Fan Fiction Essay

Long before stories were recorded on paper they were told through word of mouth. As the story was shared, it also changed. Storytellers could make any changes to the story that they saw fit without being punished. This same concept holds true with fan fiction. Fan fiction is a story written by a fan of a book, movie, comic, or television show depicting a mixture of characters, plotlines and settings that appear in the original work. Like folklore, fan fiction follows a basic storyline with concrete elements while reflecting the beliefs of the person telling the story (Schaffner 616). While the two share many similarities such as strong educational implications, the difference between fan fiction and its ancient predecessor lies in the medium

Bestselling author E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fan fiction. Meg Cabot began writing Star Wars fan fiction when she was eleven and Cassandra Clare was a popular Harry Potter fan writer (Alter). Some other authors have received acclaim for their books that are based off novel’s whose copyrights have expired. The novel March by Geraldine Brooks follows a character in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. The Broadway musical Wicked was adapted from the book of the same name written by Gregory Maguire that takes place in the same world as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Alter). The dream of many fan fiction writers is to reach a point where people write fan fiction based on something that they created (Schaffner 617), and reaching that level of success has been

In 2009, Tracy Kell and a few of her coworkers at Chestatee Middle School in Georgia made lesson plans revolving around fan fiction. During the unit, students read, wrote, published and reviewed stories written by classmates and strangers. This project was a success and it inspired many students to become more interested in writing (Kell 32-35). While this lesson on fan fiction was intentional and structured, many literature teachers assign fan fiction projects without realizing it. Some teachers will have students write alternative endings for novel that they read in class or have students decide what certain characters will be doing five or ten years after the novel ends. If teachers are using fan fiction as part of their curriculum, what is the problem with writing