Fanfiction is weird, yo.
My understand of what fanfiction is has always been a little…skewed, I guess. Growing up, my perception was that it was a bad thing: it was predominantly smut, or writing that took stories I enjoyed and made them wayyyyyyy too sexual, or was just full of wish-fulfillment. I treated it like anything else that was supposed to be taboo and avoided it.
As I got older, my understanding of fanfiction (as well as with many other things) grew. Sure, I was still a little jaded from it, hearing stories like how “Fifty Shades” started out as Twilight fanfiction, but I had a basic realization that fanfiction wasn’t all bad. In fact, a good bit of was actually, well, good. One of the stories I’m working on right now and hoping to get published someday literally started out as a sort of fanfiction, with my best friend daring me to write something better after I spent a good amount of time dunking on the entire Twilight series (actually most of my writings have spawned from said friend daring me…you know who you are, and thank you).
I had never really tried to write a fanfiction until last year. It was the start of the pandemic, my wife and I were stuck in our house spending all the hours playing Animal Crossing, and another wave of news broke out showing how a beloved children’s author was actually a pretty terrible human being. It got me thinking about how the story could have been better, but also for how it set the stage for so many great stories that just haven’t been realized yet.
Out of boredom and frustration with a manuscript that wasn’t going anywhere out in Query Land, I started writing a basic little premise: a girl discovers she has magical powers and becomes part of a much bigger world than she realized. Pretty tropey, right? But it was fun, getting to play around in the world of Harry Potter and throw in some ideas of my own.
And BAM!
Leticia Lunetti was born.
I’ll admit, after publishing the first chapter, I let it go for a few months. I wasn’t really serious about it and still in the mindset of “oh, fanfiction. blech.”
Now, Leticia Lunetti and the Burning Egg sits at a around 86,000 words. For reference, that’s about as long as the first Harry Potter novel (which is actually really long for a book of that age level, by the way; like almost double the norm). Have I spent way too much time working on it? Probably.
But also, it’s been a ton of fun. I’ve gotten to try out some plot beats that I probably wouldn’t have normally, written some characters that are outside of my comfort zone, and been able to toy with my writing craft in a way I hadn’t considered. And, honestly, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve made. Sure, some parts of it (especially the beginning) drag on and are pretty crummy, but overall as a whole I am glad I did it. I feel like I have genuinely become a better writer as a result.
Want to read it? Go ahead and click the link right here! Feel free to let me know what you think. Right now, I’m going to focus my attention on some actually-publishable writing prospects, but I definitely have plans to return to Letti Lunetti and Co. and flesh out their story.
Have a wonderful day, stay safe, and (as always) don’t get arrested!
Jacob Ryckman 