What Fan Fiction Teaches That the Classroom Doesn’t

N. K. Jemisin, the only author to win the prestigious Hugo Award for best science-fiction or fantasy novel three years in a row, partly credits fan fiction for her ability to draw in readers.

 Jemisin started writing fan fiction, in which authors imagine new stories based on preexisting fictional works, while in grad school for counseling. 

In these online communities, writers of all ages and skill levels—from adolescents still refining their grammar to professional adult authors such as Jemisin—are learning and teaching others how to write, and write well.

Generally, fan-fiction writers’ strengths are effusively celebrated, and any feedback on their weaknesses is very gently conveyed. Reviews of fan fiction are overwhelmingly positive—Aragon and Davis found that out of a sample of 4,500 reviews on fanfiction.net, only 1 percent were what they called “non-constructive negative” reviews, or “flames” (such as: “I never thought that human spawn could create such a horrible piece of crap”).

Some felt that fan fiction had taught them things they could never have learned in school. And Aragon and Davis think that the sort of distributed-mentoring community that exists in fan fiction isn’t just useful for improving writing. They mention DeviantArt (an online community for visual artists) and Ravelry (a knitting website) as places where distributed mentoring may also thrive. “If you have this basis of interest-driven learning in a supportive community,” Davis says, “that sets the stage for learning pretty much anything.”