Genres
Fan fiction
Fiction written by fans, usually amateur and unauthorized, using the characters and settings of an existing work or public figure.
Fan fiction is fiction typically written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, based on existing works of fiction or real people. It is unauthorized by definition: writers borrow copyrighted characters and settings, and pieces range from a few sentences to novel length. What defines a work is its relation to the source's canon, either staying within those boundaries without becoming canon itself or running in an alternative universe. The term appears in print as early as 1938, initially for amateur science fiction, and the modern phenomenon was popularized and defined by the Star Trek fandom's 1960s fanzines. FanFiction.Net (1998) and the Organization for Transformative Works' Archive of Our Own scaled it, and its community vocabulary (canon versus fanon, the Mary Sue, shipping, the AU and hurt/comfort forms) became web fiction's shared inheritance. One estimate puts fan fiction at a third of all book-related content on the internet, and the commercial pipeline is proven: Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fan fiction.