland, based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; and Wide Sargasso Sea, based on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
The modern idea of fanfiction, where fans write stories about their favorite books, movies, or TV shows, began with the Star Trek fan community in the 1960s. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia (1967), included fanfiction stories. These fanzines were printed using special machines and sent to fans or sold at science fiction events. Many fanfiction writers were women. By 1970, 83% of Star Trek fanfiction authors were female, and by 1973, 90% were female. One expert said that fanfiction helps meet the needs of a mostly female audience by creating stories that expand on official stories from movies and TV shows.
Since the Internet became widely used, fanfiction has grown in popularity. One estimate says that one-third of all book-related content online is fanfiction. In addition to traditional fanzines and events, online groups and email lists were created for fanfiction and discussions. Online archives, where people could search for fanfiction stories, were also started. These archives were first run by volunteers and focused on specific books or topics. Later, automated systems were used to manage these archives. In 1998, a website called FanFiction.Net was created. This site allowed anyone to upload fanfiction stories about any book or movie. The site became popular because it let users post stories easily and read reviews online. A well-known example of modern fanfiction is Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James, which was originally written as a story about characters from the Twilight series. James changed the names of the characters to avoid copyright issues, a practice called “pulling-to-publish.” Another example is After by Anna Todd, a story about the boy band One Direction. The book and movie versions of After used new names for the characters and were released in 2014 and 2019, respectively.
In 2013, Amazon launched a service called Kindle Worlds, which allowed fanfiction based on officially licensed stories to be sold on Amazon. Authors received 35% of sales for longer stories and 20% for shorter ones. However, the service had rules about content, formatting, and titles. Amazon stopped Kindle Worlds in 2018.
In Japan, a similar trend began in the 1960s and 1970s with doujinshi, which are independently published manga and novels. These works often used characters from popular manga, anime, or video games. Artists like Shotaro Ishinomori and Fujiko Fujio started doujin groups, such as Fujio’s New Manga Party. At first, these groups helped artists become professionals. Later, doujinshi became more popular, and groups formed in places like school clubs. This trend led to the creation of Comiket in 1975, a large event in Tokyo that helped grow the doujinshi community.
Demographics
A 2010 study showed that 75.2% of users on FanFiction.Net allowed the website to share their location. Of these users, 57% were from the United States, 9.2% from the United Kingdom, 5.6% from Canada, and 4% from Australia.
A 2020 study of Harry Potter fan fiction writers on Archive Of Our Own (AO3) found that, among users who shared their location, 59.7% were from North America, 16.9% from Great Britain, 10.1% from Mainland Europe, 6.3% from Oceania, 2.8% from Scandinavia, 2.2% from Asia, 1.8% from South America and the Caribbean, and 0.2% from the Middle East. The study did not include users who wrote in Chinese, Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, or Turkish.
The same study found that, among users who shared their gender, 50.4% identified as female or leaning toward female, and 13.4% identified as male or leaning toward male. Eleven percent of users identified as transgender, 21% identified as nonbinary, genderfluid, or genderqueer, and 3.9% identified as agender or genderless.
The study also found that most Harry Potter fan fiction writers were in their early to mid-20s. Of these writers, 56.7% were students or young adults, 21.3% were 30 years or older, 19.8% were teenagers, and 0.2% were of retirement age.
Unlike many fan fiction communities where more women participate, Fimfiction (the largest site for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan fiction) has a mostly male audience.
Categories and terms
In addition to the usual list of genres, some types of stories are especially common in fan fiction. These genres can overlap and include:
Stories that are filled with sadness or worry, focusing on characters who are brooding, sorrowful, or in pain.
Stories that place characters in a different world than the one they are known for in their original story. These can change the setting, such as moving characters from a non-fantasy world to a magical one; change how characters act, which is called "out of character" (OOC); or change major events in the story, like in a "fix-it fic" that changes the original plot to fix problems.
Stories that take place in a world similar to the original one, where characters believe they have soulmates. Common ideas include names being written on skin at birth or changes happening when soulmates meet. A common theme is a character believing they don’t deserve a soulmate, only to learn they do after falling in love.
Stories where a character travels back in time to change the future, using knowledge from the original story. This is sometimes called "Peggy Sue" after a movie, or "Groundhog Day" if time travel repeats until the character learns a lesson.
Stories that include characters, items, or places from more than one fandom. A type of crossover is "fusion fic," where two universes are combined.
Stories that are darker or more serious than the original, often used to contrast lighter stories. This can include stories with disturbing themes, like violence or abuse. Not all stories labeled "dark" are considered darkfic.
"Dead Dove Do Not Eat" (DDDNE) is a type of darkfic. It started as a tag on a website in 2015 to warn readers about dark themes. The name comes from a TV show where a character finds a dead dove in a bag and says, "I don’t know what I expected." This tag reminds readers to take other dark themes seriously.
Stories that rewrite parts of the original story the author disliked, such as changing tragic endings. These are sometimes called "rebuild fics" or "rationalist rewrites" if they focus on logic.
Stories that are happy and romantic. These are also called "WAFF," short for "warm and fuzzy feelings."
Stories where a character goes through a hard experience and is comforted by another. A type of this is "whump," which focuses on the pain without much comfort.
Stories where the author’s version of themselves is sent into the fictional world. These are often written in first person and compared to "Mary Sue" characters. Some types include "y/n," "xReader," or "imagines."
Stories based on other fan works, called "remixes" on some websites.
Stories that include song lyrics. These are called "songfics," but they may break copyright rules. Some sites prevent this.
"Uberfic" is a type of story where characters look and act like their original versions but have new names and backgrounds. This started in a TV show called Xena: Warrior Princess and has been used in published books.
"Author’s notes" are messages from the writer, usually at the start or end of a story.
A "beta" is someone who edits or checks a story for errors.
The "canon" is the original story, including its plot, setting, and characters.
"Disclaimers" are notes that tell readers who created the original work and often say the story is not meant to copy it. These have no legal effect.
A "drabble" is a short story exactly 100 words long.
A "fandom" is a group of fans who love a story and create things like fan fiction.
A "fan" is someone who loves a story or its characters.
"Fanon" is an idea accepted by fans but not confirmed by the original creator.
"Hanahaki disease" is a fictional illness.
Interactivity in the online era
Most websites allow both anonymous and registered users to post reviews. These sites usually send a message to the author when someone leaves feedback. This helps readers and authors talk online and allows authors to improve their writing with helpful suggestions. Sometimes, uncontrolled review systems are used for harsh messages, unwanted messages, or disruptive behavior. To stop this, an author can choose to allow or block anonymous reviews based on their choice. Fan fiction has also been shown to help improve reading and writing skills by letting authors share their work with more people and encouraging others to write.
Other ways for fandom members to join their community include gift exchanges and fic exchanges. A gift exchange is a planned activity where members write fan fiction for other members. They might find out what the person receiving the gift likes, or some submissions include a note that explains the recipient's preferences.
Social and psychological aspects
Fanfiction offers a different kind of story world that helps readers take a break from daily problems or situations that feel unsatisfying. When people read stories, they often imagine themselves in the fictional worlds and characters that matter to them. This kind of reading lets people decide how they want to experience the story, such as reading favorite parts again or skipping parts that don’t interest them. This helps readers feel in control of their experience.
In fanfiction, readers and writers use familiar stories but change them in creative ways. Writers might imagine new versions of old stories, such as changing characters or events, or creating "alternate universes." This allows both writers and readers to include details and ideas from their own lives into the stories they create.
Some experts believe that reading fanfiction helps people form one-sided emotional connections with fictional characters or media figures. These connections can continue through fanfiction, where readers write new stories or imagine new situations for characters, keeping or changing these emotional bonds beyond the original story.
For young readers and writers, fanfiction can help them explore who they might become, how they might relate to others, or what their future might look like in a safe, imaginative way.
In fan culture, deeply connecting with stories is often described as happening in a special kind of space, called a "third space." This space is between a person’s private thoughts and the shared ideas of a group. In this space, reading a story feels both personal and connected to others. This idea helps explain why fans feel so strongly connected to certain stories and characters. For fanfiction, this space lets writers explore stories in a fun and creative way.
Another reason people write fanfiction is to fill in parts of a story that were not clearly explained in the original. For example, they might write about characters’ thoughts or past experiences. Some stories, called "fix-it" stories, change parts of the original story that readers found unsatisfying, like fixing unhappy endings or undoing sad events, to create a more satisfying experience.
Fanfiction communities often work like a "gift" economy, where people share their creative work and receive rewards like comments, reviews, or "likes" from others. This kind of interaction helps people feel connected to others, especially online, where shared interests can lead to lasting friendships and creative teamwork. These exchanges encourage people to keep sharing their ideas and staying involved in the community.
Legality
There is an ongoing discussion about how much fan fiction is allowed under modern copyright laws. Some people believe fan fiction is not protected by fair use because it is based on existing works. In 2009, a U.S. court ruled against a book by Fredrik Colting, who wrote a story featuring an older version of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. The judge said the book did not qualify as a parody of the original work, which is a type of fair use.
Others, like the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), argue that non-profit fan fiction is legal under fair use because it creates new, original content. OTW runs a website called Archive of Our Own, which allows only fan fiction that changes or transforms the original work. It does not permit copying existing fan works exactly or making small changes, like adding audio narration or translations, without permission from the copyright holder.
Jamar and Bloom (2014) noted that fan fiction can range from stories that only change the ending of a book to entirely new stories set in the same fictional world. They explained that copyright laws protect how ideas are expressed, not the ideas themselves. However, Klapper (2025) argued that even fan fiction that only uses a fictional world’s setting might still use a significant amount of the original work’s content.
In 1981, Lucasfilm Ltd. warned fanzine publishers that they owned the rights to Star Wars characters and required them to stop publishing material with explicit content. In another case, the Harry Potter Lexicon website faced a copyright lawsuit from J.K. Rowling and her publishers because it copied too much of the Harry Potter series without enough transformation. While the website won the case, the dispute highlighted how fan fiction is treated in Western copyright laws. In China, Harry Potter fan fiction is less legally controversial but is sometimes used as a tool to explore cultural and educational topics related to Chinese traditions.
Some authors support fan fiction. J.K. Rowling said she was "flattered" by fan stories about her characters, and by 2014, there were nearly 750,000 Harry Potter fan stories online. Stephenie Meyer linked her Twilight fan fiction sites, and Fifty Shades of Grey began as a Twilight fan fiction called Master of the Universe.
In 2003, a British law firm asked fan fiction websites to remove adult Harry Potter stories with explicit content, fearing children might see them. Website owners argued these stories fell under fair use and were not professionally produced.
Author Orson Scott Card initially opposed fan fiction but later supported it, calling it free advertising for his books. In contrast, Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey (before her son changed her stance), Raymond Feist, and George R.R. Martin have all opposed fan fiction, calling it copyright infringement or harmful to writers. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, creators of the Liaden universe, also oppose fan fiction, saying others might not portray their characters accurately.