The Positive Impact of FanFiction: A Deep Dive Into Wattpad and AO3

From the talk of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson's relationship to 1000+ words with their fictional love story, AO3 (Archive of Our Own) and Wattpad are popular platforms where writers share fanfiction focused on people or characters from previously released TV shows, movies, and books.

It might surprise people how large the community is for fanfiction readers, the range of relationship crossovers (also known as ships) that stem from pre-existing media or real people, and the number of authors that started as fan fiction writers.

To understand more about the impact of fanfiction, you have to know more about the platforms on which they are published.

Wattpad is “home to 97 million people, who spend over 26 billion minutes a month engaged in original stories.” As they say themselves, it “has democratized storytelling for a new generation of diverse Gen Z writers and their fans.”

AO3 is all about “Fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic.”

The difference between Wattpad and AO3 is the content. Wattpad still has original work of people who just want to start writing fiction, so the focus is not necessarily on fanfiction. AO3, however, has a main focus on fanfiction.

You might be wondering, what do these websites do right to have such a large audience?

“John Milton wrote Paradise Lost using characters from the Bible. Shakespeare retold ancient folk stories. Today, millions of young people are writing and sharing fan fiction on a variety of websites,” said Cecilia Aragon in an article about fanfiction and the impact it has on writing. “They are giving and receiving feedback and teaching each other how to write.”

Anna Todd, author and film producer, says that she still reads comments on her original stories After, Nothing More, and Nothing Less.

“I love reading their live feedback from those chapters,” Todd told Marisha Pessl in an interview.

But that is not all. Wattpad started with the comment sections below paragraphs so people could debrief with other readers around the world about their thoughts on characters, plot lines, and more.

Besides the ability to become a better writer, the readers can become friends and start a community, sharing what stories they like on their profiles, and getting recommendations at the end of stories.

Many writers started on Wattpad, AO3, and other online writing platforms. Besides helping with creating communities and people becoming better writers, it might come as a surprise to you that there is a large amount of now-published work that started as fan fiction.

Books like Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, which now has a show and movie, started as fanfiction. Fifty Shades of Grey started as a Twilight fanfiction which is seen by “Edward/Christian’s predatory nature and Ana/Bella’s innocence,” Daniella Di Carlo wrote.

After, written by Anna Todd was originally a fanfiction about the One Direction band, now has turned into a 5-part movie series.

Some of us (like me) started out reading on online platforms but never expected the range of positive outcomes that it has had. Writing to strangers online may just turn into a TV show, film, or book.

When you might feel excluded from the audience of already published work, maybe this will help you find your place in a fictional universe.

See below for the top 10 Fanfiction “Ships” on AO3.

Do you read fan fiction? Leave a comment below!