That last bit, about the desired feedback, can be terrifying for educators tasked with teaching classes of 30 or more. And they want you to read it as their teacher because they want your feedback.” “I had one student, his name was Arturo, and he had written several novels’ worth of fan fiction. “I’ve had several students over the years who've come to me with the fan fiction that they've written that's in the hundreds of pages,” says librarian Julia Torres, as reported by MindShift. When teachers assign fan fiction as reading and writing projects, says Sung, the results can be startling. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley and the BBC series Lost in Austen. Pride and Prejudice alone has spawned countless works of fan fiction, with some adapted for film, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and some leapfrogging straight to television, like P.D. Some strains grow from an interest in Sherlock Holmes, Virgil’s Aeneid, or Jane Austen’s work. Fan fiction isn’t always rooted in fantasy and sci-fi, though, according to Harvard professor of English Stephanie Burt, as related in the New Yorker. The Harry Potter books are a popular source of inspiration, along with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, the anime/manga series Naruto, and the futuristic series Star Trek and Star Wars. An endless stream of essays-and rule-based feedback on grammar, spelling, and punctuation-can have a chilling effect on the motivation of everyone in the classroom.Ĭouple all those rules with topics or assignments a student has no interest in, and you’re likely to get an uninspired, frustrated kid, and a teacher who doesn’t feel up to grading the work.Įnter fan fiction, says Ki Sung in a recent MindShift piece titled “ How Fan Fiction Inspires Kids to Read and Write and Write and Write.” Fan fiction is a form of narrative that draws hard-core followers and “builds upon or takes liberties with existing stories.” Writers of this type of content can “create alternate endings for stories, create parallel worlds, develop side characters more deeply, or cross over characters from different stories.” (I had favourite characters before that I could relate to in some ways, but, for example, both characters of my current main ship could not be more different to myself, both in background and in personality.Ideally, writing shouldn’t feel like a chore to students, and grading writing shouldn’t be overwhelming for teachers. I'm also the kind of person who doesn't "identify" with characters I like them because I find them interesting and entertaining, not because they are like me or I identify with them in any personal way. I'm always trying to put myself in the character's head as much as possible, to write them in a way that's believable and consistent for who they are, despite what I would do/think/feel in their situation. I'm sure there are certain details and pieces here and there in my stories that are inevitably influenced by who I am as a person (and by who I am not)-and I guess the way each writer interprets the characters is also determined by it too, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little bit.īut I only write canon characters, and characterization is one of the things that matter the most to me.
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