Anne Rice: I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.

W.A. Hoffman: [B]y all means, run with the ball if you feel the need. Play in the playground I have created. Write fanfic. Do fan art. Let my work serve as inspiration for your own original works. [...] All that I ask is that you do not infringe on my copyrights or trademarks by profiting from direct derivations or copies of my words or characters.

Alex Sanchez: I think fan fiction helps to publicize books. I don't read fanfic, so
it has no affect on my own writing. I imagine that the writing helps
fanfic writers to develop their writing skills.

1. Connecting with Other Fans

Even though I've been what some might call 'obsessed' with different book and anime series, I rarely talked about my interests around my peers. Why? Because some (like my love of Gundam Wing, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh) would have marked me as a capital-L "Loser!" in high school. Others (like Michael Schiefelbein's Vampire Series, Mark Roeder's Gay Youth Chronicles, and my love for any-and-everything Alexander the Great) marked a teenage girl living in the Bible Belt as a deviant and all-around freak - both of which I'm proud to be.

But on websites like FanFiction.net, MediaMiner.org, and deviantART.com, I wasn't considered 'weird'; in fact, nine times out of ten I was moderate! I squealed whenever a new episode of Naruto was coming on? Who didn't! I thought Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy would make a good couple? So did a few dozen other people! All of a sudden I knew that I wasn't a fandom of one.

2. Eleminate "Is It Out Yet?" Stress

As part of the “instant gratification” generation, I can’t stand waiting for things. Patience is definitely not my strong-point. However, at some point a release date will have to be pushed back (as was the case with two books I’m desperately waiting on, W.A. Hoffman’s Wolves and Lynn Flewelling’s The White Road). I desperately shook my poor computer monitor screaming “why, why?!” Other medias – like television shows – may come out on a weekly basis, but sometimes even a week seems too long to wait for something you really want to see.

Fanfiction helps eliminate the stress of having to wait; if I have my own plan for what should happen in an upcoming episode of Degrassi: TNG, then I don’t have to wait for the next Sunday to get satiate my addiction. I can open Microsoft Word and start writing what I think should happen. It doesn’t matter if I’m right or not – not to me, anyway; what matters is that I don’t have to wait. Do you know how many versions of the seventh Harry Potter book were on FanFiction.net? Me neither – it was too many to count.

3. Explore the "What If?"s

I hate Raoul/Christine, I hate Raoul/Christine, I hate Raoul/Christine. Christine should have chosen The Phaontom! (Did I mention I hate Raoul/Christine?) We know how the cannon ends – we’ve seen the last episodes, read the epilogues, and watched the bonus scenes they show in the movie credits. But have you ever started thinking ‘what if?’ What if Treize Khushrenada had survived the fight with Wufei? What if Harry Potter had been born a girl?

As fanfic authors, we do well with answering the question ‘what if?’, even when the ‘if’ in question is something as small as ‘so-and-so had bumped into whoever between classes’. We get to put our favorite characters in brand new situations and watch them react, or tweak a single word in a cannon conversation and change the entire outcome of the series. It lets us explore every possibility for our favorite characters – like they say, every second a new universe is created based on what we didn’t do.

4. Receive Helpful Critiques

“OMG, I can’t wait to find out what happens next!” “You’re stupid; that would never happen in a million years!” “… *nosebleed*…” Not exactly well-rounded reviews. Fortunately, reviews like this are not the norm. People who read fanfics are just like people who read anything else; they want to read something well-written that’s complex and believable and true to the characters or universe they’re fans of.

“Aw. It's so sad, but very well written. You capture the characters just right and keep the emotions real.” “Very...uh...interesting. Love the plot! Uhm...But I didn't like the way you wrote it. Like how they speak? It's very confusing.” These are two reviews I’ve received for stories I’ve posted on FanFiction.net, and they helped me learn what I was doing right in my stores and what I was doing wrong.

Which leads me to my last point…

5. Develop Writing Ability

The best thing about writing fanfiction is just that… the writing. When I declared creative writing my major in college, my mom got me a cheesy inspirational poster that starts “If you write every day, you get better at writing every day”. I believe it. Writing fanfiction gives aspiring authors the chance to play around with plots and scenes without having to fully develop their own characters or universes.

Because readers leave their opinions on fanfiction, the authors can find out their strengths and weaknesses – and some people even take the time to give advice on how to improve the weaknesses. My favorite reviewer sat down and counted the number of adverbs I used in a single chapter; now, I use more descriptive verbs so that person doesn’t have to come and get onto me again!

1. Publicity, publicity, publicity.

AND IT’S FREE! Before I read my friend’s DNAngel fanfic, I never even considered watching the show - it just didn’t seem like something I would enjoy. But after I read her story and got to know the characters, it was too easy for her to convince me to watch ‘just one episode’ that turned into two… then three… then buying my own copies of all seven DVDs and eleven books.

Crossovers, too, at least introduce fans of one series to something they wouldn’t normally be interested in. A crossover between Gundam Wing and Sailor Moon introduced me to the Sailor girls and it became one of my favorite series for the next three years. WE AREN’T TRYING TO STEAL YOUR CHARACTERS! We just want to help spread the love we have for them!

2. Check Yourself: How is Your Work Coming Across?

We admit it. We can be a little freaky. Rosiel and Arachne (Angel Sanctuary) just work when you’re a fanfic writer. But if there’s something you’re trying to get across to us that we’re not picking up on, there might be some kind of communication error.

Maybe we look too deep at times. But when my Genocide and Human Rights final was a full-length essay on Harry Potter as a metaphor for the Jewish Holocaust (apparently the Malfoys are an Aryan joke?), I had to wonder if that much thought had gone into the series. Maybe that’s the difference between J. K. Rowling and me; when I write, there’s no hidden meaning. Just drama.

3. Doesn’t It Make You Feel Good Inside?

After reading all of the advantages that fanfiction gives to the people who write it, don’t you feel warm and fuzzy knowing that we’re spending hours (and hours and hours) writing fanfiction for your series? We aren’t making a single cent off of fanfiction – yes because it’s illegal, but also out of respect for you, the writers who inspired us. We love your characters, your universes, and your plots. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and fanfiction is the highest form of imitation (if the number of stories on FanFiction.net is any indication!)