What Writers can Learn from Fanfiction(.net)

About once a year I make a point of visiting the website Fanfiction.net, which as the name might suggest is a giant trove of fanfiction, perhaps the largest on the internet with 6.6 million titles as of March 2011. Fanfiction, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a special form of writing where you take existing characters, settings and situations from media and write your own stories with them. So, for example, if you were a fan of Harry Potter (as a few people are), you might choose to...