You’ve poured your heart and soul into a fanwork, and lo and behold, it’s caught on with other fans. While success is great, it’s not paying the bills. To financially benefit from all that labor you put in, you’ve decided it’s time to retool your piece as a work of original fiction. Conventional wisdom says doing this just means “rubbing off the fingerprints” – changing names and other obvious references to the parent work. However, if that’s all you do, you’re not giving your story the best chance of succeeding in the original-fiction market.
Taking Your New Audience Into Account
Fan fiction is written for a specific audience of enthusiasts who all share knowledge of the parent work. Once you branch outside of that, your new readers won’t understand things that are obvious to a fan. So, while specific areas of your story could use extra attention when making the conversion to a stand-alone piece, there’s no replacement for looking through the whole thing for references that won’t make sense to newcomers. Recruiting beta readers from outside the work’s fandom will be very helpful.
While you may need to include more explanation for your new readers, insert it into your piece carefully. Fanfic generally has a much quicker opening than original fic,* and that’s a good thing. If you add scenes to your beginning to fill readers in, make sure those scenes are as engaging as the opening you had before. Your new audience needs to understand the elements of your story while simultaneously watching your protagonists deal with the problems in their lives.
Unfortunately, you may also need to cut some things. Because your former audience was familiar with the parent work, they already knew who all the characters were, any important facts about their relationships, and how their world works. But an outside audience has to learn all of those things for the first time, and that can be really confusing. If your fanfic has references to a dozen minor characters that appear in the parent work, think about who you can part with. Their presence won’t be very meaningful without their original names, anyway. When in doubt, simplify the story.
Building Attachment to Characters
The biggest distinguishing factor between fanfics and original fics is that in almost all fanworks, the protagonists are already known and loved by the audience. This takes a huge burden off the beginning of the story. In a work of original fiction, much of the beginning is devoted not only to introducing protagonists but to showing the audience why these characters are worthy of their love and attention. A fanwork doesn’t have to do that.
Once you change the names of your characters and market your work to an outside audience, this burden falls on your story. Since you didn’t have to do that before, there’s a good chance your story could use strengthening in that area.
Generally, selling a character means showing their likable traits in action during the opening scenes of the story. I have a list of twelve likable traits I recommend browsing, but the gist is that they are traits that are selfless, sympathetic, or fascinating. If you’d like to know more, we have many articles on character likability you can go through.
Carefully examining the parent work can give you ideas for how to introduce your protagonist. If your hero has a very similar tone and personality to the hero in the parent work, that may be a good route. However, characters in fanworks are often pretty different from their namesakes. On top of that, if your character is from a visual medium, their introduction might lean on the skills of a talented actor. Be true to the character you’ve written by picking something that fits them and the unique story they’re in.
Optimizing Your World
Fanfic worlds generally come in three varieties. What you should consider varies depending on what type of world you have.
Canon Worlds
If you’ve been using the fantastical world of the parent work, or one of a different original work, then you’ll need to rub the fingerprints off. But while you’re doing that, keep in mind that there are probably ways the world could work better for your story. After all, it was created with a different story in mind. While changing the names of everything in the world might not be fun, at least there’s nothing stopping you from making additional tweaks.
However, you’re not doing this to make more work for yourself. To avoid rewriting too much, start by looking for anything that will take a bunch of explaining for your new audience to understand. If you don’t need it to support your story, take it out. If you do need it for your plot, can it be replaced by something simpler and easier to explain?
This is also a great time to integrate anything you tacked onto the world to make your story work. If you added time loops, ghosts, or soul-mate magic to a world without those things, consider altering the theme of your world a bit so they fit in better.
Worlds Using Another Theme or Genre
Let’s say you’ve moved the characters to another fantastical genre or switched the fantastical elements involved in the story. They might now be in a science-fiction setting instead of an other-world fantasy, or they might be fighting zombies when before they were dealing with werewolves. Whatever you chose, it probably has a strong theme. That gives you a leg up over many writers of original stories, who often try to include everything and the kitchen sink in their worlds.
However, worlds created for fanfic can be a bit generic. This happens for a couple reasons. First, because fanfics generally devote the lion’s share of their wordcounts to characters and relationships, leaving less space for complex worlds. Second, the mere act of moving established characters from one genre to another creates novelty. The world doesn’t have to be unique because seeing beloved characters in a new setting is interesting enough.
When you change your work to original fiction, that novelty won’t be there anymore. Instead of being something that draws readers into your story, your world may seem forgettable when compared to settings created for original fiction. To help your story sell, consider how you can make your themed world more interesting and distinguished. Simply changing the description of your zombies or spaceships to something that stands out could make a difference.
Modern Settings
If you took out any fantastical elements from the parent work and placed the story in a familiar, contemporary setting, there’s not much for you to do here. There’s no point in adding fantastical elements, since your plot doesn’t need them, and you won’t have to explain anything.
Strengthening Your External Conflict
Fanfic is often written to fulfill an unmet need to see favorite characters work on their relationships and sort out their inner demons. While many fanfics do have an outside threat, they usually don’t have as much as original fiction. Fans have the parent work for that. However, once your story is marketed to an outside audience, readers may not show up looking for what they’re missing from a different story.
To be clear, external conflicts aren’t strictly necessary; your story might be fine without one. However, they do come with benefits. In particular, an outside threat relieves relationship arcs of the burden of generating lots of conflict. Trying to keep your lovebirds from hooking up when they’re obviously meant for each other is just hard. Letting monsters swoop in and separate them is a lot easier. The same can also be true of personal-development arcs.
Here are some signs that your story would benefit from more external conflict:
- Readers tell you that your heroes are acting out of character or just feel unrealistic when they get in conflicts.
- Readers find conflicts really unpleasant or become frustrated with the bad behavior of the characters.
- Readers report that the story’s conflicts have gotten repetitive by the end.
If you want to retool your climax to include more external conflict, remember to put in foreshadowing about the outside threat earlier in the story. But you shouldn’t have to rewrite everything.
If you already have an external conflict throughout the story, you might consider fleshing it out with some additional scenes. That’s likely to please an original-fiction audience. Just make sure your beginning sets the right expectations about your story, and don’t let urgent, life-threatening problems overshadow interpersonal scenes. Readers shouldn’t feel like innocents are dying because the heroes chose to watch sappy movies together instead of saving the day.
Your converted story doesn’t have to be like most works of original fiction. Many readers out there want the type of writing fan fiction has to offer but aren’t involved in a fandom. Yet.
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Great article with a lot of helpful suggestions!
I remember coming across a Harry Potter fanfiction which was, essentially, an original work. Since it was set in a non-magical reality, put all characters into new roles, and was a thriller, it had everything an original story needs (including a lot of conflict and good plot arcs). In this case, I believe, simply changing names would have been enough, since for this new setting, all characters also had to be reintroduced and the writer did a very good job with that – and wrote a really good story, too.
I’m not sure whether it’s still up, but it was titled, I believe, “Paying the Piper”.
I find that a lot of former fanfictions, especially badly edited/unedited ones like Fifty Shades, have problems with overall plot structure since they were originally written in an episodic way. It can be useful both for writing fanfiction and editing it for original publication to make sure you have a strong through line.
Yes, I agree. There are stories which rely on a through line and will thus, with all the other changes mentioned in the article, make good originals and then there’s a lot of stories which have very weak through lines or none at all and only work as fanfiction, because most people read them episodic on the sites as well.
Fanfiction in general tends to be a lot less edited than original fiction, and this is defiantly one of the problems that can arise because of that! A lot of fics, especially ones by young writers, are written on-the-cuff, without much more than basic grammar check before being published. This isn’t a problem in the world of fanfiction, where readers are used to it. But when a fic is being published, problems like repetitive plots or lack of overall structure can easily crop up.
Another issue can be lack of foreshadowing for plot events. It can be really fun when a writer throws an analogue to a canon event into a very non-canon setting! For fans, some events from the canon plot are almost expected to occur in fanfictions, and so they don’t need much foreshadowing; the prior knowledge of the audience provides enough. This obviously won’t happen with a non-fandom audience though, so some foreshadowing should be sprinkled in.
Wow, how synchronous! I just spent three days completing a bunch of fan fiction [based on Persona 3], my first attempt at fan fiction in years. This article will be super helpful!
Social Link with Mythcreants increased!
Wow, thanks for this great article.
I use to write Narnia fanfic in high school, since I was a really big fan. But then I decided to write my own fantasy world, its Narniaesque with its mythical creatures, talking animals and a Messiah-like figure, and child heroes. But I have also expanded it with other countries (based on European, Asian, Indigenous, and African cultures and mythologies). And also other gods and goddesses exist in my fantasy world, with the Messiah King and his mother (a Virgin Mary/Mother Goddess figure) as Chief/King among them. There are also a couple of Adult heroes who travel to the fantasy world with the children, but are given choices either to stay or return.
And like Narnia, time in my world is different, but instead of a slow time, my world exists in all earth times, from Antiquity to Modern times. For example, a modern person can meet a historical person in the time period of the fantasy world. Also, it kind of works backwards, as the beginning of the story and the world start with 21st century heroes from earth, and the end of the story (series) with heroes from the 1950s earth (does that make any sense?). And rather than end (like in The Last Battle), the fantasy world shuts all its doors to earth because a Satanic-like God schemes to cross from the fantasy world to earth, to conquer and subject the earth to his will. And all the earth heroes and heroines return to the fantasy world, to stay, as they were promised.
Very interesting article! One of my fellow fandom writers actually did this after one of her AU stories became very popular, she pulled it from FFN, changed the characters’ names, tweaked it slightly [since it was AU, there wasn’t much that had to be changed] and submitted it for publication – and yes, it was published, so I know that it can be done
Very interesting read. I used to dabble in Star Wars fan fiction a lot, and one of my always-on-the-back-burner-while-I-work-on-my-original-novel projects is converting some of my original character Star Wars fanfics into something completely original.
While all my characters are original, there are some obvious challenges when you consider references to the Force and the Jedi and other quintessential Star Wars elements. I came up with a new magic system (and a backstory for it) that I’m happy with, and I’ve woven the setting into another original sci-fi universe I created a while ago, but there’s still some bits and pieces here and there that need re-evaluating like how to replace lightsabers.
As I say though, it’s a side project that I may or may not ever complete while I focus on my original novel, which has already sprouted a few sequel ideas before I’ve even finished a first draft, so it may be a while.
I will have to keep this bookmarked for a bit.
I am going to turn a fan fiction I’ve written into an original fic, but it shouldn’t be to hard.
a) I am working with my own characters only – there is mention of two characters of the original IP, but none of them is actually in the fic.
b) I am using a setting which is different, which means I am not using any of the specific technology which is in the original IP (which is a piece of speculative fiction).
c) the six stories which make up the full fic are self-contained to a degree, but lead towards the end of the last one (it’s the culmination of the conflict building up from story to story). Each of them tells a full story with beginning, middle, and end.
Considering all of this, I think I will be good to go by renaming two of the characters, removing references to the characters of the IP, and thoroughly editing, of course.
This was really helpful.
I have what started as a one off fic and spiraled and spun into my own literal multiverse (9 universes started 12 planned and 2 crossovers). I took characters from Shadowhunters (s1 tv show) and tossed them into a psych type detective type verse (fake psychic real detective with an eidetic memory) and over the 1st 10 stories the characters evolved so much they don’t even feel like the shadow hunter ones anymore.
I want to take the whole multiverse swap in my original versions of the characters (both sets as I have a male led and a female led cast as I realized the way I write them it would work for either gender) and eventually publish them as original stories.
They feel pretty original- the only thing I really kept of the shadowhunters cast is the sexuality of 3 of the main characters (one gay one bi one ace) and a few physical traits. All of the plot points are my original ideas, settings and world building are all mine and I have a ton of OC’s as well so I think it’ll work for originals.