Fan-Fic is NOT a waste of time!

I used to shake my head at myself and at others who wrote in that dreaded medium titled "Fan-fic" where you kidnap characters of other books or movies and write your own stories with them. Gasp! How dare you! Copyright law! Lack of Creativity!

But then, I heard something from Kevin J Anderson when he was a guest on Writing Excuses, the fantastic writing podcast that I listen to. He said that writing Fan-fic is NOT a waste of time, because it teaches you to focus on certain things. LIke what do you say?

• It forces you to focus on developing plot around your character's personality, you wouldn't make Captain Kirk act out of character just to make your fanfiction work would you?
• It allows you to focus on developing your prose
• It forces you to write dialogue according to each character's unique voice
• It teaches you the value of having very strong, unique characters.

So there you have it! Will it ever get published? Eh, probably not. They usually ask you to write in their universes, you don't usually ask them if you can share your great Star Wars novel idea. But it will teach you these things, and writing practice, of course, is one of the most important things of becoming a writer.

Last, but not least, learn how to develop characters that are as strong as these movie characters. Learn to know them so well, that you would never dream of forcing them to act out of character.

There ya have it, KEEP ON WRITING!

-Thomas