Fan Fiction

Inspiration Thursday

In this week’s segment, I want to expand on last week’s fan fiction topic. I’ve given you some details about the Roswell Fan Fiction that has become Just One, and in the upcoming weeks, I will provide even more information on the original draft.

Still, I want to talk about writing Fan Fiction in general. Posting stories online as a teenage girl was a massive deal for me, as this was a time before I started roleplaying when I dropped so many stories out of fear that I wasn’t good enough. I can still remember some of them.

It’s strange to me then that I found the courage to go onto one of these websites and started posting weekly updates to my fan fiction and letting strangers read them, yet that happened when I joined Roswell Fanatics. It was a message board filled with many stories about the TV show Roswell, with members counting in thousands rather than hundreds. This shows just what a following this science fiction (fantasy) story had.

Explanation of Science Fantasy

To interrupt this, I’ll explain my use of fantasy in this contest, as I have long believed I wrote science fiction (and I do), but there is a subgenre within, which is Science Fiction Fantasy or Science Fantasy. A perfect example of this is Star Wars – Science Fiction, yes, with aliens, planets, and technology beyond what we have, but it’s the Force that makes it fantasy. Like Roswell, it is Science Fiction, as it has aliens, mention of a planet far away, alien technology, spaceships, etc., but our aliens have powers, making it fantasy.

Now, back to our topic.

So, here I was, a teenager (still discovering the internet) and using the search engine to discover the topics I was passionate about. Roswell was most definitely one of these topics, but I couldn’t have imagined it would lead me to the website it did. I read a lot of fan fiction stories from other writers while there, and I absolutely fell in love with the imagination of other fans. Some of these stories stayed with me for a very long time.

Furthermore, I discovered extraordinary graphics designers who made fantastic art to complement their stories. I was relatively new to the concept and inspired. I tried creating my own, but I sometimes went out there and requested others make them.

Fan Fiction Definition & Meaning

The term fan fiction has been included in dictionaries and has a Wikipedia page. The name of it tells you just what it is – stories written by fans, set in existing worlds involving characters created by someone else, whether it’s a writer or screenwriter, or both. It’s someone else’s intellectual property and fan fiction writers borrow said work while giving due credit.

Roswell Fan Fictions

In my time on Roswellfanatics, I’ve written two or three stories (Just One has two completed parts) and another one that had nothing to do with the series. I’d planned for two more short stories with Just One, but had only begun to write them in my documents, never having published them.

My fan fiction, Just One, starts mid-season two in the heart of the alien-focused storyline. While Max, Isabel, Michael and Tess were exploring their own history and Liz was going through her own story (while throwing hints of what may come), I began to write fan fiction about those very characters and what their past lives were potentially about. And I kept writing until it was finished (full of grammatical errors and cringe-worthy parts).

After the epilogue, I wrote Just One: Weight of the World (now intended to be the third and possibly fourth book in the series).

The one thing about the original fan fiction was that while the main characters on Earth were from Roswell, my Antar reincarnations (the homeworld of our Roswell aliens) were both from the TV show and my own. Instead of a story about four aliens and their human friends (and their loves), it became a story about what would happen if Liz Parker had her own past life. In writing the fan fiction, I realized this story focused far more on Liz, not just on Earth, but also on Antar.

On the other hand, the other fan fiction written during that time was The Real Ava. In truth, the basic premise of Liz Parker belongs to the aliens, but it is different. In this, Liz is the real Ava (to explain Max’s past life is Zan; Ava is meant to be his “young bride” if we have some newcomers to the TV show). I also enjoyed writing this story, but it would always be only fan fiction.

Inventing Characters

These two stories (Just One and The Real Ava) were only published online. Over the years, I’ve written parts of other stories as well, and this will be confusing if you haven’t seen the original show, but the character of Serena as Agent Pierce’s wife, but Serena is one of the aliens, which is how the FBI knew so much about them; and why he went mad and became so dangerous in hunting down our aliens.

One of my passion projects was adding a character to my favourite TV shows and movies after having seen them so many times. A lot of the time, I didn’t even write them down, thinking about them when I re-watched something.

So, like, in Terminator, the character of Reese, John Connor’s sister who ran away from home when she was old enough, a computer tech genius who wanted to make sure judgment day never occurred. She ends up becoming the creator of it. You have generations of terminators who would never harm her and even a terminator looking like her. I really enjoy imagining and writing that fan fiction.

It made the sequels just as enjoyable because, in my head, in the third movie, the female Terminator villain is the one made in Reese’s image. Or in Salvation, the woman would be Reese. I didn’t write all of them down, but somewhere in my files, a Judgement Day fan fiction would still be floating if I went looking for it.

I also had a character like that for Star Wars, and to this day, I can place her in every movie (first six). In order of appearance… New Hope… Princess of the Empire, “heir” to the Emperor, is Lee. She’s gone dark, but she’s also somewhat detached from reality. The Emperor prefers to keep her away from Vader as he’s never too sure about her loyalties, as they may be split. Her counterpart is Jinn, a woman who always masks her face. In Empire Strikes Back, our heroes learn that Lee and Jinn are one and the same, split into half (go with this: there have been variations of force powers in Extended Universe and in a roleplay that made it a little less impossible to achieve something similar). She’ll explain before the trilogy is over that her father had trained Anakin, and when Anakin went dark, it broke her heart because he was family to her.

If it wasn’t for the twins, she would have stayed with him, but she split herself into two because she also wanted to protect Luke and Leia. Rewind into the first trilogy; Qui Lee Jinn is Quin Gon’s daughter, Jedi Knight, with the gift of sight, though the visions tend to be chaotic. She’ll think herself a bit arrogant at first, thinking she should be one to train Anakin, and also harbours a bit of a crush on Obi-Wan (because we’re all young and stupid sometimes, right?). When her father dies, she vows to protect Anakin as if he was family. It will explain how she eventually split herself in half, unable to put herself today for as long as Vader exists.

Back to our topic, though…

The original drafts of the two Roswell fan fiction stories were completed seventeen years ago and posted for other fans to read. Ten years had passed since that occurred, and the tale Just One kept coming back to mind.

I would think about it, still impressed with what I created from a simple “what if” fan fiction. And that was when I began thinking about how to take my story out of the other one. This process was long – recreating characters, building locations (on paper), forming new romantic storylines, etc.

There was a lot of work to put into it. I must have changed some of the names (and even actor choices) two or three times, unable to settle on a change. When I re-wrote Just One into the first draft, it became this massive project, far too big to be a single page. Frankly, I don’t know how I put the storyline in only forty-two chapters.

Again and again, I kept re-writing, tweaking, editing. In truth, there were ten drafts, one after the other, as the process went on. The fate of some characters had changed in the process well. The second half of the story became the second book in the series, for which I’ve written four or five drafts already, called Just One: Edge of Never, a title I fell in love with quickly enough.

While the first one will centre stage Eveleen and Valerie, their journey of discovery and the readers learning about the universe, this will focus more on Kivana Eli (their predecessor). Still, it’s a sequel to Just One, existing on the same timeline.

I will eventually have to write a timeline of events, as it gets complicated after Edge of Never. Just One: Weight of the World will not be a sequel or prequel. It’ll be a do-over. But I won’t get into that too much for now.

Some of Favorite Storytellers

Fan Fiction, to me, was a school of writing. Coming up with your own ideas from scratch and building a whole universe isn’t the most straightforward task, and I take my hat off to the minds of George Lucas, Margaret Atwood, Gene Roddenberry, J.K. Rowling, Joss Whedon, George R.R. Martin, Melinda Metz, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino (to name a few) for their extraordinary worlds. I can attest to just how hard it is now, having (began) building a world of my own.

Write your Fan Fiction

Writing inside an existing sandbox helped me as a writer, focusing only on story fragments and using something that existed. The same could be said about roleplaying. I could write, create additions for myself, build on things and stick to the rules of a universe created by someone else. When you know these characters, it makes writing fan fiction easier in away (harder as well, as you have to honour someone else’s creations). I know, it’s complicated. But it’s like having assignment parameters, where you have to respect existing rules. It’s a good way to focus.

I would encourage anyone looking to grow their writing skill to try their hand at fan fiction. You don’t have to write for others or even post it anywhere, but if you wanted to (as feedback is an integral part of writing), there are still websites where fan fiction can be published, such as Archive of Our Own.

As a writer, I recognize that work will essentially belong to the creators of the universes (even if they never see it), but it’s a unique experience.

This has been a delightful topic to write about, one dear to my heart as I focus my efforts on Just One. It’s a story I still have to tell, and while someday, I look to build other universes and characters, I would say it would be a while before this occurs.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please like and subscribe.

Have you ever written fan fiction? In what universe? Did you enjoy the process? I’d love to hear about your own experiences. If the stories are published, include links in the comments. I’ve always loved reading fan fiction.

Until the next one,

~Love, L.V.