Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft

In my last column, Beyond Borders: Canon Deviations, Multifandoms, and Original Content, I discussed the once-prevalent idea that fanfiction acts as a training ground or a springboard to writing original fiction. This is wrapped up in the 2000s-era defensiveness that fanfiction writers felt in the face of near-universal derision of their art/hobby outside of their fan communities, including several well-publicized screeds by prominent fantasy authors. Fanfiction authors pointed to an endgame of writing and publishing original fiction to legitimize their fanworks, using the analogy of the budding chef who uses some packaged ingredients to master constructing a dish one element at a time. (The idea that fanfiction—which requires the same craft as writing any fiction but also operating within the constraints of a canon—might be more difficult was of course never mentioned.)

Wrapped up in this was also the idea that fanfiction writers are working to improve their craft, and this is one of the primary purposes of writing fanfiction. The fan communities I was in were eager to embrace craft while holding escapism, sexual exploration, and playfulness at arm's length. (It is important to note that not all fanfiction communities shared these values, but it was certainly not an uncommon notion in the 2000s-era online Tolkien fanfiction fandom that we were there for Serious Business and all this faffing around with crackfic and smutfic was beneath our dignity, save as an occasional indulgence.)

How important do writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction consider the craft of writing? This month, I will consider this question, using data from the 2015 and 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Surveys. The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey includes multiple items about the various motives for creating fanfiction. Some of the others—and their potential overlap with interest or lack of interest in writerly craft—will be the subject of future columns.

The Tolkien Fanfiction was run in 2015 and 2020 by me (both years) and Maria Alberto (2020). Involving 1,052 and 746 participants respectively, it collected demographic data and included a series of mostly Likert-style statements about beliefs and practices related to participation as a writer and reader of Tolkien-based fanfiction. In this article, when I say that participants "agreed" with a survey item, I mean that they chose Agree or Strongly Agree; likewise, when they "disagree," they chose Disagree or Strongly Disagree. (A fifth option—No Opinion/Not Sure—was also available.) Survey data should always be interpreted with caution and is not the only way to study fan communities and practices and should not be used in isolation to make sweeping statements about those communities and their cultures. For example, I had no way to reach every reader and writer of Tolkien-based fanfiction to invite their participation in the survey, so responses will necessarily favor some groups and underrepresent others. Specifically in this article, I spend a good bit of time talking about approaches used by fans that are/were very much in the minority. I'm always happy to hear from authors who identify with these philosophies and practices about how my data and its interpretation line up with their own experiences of their fan communities.

Craft Matters

Across both years of survey data, the attitude of most writers can be summed up as: craft matters. Two survey items lead to this conclusion:

• I take my writing seriously when writing Tolkien-based fanfiction.
• Writing fanfiction has helped me to improve as a writer.

On the first survey item, about taking one's writing seriously, 93% and 90% agreed in 2015 and 2020, respectively. On the second item, about improving as a writer, 96% in 2015 and 94% in 2020 agreed with the statement. Graphs illustrating these survey items are below.

Both of these pairs of data are surprisingly strong and speak to the near universality, within the Tolkien fanfiction fandom, of approaching one's stories as worthy of craft and care. This certainly debunks the 2000s-era stereotype of the fanfiction writer as so singularly interested in getting two characters in bed together or doing something ridiculous with the text that she loses sight of her story as a work of art. Of course, this might be part of the point: that fanfiction writers are eager to distance themselves from this stereotype.

However, there is some evidence that writers are beginning to break free from the need to prove themselves serious artists. In 2015, only twelve authors (2%) disagreed with the statement, "I take my writing seriously when writing Tolkien-based fanfiction." By 2020, despite significantly fewer participants, the number who disagreed had nonetheless doubled to twenty-four participants (5%).

Small increases in data like this should, of course, be approached with care. While "twice as many" is a provocative statement, in this case, "twice as many" is just twelve people, a small enough number that is within the realm of possibility that twelve additional people who disagreed with the statement just happened to take the survey in 2020. It doesn't necessarily demonstrate a trend. (I also find myself increasingly cognizant, on the eve of the third installment of the survey, of not wanting to read a pattern in a mere two sets of data. In a year's time, I will possibly know if these data are actually trends or just anomalies. I suppose I'm actively avoiding the imminent eating of crow!)

But it is interesting, given other trends within both the Tolkien fanfiction fandom (and fanfiction more broadly) and the perception of fanfiction outside of fan communities. Fanfiction is no longer universally derided and, perhaps even more importantly, conversations have entered the mainstream about the importance of art created by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ fans as a means of affirming the experiences of marginalized groups. Fandom is cool(er) than it once was too. Films, books, shows, and comics once sidelined as geeky have entered popular culture.

Does this free authors to write fanfiction for reasons other than high art? Does this explain the data? It is possible that we are growing more open to valuing fanfiction that serves purposes beyond craft. Since so many authors in both surveys indicated that craft was important to them, I thought that honing in on the subset who bucked this trend could be an interesting side quest.

You Can't Be Serious …

What do these twenty-four authors who, in 2020, disagreed that they took their "writing seriously when writing Tolkien-based fanfiction" have in common, if anything? And how do they differ from Tolkien fanfiction authors overall?

• They are younger than authors overall. The median age of authors in the 2020 survey was 28 years; those who disagreed with the statement had a median age of 26.
• Queer identities were more common among those who disagreed with the statement. In the 2020 survey, 73% of participants identified as female. Among this subset, only 58% did—but 38% chose a queer identity (nonbinary, genderfluid, or agender. One participant in the subset preferred not to say.) Among all participants, 17% chose a queer identity. No one identified as male in the subset (while 7% of participants overall did).
• Authors in the subset had been writing less time than authors overall: a median of 2.5 years compared to 5 years.
• They were less likely to write for other fandoms (67% compared to 77% of authors overall wrote for other fandoms. This one honestly surprised me!)
• They were slightly less likely to use the films (only 50% used the Lord of the Rings films compared to 56% of authors overall, and only 29% used the Hobbit films compared to 37% overall). They were also less likely to use The Silmarillion (50% compared to 75% of authors overall) and other posthumous works.

These demographic data suggest that authors who don't "take [their] writing seriously" are newer, younger writers who largely began writing in the post-Hobbit film era. In other words, they are possibly less burdened by past stereotypes of fanfiction and values in fanfiction communities that push improving one's craft as a primary objective. They are also from demographic groups where increasing attention has been given to the role of fanworks as an art form especially suited for centering the experiences of marginalized groups.

As I noted above, several other survey items asked about motives for writing. I was also curious how this subset of authors compared to authors overall in terms of some of these motives. If craft isn't a motive, what is? Can we identify trends here that suggest commonalities among this small group of authors?

To get a sense of this, I calculated the number of authors overall who agreed with the various motive statements and again for the the twenty-four authors in this subset. I then ordered the statements based on the difference between the two groups. Again, I must urge caution—twenty-four is a very small sample size that can easily be skewed by just a few responses. However, even interpreted cautiously, some trends do emerge.

The graphic below shows the final ranking of the forty-four motive statements. Here's how to read it: I computed the difference between the percentage of authors overall who selected a motive and the percentage of authors in the subset. The graphic below arranges those from the motives more strongly preferred by the subset (i.e., the percentage of the subset who agreed with a motive statement was much higher than for authors overall, in pink) to those more strongly preferred by authors overall compared to the subset (i.e., the percentage of the subset who agreed with a motive statement was much lower than for authors overall, in blue). Motives toward the center of the graphic are those where the difference between authors overall and the subset are less extreme.

Because there were so many motive statements, it was useful to categorize them as well to see what trends emerge. You can see each motive category in the bottom left of the graphic with the motives included in that category highlighted in orange. It is helpful, when first engaging with this graphic, to just take in what patterns emerge for each category.

First, the subset agreed far less readily to nearly all of the forty-four motive statements; this is why most of the motive statements are concentrated on the right/blue side of the graphic. They did, however, choose No Opinion/Not Sure as an option more often, which in working with the survey data, I have noticed tends to be true of writers with less experience in the fandom. However, while varying levels of the experience may confound the data somewhat, it does not appear to be the full picture.

If you break down by category, further trends emerge. Here are the categories shown in the graphic above:

• appreciation: motives where the author uses fanfiction to express positive emotions toward Tolkien and his work
• transformation: motives where the writer uses fanfiction to extend Tolkien's work
• criticism and analysis: motives where the author seeks to understand Tolkien's works more deeply through writing fanfiction, which may include exploring what the writer perceives as shortcomings or flaws in that work
• repair: motives that use fanfiction to fix what the writer perceives as shortcomings or flaws in Tolkien's work
• sex and gender: motives including all of the above that pertain to sex and gender
• race and culture: motives including all of the above that pertain to race and culture
• characters: motives including all of the above that pertain to characters
• personal: motives that enrich the author in some way through the creation of fanfiction

In addition, I identified social/community (creating fanfiction as part of an interaction with other fan) and adaptation-related (concerning adaptations of Tolkien's works) motives, but there were only two of the former and one of the latter, so I did not include these in the graphic.

So what patterns can we observe between the two groups?

Compared to authors overall, authors in the subset tended to agree most with statements in the personal, sex and gender, and repair categories. They agreed less (again, compared to authors overall) with statements in the appreciation and criticism/analysis categories.

Transformation motives were spread most widely between the two groups, with the two survey items at either extreme classified as transformational. Looking closer at the survey items in this category, it depends on the nature of the transformation of the text as to whether it is favored by the subset, authors overall, or common to both. In other words, all authors transform the texts, but how they do this does seem to vary between the fandom overall and authors less concerned with writer's craft.

Looking at which items resulted in the greatest difference between the subset and authors overall again supports the hypothesis that the subset are authors who reject the traditional values of many prominent communities within the world of Tolkien-based fanfiction. As a participant in that world—as well as a researcher of its culture and history—and I would say that Tolkien fanfiction authors tend to

• enjoy deep exploration and analysis of the canon (including character and worldbuilding elements),
• view the craft of their writing as important,
• match Tolkien's tone (serious) and focus (e.g., friendships versus sexual relationships), and
• avoid criticism of Tolkien or suggestions that aspects of his world are "wrong."

In addition to not agreeing that they take their writing seriously, this subset rejects several other of these values. They do not particularly enjoy deep dives into the canon (criticism/analysis). Instead, they focus on having fun with the texts—the item that the subset agreed with most compared to authors overall was "I enjoy writing fanfiction to explore fun or silly scenarios" and "I write fanfiction to entertain myself" was a more popular motive with this group than authors overall—which includes using fanfiction to write about sex. Of the eight items where the subset agreed equally with or more often than authors overall, three of them had to do with sex.

The subset may be less eager to explore or analyze the canon in depth, but they are more comfortable with changing it, tending to agree more readily with some of the reparative items. Repair of the texts, per the work done by Una McCormack,¹ is often associated with centering the stories of characters from marginalized groups, but a closer look at these particular data shows it is not so simple. Although they readily identify motives related to sex and gender, authors in the subset are less likely to identify motives related to race and culture—in fact, there is not a single race/culture item that is more identified by the subset than any of the sex/gender items. Elsewhere, I have shown that reparative fanworks about social justice issues are mostly written by fans who self-identify as marginalized based on the identities they write about.² However, this does not seem to be the case here. The subset reports levels of marginalization nearly equal with those reported by survey participants overall.³

It seems that the sex is really the key here. This subset of authors is motivated to write about sex, and stories centered on sex align more readily with reparative writing concerned with sex and gender than with race and culture. Writing concerned with race and culture, on the other hand, is more tightly tied with the kind of deep, analytic worldbuilding that is typical of writers in the fandom overall.

Again, this is a small subset of authors but one that doubled in size (despite significantly fewer participants in 2020 than in 2015) between the two surveys. As we stand on the cusp of the 2025 survey, it will be interesting to see if this turns into a pattern: Will we see more authors who reject some of what I would term old-school fandom values? Or was this a blip in the data, and 2025 will show that the canon- and craft-focused fandom with its regard for Tolkien's authority remains unchallenged as the dominant fandom culture?

Conclusion

Looking back at the history of Tolkien-based fanfiction on the internet, the centering of craft is apparent in the fandom's early institutions. Writer's workshops (like Garden of Ithilien or the Lizard Council), awards (like the Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards and Mithril Awards), and selective archives (like the Henneth-Annûn Story Archive with its peer review process or Stories of Arda with its author approval process) all imply that craft matters and working to improve one's craft as a writer is an appropriate direction for one's fannish energies. Even the site where you are reading this now was originally intended to begin as a writer's workshop, not an archive.

There has always been pushback on this idea that we are here to become better writers: authors who celebrated the use of fanfiction for sexual, escapist, and purely fun purposes. Is it possible that these motives are becoming more acceptable, along with the idea that fanfiction doesn't have to result in becoming a better writer? That it's okay to be here just for the fun of it without needing a higher calling? There are early signs that the tides might be changing where craft, motive, and their overlap are concerned.

Works Cited

1. Una McCormack. "Finding Ourselves in the (Un)Mapped Lands: Women's Reparative Readings of The Lord of the Rings" in Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan (Altadena, CA: Mythopoeic Press, 2015), 309-26.
2. Dawn Walls-Thumma. "Stars Less Strange: An Analysis of Fanfiction and Representation within the Tolkien Fan Community" in Tolkien and Diversity: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Seminar, ed. Will Sherwood (Edinburgh: Luna Press Publishing, 2023), 86-104. The version I presented at the 2021 Tolkien Society Seminar "Tolkien and Diversity" can be found on the Silmarillion Writers' Guild: Stars Less Strange: An Analysis of Fanfiction and Representation within the Tolkien Fan Community.
3. Among all survey participants, 58% self-identified as marginalized based on sexual orientation, 41% based on gender, 10% based on ethnicity, and 6% based on race/color. Among the subset of authors, 54% self-identified as marginalized based on sexual orientation, 38% based on gender, 8% based on ethnicity, and 8% based on race/color.