Fanfiction

Fanfiction is fiction written by fans about characters and/or settings created by someone else for a TV series, Movie, Book, Comic, Video Game and so forth. Basically, if you didn't create it, but you're writing about it, and it wasn't commissioned by the original creator (or rights holder) it is fanfiction. Fanfiction writers use the characters and situations from these works to develop their own personal and, sometimes, preferred views of the story.

A fanfiction story is called a fanfic or fic for short.

History of Fanfiction
It is believed that as long as there has been stories there has been fanfiction. The modern phenomenon of fanfiction, however, as an expression of fandom was popularized and defined via the Star Trek fandom and fanzines published in the 1960s.

In 1998 Fanfiction.net came online. At the time of its initial creation, it accepted any sort of writing, original or fanfiction. It has since separated its original fiction section to another website and banned several subgenres, including explicitly sexual stories, real people fiction, and stories featuring song lyrics. The ability to self-publish fanfiction at a common archive like Fanfiction.net, and the ability to review the stories directly on the site, became popular quite quickly. Fanfiction.net now hosts millions of stories in dozens of languages, and is widely considered the largest and most popular fanfiction archive online. Its also considered one of the worst, hence its nickname The Pit of Voles and the need for the PPC.

Formats of Fanfiction
Fanfiction is available in several different formats. The most common is the regular story, although these could be further distinguished according to length. Chaptered fic is written in a similar manner to traditional serial stories, with each chapter released separately as it is finished (though there are a few authors that first finish the entire story before they start releasing the chapters at regular intervals). Chapters may take anything from a day to several months to be updated.

Single-chapter stories of any length are usually referred to as one-shots. Stories with two chapters are sometimes called two-shots. There are various terms for different lengths and they are sometimes used interchangeably. These include "flashfic" for stories under 500 words, and short-short for stories between 500 and 1,000 words. The term "ficlet" is also commonly used for stories under approximately 1,000 words.

A drabble is traditionally a story of exactly 100 words in length. A proper drabble is often a short scene or idea that does not tell an entire story. It is simple a refection of a moment in time. A lot of the time the term drabble is also used for stories that are considerably longer thn 100 words.

Fanfiction is occasionally written in script format, although these are banned from Fanfiction.net. There are several subgenres of "scriptfic". Some are written in the style of screenplays. While others are "chatfics", stories which are written like an instant messaging or chatroom conversation between characters. "Chatfics" are somewhat similar in this sense to an epistolary novel, though usually much shorter. And far, far worse in quality as a result of the "chatfic" often being written by a fanbrat.

Another format of fanfiction is the songfic, where authors take the lyrics of a song and with the song as inspiration, construct a piece of writing around the lyrics. Usually, this is done by quoting lines of the lyrics in order and inserting original writing in-between (some of the worst authors skip the inserting bit).

Types of fanfiction
Fanfiction is written for many different reasons. Though, all of these reasons could be filed under the heading: "What if I took these characters and put them in that situation?"

Missing scene In the original story line a certain situation is not elaborated on. For instance, in the New Who episode Blink The Doctor and Martha spend sometime in 1969, but it is never told in the episode how they get on there. The author explores what could have happened.

Missing adventure Some authors prefer to write stories that have the taste of a canon adventure, do not contradict canon in any way and could seamlessly fit into the canon. Until a later canon occurrence retroactively contradicts that story and in one blow turns it into an AU story (see below). That is the risk of any author working with a canon that is still under development (i.e. the series is still in production).

Alternate Universe As the name says this fic explores the possibilities of an Alternate Universe, AU for short. There are two main possibilities here. One is that the author didn't like a certain canon event, such as the death of a character, and writes a story where that event is ignored or the character is brought back to life. The other form is the High School AU, where all the canon characters are suddenly of high school age and each others' classmates.

Crossover In a crossover the characters from two different fandoms are brought together for a mutual adventure. See further the main article on crossover fics.

Goodfic
Main article: Goodfic

Badfic
Main article: Badfic

A poorly written story.

Suefic
Main article: Suefic

A story that has a Mary Sue in it.

External link
Wikipedia article on Fanfiction a wiki on the history of fanfiction