My nine year old daughter, Annika, has sat beside me many evenings and watched me typing away at my computer. At first, she would simply watch. Later, as she became more curious about what her mother was up to, she started to ask questions — what are you writing? What are your characters’ names? What’s happening in your story now? Finally, she brought her iPad over to me and asked if I could put a “writing program” on it. I gave her Google docs and handed it back, and she announced that she was going to write with me. So now, not every day, but occasionally, when I start writing, Annika will come and sit beside me, and she’ll write as well.
What does a 9 year old write, you might ask? Well, my nine year old writes fan-fiction. In particular, she writes fan-fiction for the series Warriors, which is about sentient cats and the battles between different cat clans, and the similar series Wings of Fire, which is about sentient dragons. She has her own OCs (original characters, for the uninitiated), she’s involved in the fan group on the app Amino, where she posts her stories for likes and feedback, and she also draws fan art.
Myself, I’ve never written fanfiction, not technically. True, my first attempt at a novel was practically Star Trek fanfiction, but the universe was ultimately not the Star Trek universe. When I was nine I didn’t know anything of fandom, but I also wrote stories based upon one of my favorite topics — in my case, ancient Egypt. In fact, I wrote an entire play in five acts based upon the lives of the pharaohs and their queens. So it didn’t surprise me that my daughter would write about her favorites — the cats and dragons that populate the novels she reads.
Some writers look down on fan-fiction, and I’m sure there are some author moms who would encourage their children to write original fiction instead of fan-fiction. However, I’m not one of them. Although I’m not a fanfic writer myself, I am an English teacher. I work every day with teenagers, many of whom are reluctant to write anything at all, and many of them are incredibly intimidated by the idea of writing creatively. “I can’t think of what to write about,” they say. My daughter, at nine years old, already has made writing a habit and a hobby. Although currently she’s writing fanfiction, I have no doubt that with age and maturity, she’ll be able to transfer the skills she picked up with her fan-fiction writing to original works.
Fan-fiction, to me, is like a pair of training wheels for a young writer. Because the intimidating business of creating a world and characters to populate that world is already taken care of, the writer is free to imagine scenarios, to work on plotting and pacing, dialogue and description, which are harder, more technical skills to master than worldbuilding or character creation. Later, once a young writer has accumulated more experience and has seen more of their own world, world creation will come easier. This young writer, who has already mastered the basics of the craft, will be in a great position to create entirely original works.
I’m proud of my daughter’s fanfiction and I brag about it often. Of course I hope that one day she will begin to write her own original fiction, but for now, it is enough for me that she treats writing as a pastime, rather than a chore to be dreaded. A child who has discovered the pleasure found in the written word will keep that pleasure in her heart for a lifetime. Whether that pleasure comes from fan-fiction, comics, or original fiction, is unimportant, what’s important is the joy itself.
prenticepieces.com 