Spark: How Fanfiction and Fandom Can Set Your Creativity on Fire by Atlin Merrick (editor)

Title: Spark: How Fanfiction and Fandom Can Set Your Creativity on Fire

Author: Atlin Merrick (editor)

Genre: Non-fiction

Publisher: Improbable Press

Published: 1^st April 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 360

Price: $36.95

Synopsis: Spark is all about encouragement, permission, it’s about firing you up.

Spark: How Fanfiction and Fandom Can Set Your Creativity On Fire hopes to help you believe that your fandom writing, drawing, podficcing – whatever you’re creating right now – is, was, and ever shall be legitimate, important, and a fantastic way to expand your community, develop your skills, and above all help you find your voice in the world.

Spark’s more than forty essays and interviews from best-selling writers Anne Jamison, Claire O’Dell, Diane Duane, Henry Jenkins, KJ Charles, Lyndsay Faye, Sara Dobie Bauer, and many others discuss, encourage, and shout about how fic and fandom in all their glories can absolutely inspire you, set your creativity on fire – and change your world.

Ideal for teachers of Media & Communication; and Creative &

Professional Writing.

Interviews with well-known academics in fandom studies.

A great resource for students of Literature; Creative Writing; Pop

Culture; Media; especially in subjects like: Writing Genre Texts;

Exploring Iconic Texts; and Reading, Writing Criticism.

Over 40 personal stories of how fandoms help inspire creativity.

Writers, singers, artists, scientists and more share how fanfic

has encouraged their imaginations and their lives.

Quotes from ‘famous creators’ who’ve also written fanfiction.

~*~

Creativity can come from all sorts of places, and sometimes writers can get started writing fanfiction – works of fiction that take characters from books, television, or movies, for example, and they create new stories with them, using the existing characters, inserting original characters, and creating scenarios in the things they love where they can see themselves, particularly if the writer feels the thing they are enjoying is missing something.

It’s also a way to practise style and voice, a way to learn about storytelling, and can help people find that they enjoy writing and creating. And it’s not just about writing. Fandom can be explored in drawing, videos, comics and a range of other artforms. And this is where Spark, an essay collection about writing fandom and fanfiction comes in. A series of essays that was ignited by inspiration, and the idea that inspiration can come from anywhere. It celebrates community, and the role of the fandom community in helping inspire, support and grow the creativity of writers – the support that writers may not get elsewhere, but finding likeminded people can help – it can show that whether people are dabbling, doing this as a hobby, or working towards writing licensed works – fanfiction that is written for purpose, there will be people out there wanting to share in the joy of writing fanfiction and the sparks of creativity it can give people to create other work, as something fun that means something will come to life in the mind of a writer. Writing is after all, about creativity and those little sparks that come to life in words. It is books like this that give insight into the creative process, and the different ways people work, write and crate, and what this can mean for them.

This collection of essays from a diverse range of fanfiction creators and edited by Atlin Merrick, who write across a range of fandoms and work to give underrepresented groups representation in worlds they may not have seen themselves in came about organically, where people with very different experiences – scientists, singers, professors, writers, disabled people, women, LGBTQIA people, and people from all walks of life came together to talk about fandom – something that is important to them all. Something that has united them despite their differences. Whilst this collection focuses on fandom and fanfiction, I felt that a lot of the advice about creativity and imagination, and using what works for you to create can be used in other fiction writing too, as fictional and writing techniques are used in all sorts of writing. This makes it an accessible book – and whilst many contributors are part of similar and popular fandoms like Sherlock, there is no judgement over what fandom or fanfiction someone might write, or how someone might write – it’s all about celebrating what inspires you as an individual writer.

This is a great resource for writers, or those teaching and studying media and communications, to explore how we receive and interact with stories and iconic texts that everyone, or at least most people, will know about and potentially have had some exposure to or experience with. And it also shows how writing, genre, communication, reading and criticism can be explored in a variety of ways – how each piece of work we explore can be looked at through this lens, examined in different ways, and received differently – that every reader’s reaction will be unique, and that is okay. It’s a good resource to have on hand, to dip in and out of, and to remind writers that writing anything can spark something – and that there is always a way to get into a story that you are trying to write. This is an intriguing book for writers and readers.