Harry Potter fan fiction, tell me your horror stories.

Fan fiction, what is it? By definition of the dictionary it is, a fictional account written by a fan of a show, movie, book, or video game to explore themes and ideas that will not or cannot be explored via the originating medium. That sounds familiar to everyone, I should think. Even if you don’t write fan fiction for your favourite book, show, movie or video game, I’m sure you’ve discussed or considered “what-if” scenarios; maybe even written a few pages of your alternate story before giving up. For the most part, it’s dominated by girls who weren’t happy with the love story or want more of it.

I was a late bloomer when it came to discovering fan fiction (sheltered-dork-child alert). I had already been writing it but I had no idea what “it” was until I was seventeen. And, with such a huge internet writing community comes unspoken rules, in-jokes and conventions. One of the first things you learn about fan fiction is: stay away from the Harry Potter section. As a devout follower of my internet guru Mitch, I have (for the most part) done so. Harry Potter fan fiction is renowned for being out of character, having awfully written sex scenes, themed with petulant prepubescent problems and often involving vampires because J.K.Rowling mentioned them once.

I’ve never been interested in Harry Potter fan fiction, despite being a rabid fan myself, because the first book came out when I was five. At that age, I was not interested in love, bleh! The famous trio were just friends and in my eyes they still are. I don’t ship any of the characters. At fifteen-sixteen (I can’t remember how old I was when the last book came out) I was shocked when Ron and Hermione kissed. Yeah, I really was.

When told to stay away from a dangerous, pongy swamp, however, what’s the first thing a kid will do? Out of curiosity I browsed and read four Harry Potter fan fics, one even twenty-four chapters long. I really gave it a try. They were diabolical and I felt satisfied that I wasn’t missing out. Over the years my friends have shared links to other terrible HP fiction and they’ve served as hours of entertainment together.

But the reason I’m writing this is I started thinking: there must be good HP fan fiction out there. It has a massive fan base – I don’t think I need to remind you – but with those odds there simply must be a few good writers. The only problem is all the terribleness you have to sift through to find them.

My next challenge to myself, although I can’t guarantee I’ll follow through with this one, is to write a Harry Potter fan fic. I’ve never considered it before now, maybe it always seemed taboo, but I think I could write a decent HP fan fic. That seems like a challenge and a half, don’t you think?

Anyway, don’t judge me. Tell me about your painful fan fiction experiences!

Willow logging out. 😉