Fanfics .. writing those won't improve your skills ?

[Hasith]

I saw somewhere our fellow member Lassiter said " Writing fanfic only teaches you how to copy someone's style ". I can't agree with this but its good to see what others think about it. Open discussion about what you do gain by writing fanfics.

 My opinion is  A fanfic can be written in your own style. That's the whole idea of a fanfic. Doing something different with a stories character than the original author had done. Using your own imagination in different ways.

You wouldn't need to create / build characters since we take them from original story but still there are other things like Dialogues and plot. these can be unique.

[dawood]

i think that lassiter is right in some respect.... if you are writing using someone else characters in a world they created you can only work on the lines of their perameters which they have set out... no matter how good your imagination is you would still be slightly limited in that respect...however its what you can do with those limits which really tests you as a writer and your writing skill...
 this would be different if you started with a clean slate and let your imagination run wild.. lol

[Coryn]

its kinda a fifty fifty thing. on the one hand yeah you can only do so much with the characters provided but on the other hand you would be writing different situations of your own imagining. of course fan fics dont have to use the same characters. they simply have to be in the same universe for it to be a fan fic. so depending on what your writing it could be constraining or not.

[Robs_ugly_artwork]

i totally agree with Dawood and Coryn..

but, to answer the question: "Fanfics .. writing those won't improve your skills ?" .. i'd have to say that you will probably learn at least something from writing fanfics.. so i'd have to say, yes. .. but, on the other hand i believe that you won't ever become the best that you can be and reach that higher level of writing if you only write fanfics everyday, b/c of the restrictions that you would have to follow for it to stay a true fanfic and the fact that writing fanfics is easier to write, compared to starting a story from scratch.

[AnimeDoodler]

its weird, DRAWING from pros is actually a great way to learn different techniques, but writing...is immature, because youre not developing techniques or anything, you're stealing someone elses characters and pretty much (for 70%of all fanfics) ruin the series for anyone willing to give an amateur fanfic a chance! o.o

[Coryn]

series only get ruined if the person who reads the bad fan fic takes things way to seriously

[AnimeDoodler]

lol, true enough

[dawood]

its weird, DRAWING from pros is actually a great way to learn different techniques, but writing...is immature, because youre not developing techniques or anything, you're stealing someone elses characters and pretty much (for 70%of all fanfics) ruin the series for anyone willing to give an amateur fanfic a chance! o.o

i think it depends on the writing styles... most people who fanfic are to put it bluntly otaku who think they are better than the actual writer of the story when they are really just a bunch of phony otaku sitting at a computer and cant get a date

those people dont put their heart and souls into a story... you need to be a story teller.. live, eat and sleep writing to take a quote "you need to DREAM stories" - coryn ...     you need to know how to grip readers...  and it is not impossible to do that with fanfics but to work within those parameters is harder....  because you are in someone else world...  and you already have a target audience being the fans of that manga which would be hard to impress

[Coryn]

you need to dream stories? did i say that?

[dawood]

you need to dream stories? did i say that?

you mentioned something along those lines in a different topic

[Coryn]

ah yes. well it's a nice quote though. i think ill claim it as mine anywase

[Maxite]

There are some things to consider with writing fanfics. Sure, you are limiting yourself universe and character wise, but those aren't huge problems. When I was young me and my friends would roleplay after certain movies we had seen (Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc...). We played a part, and emulated it. Learning to emulate other peoples characters is useful, just as it is to an actor who wants to get into a certain part to emulate similar characters. You can take the character structures from your fanfics and modify them to give you characters that are similar, but brand new, in future stories (be careful though).

When would I consider fanfics to be problematic to a writers development? When that's the medium they focus on. An odd dabble in fanfic can be quite fun, and a good way to get practice in new genres and techniques.

We also have to consider that some people who write fanfics aren't all that interested in becoming proper writers, and don't care one way or the other about how proper their form is, or on improving their form. They do it as part of the love for a series, not out of a love for writing.

[Account Disabled]

This is a little old but I have things to say about this since I used to write a little bit of fanfic.

Fanfic can teach you the writing style of manga, so in that you can learn how to write a manga-style romance, comedy, battle, etc. better if you ever want to make your own story, it can help you try to improve your writing if you're serious about the fanfic, and maybe some more gains but I only got about 2.

Writing a fanfic though really doesn't matter upon writing skill sometimes, just having read or watched the actual manga/anime would have given you a base to work on, how characters speak, act, the humor, the serious parts, the romance and everything so it would be easy in the aspect for sure.

@Maxite: I'm interested in becoming a proper writer even though I wrote a few fanfics, I know I have to improve my writing form and word choice, and though I did write fanfic for the love of the series, I still did it with joy since I enjoy creating stories anyways, it all depends on the individual, I happen to say this line a lot though.