Creating Fan Content: If You're Embarrassed, You Shouldn't Be!

I know that there has been arguing on whether fan art is "art" or if fan-fiction counts as literature for decades now, and while I am on the "Yes they are." side of the debate, it wasn't always that way.

As a creative in a world where everything you make and put on the internet is under scrutiny, and originality is a constant and stressful pursuit, it can be extremely difficult to figure out who you are as an artist and the sort of things you want to create, especially if you put pressure on yourself to make exclusively original content.

For a very long time, that creative struggle was mine.

That is where creating fan content comes in!

When you’re a little kid you have the bliss of not knowing or caring about what other people think. So of course, when I was little I would create nothing but shameless rip-offs and parodies of cartoons and tv shows I liked, original characters, filling spiral notebooks with fan-scripts you name it. I was exploring my creative abilities and desires through that content, I didn’t care that it technically wasn’t mine, it made me happy!

Then social media (and being an impressionable teenager) happened.

All of a sudden I discovered two things:

1. I wanted to BE a writer, and start taking my art “seriously”.

2. Every other creative kid, and in hindsight, adult fans, were doing exactly what I was doing, and oftentimes better.

My response? I utterly refused to make anything that could be considered fan content (fan art, fan-fiction, etc.), I was proud to say that I had never written a single piece of fanfiction from that point forward, and started looking down on the people that did. No more X-Men: Evolution fan scripts or Chronicles of Narnia fan characters for me! I was a REAL artist!

After all, if they weren’t creating “original content” and had to use other people’s work to make what they wanted to make it wasn’t “real” right?

Of course, I was wrong, and I can safely say that my creative process suffered for it.

I put so much pressure on myself to create things that were “original” and chastised myself whenever I thought about pursuing projects that were based on someone else’s work, I was creating, but I wasn’t doing so as often, and I had a very hard time getting myself out of a creative block.

Worse still, I wasn’t ready to show what I had made to the world.

I couldn’t get over my fear that it would get lost in the vast sea that is freely consumable creative content on the internet, I wanted to build a community around my work, without showing anyone my work, it was a nightmare.

I want to give my sibling Sal (and some good screenwriting advice) a huge credit to the epiphany I would soon have.

Sal understood what I wasn’t ready to consider long before I came to the same conclusion. They are also an artist and writer, but the difference between us was that they weren’t afraid to create things based on the work of others like I had become, not only that but they were brave enough to put it out on the internet!

What did it get them? A fanbase for when they did commit to original stories and art, allowing them to even profit off of commissions and original pieces, as well as help them get a scholarship to Moore College of Art & Design.

“Fanart?! And Fanfiction?! Helped you draw and write what you wanted to draw and write?! Building a community for your art so that, when you did your original content, people would be there to see it and appreciate it?! Preposterous!”

At least that’s what it felt like, then I reflected on some of the screenwriting advice I had read and had been reading for years, almost every single article written for new screenwriters had two key points:

1. Read & take notes on the screenplays and stories you like most and incorporate them into your work.

2. If you want to get into writing for movies and television, learn how to write episodes of other people’s series. Producers want to see what you can do for a project that they’ve already committed to, not just ideas they could risk their money on.

As it turns out, a great way to explore your ability to write something that isn’t your own is through reading and writing fan-fiction, reading, and writing an analysis of things that you love no matter how big or small, looking at what other people think and feel about the content you’re creating for.

It’s good practice, it’s inspiring, it allows you to think critically about content you love, it keeps you writing when the creative well has run dry on your independent content, and most importantly it helps you build a community!

If you start by making things for yourself about things you love, and about things people already love, it is going to be a lot easier for you to introduce them to your own work. If they already trust that you will make good content for a property they already enjoy, they’ll be more receptive to trying your independent content, after all, you haven’t let your community down so far!

So make that fan art, edit that funny cross-over video, write fan-fiction, analyze that terrible episode of your favorite show, everything is content.

If you are making, you are winning, it doesn’t matter what it is.

There is absolutely no shame in creating for what you love, and who knows? It might help you boost your creative career so that you can make what other people someday will create fan content for, in the not too distant future.