Fan fiction for kids?

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

My 11 year old has gotten into writing fan fiction, mostly surround Greek mythology with some Percy Jackson. Writing has always been a struggle for him(and his spelling is attrocious) and I really want to encourage this.  He’s asked to publish it online to see if anyone likes it.  Is there a safe, kind place I could put it on?  I’d edit it for him before we did.  But I really need someplace kind; cruel remarks would crush him.  He has autism and I can’t express how huge of a deal this is.

(The plot line and dialogue is actually quite good; I have a BA in creative writing and have taught it to homeschoolers over the years, and he’s probably writing at an 8-9th grade level if you take away the spelling and writing errors). 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Mrs Tiggywinkle

[bookbard]

What I would suggest is find an outschool course which focuses on writing Percy Jackson fanfic. We did that for my daughter for a different genre and it has changed her life - she made lots of (online) friends who wrote with her and even her friends in real life, from school etc, write stories together (they do google docs, so they can all access the story). It's like her number one hobby and honestly, I think her writing is pretty good. 

I don't know if I would risk the usual fanfic sites, just because he could stumble over X rated stuff. Having said that, I wrote fanfic for years and years and never got a negative comment. 

[forty-two]

I wouldn't want to turn an 11yo loose on fanfic sites b/c of adult content, as a pp said.  But wrt comments, you can moderate comments on Archive of Our Own (AO3) - if you set up the account (use your own email and not share the password with him), you could turn on comment moderation and spike anything bad before he could see it.  I think you can moderate comments on fanfiction.net (ff.n) as well.  (Those are the two sites I am on.)

Both my girls write fanfic, and I've toyed with asking if they want to post some online - I've shared curated fanfic with them, but I haven't turned them loose to find their own stuff.  Even with ratings and such, plenty of 18-22yos aren't very good at it - I've seen plenty of rated-PG stuff that had super intense violent situations.

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

Ugh. I was kind of hoping there was a kid fanfic site.

i offered to self publish on Amazon because I have enough friends and family that would read it.

[vonfirmath]

Does he have any sort of in person friends?

 

People are much kinder in person than they are online

[katilac]

1 hour ago, forty-two said:

 But wrt comments, you can moderate comments on Archive of Our Own (AO3) - if you set up the account (use your own email and not share the password with him), you could turn on comment moderation and spike anything bad before he could see it.  I think you can moderate comments on fanfiction.net (ff.n) as well.  ( 

Yes, you can delete comments on AO3, but it might say "comment deleted" if it has a reply (just so she's aware that her ds might know comments are being deleted). 

I'm relatively certain you can only delete guest reviews on ff.n but not positive. 

1 hour ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:

Ugh. I was kind of hoping there was a kid fanfic site.

i offered to self publish on Amazon because I have enough friends and family that would read it.

There might be. I know there used to be a couple when my kids were younger. But do be aware that a kid site does not equal no negative comments. 

He might get a bad review on Amazon as well. 

9 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

Does he have any sort of in person friends?

People are much kinder in person than they are online

But, if the friends aren't into fanfic AND the specific fandom, they aren't going to read more than one or two as a courtesy. Maybe. If they're not too long. People who don't read fanfic themselves tend to think its quite weird. 

3 hours ago, bookbard said:

What I would suggest is find an outschool course which focuses on writing Percy Jackson fanfic. We did that for my daughter for a different genre and it has changed her life - she made lots of (online) friends who wrote with her and even her friends in real life, from school etc, write stories together (they do google docs, so they can all access the story). It's like her number one hobby and honestly, I think her writing is pretty good. 

I don't know if I would risk the usual fanfic sites, just because he could stumble over X rated stuff. Having said that, I wrote fanfic for years and years and never got a negative comment. 

I like this the best to get him started, although it still does not negate the possibility of negative comment (kids talk faster than teachers can intervene, lol). I do think it's unlikely that he would get cruel comments in almost any setting, but it does happen. If he sticks with it for a fair amount of time, he will definitely have to accept people saying that, oh, you wrote him completely out of character, or, this plot device is unbelievable, stuff like that. 

[Farrar]

You have a ton of control on AO3 and people are pretty nice there for the most part. And people are relentless about tagging these days so while you used to stumble on all sorts of stuff, the culture is more that people label every little thing now. But... it's a smutty place. Like, there's a lot of straight up p*rn. Just reading the tags is not something you want a kid that age doing.

FanFiction(dot)net is dying a slow and painful to watch death. It's still a huge site, but it's really funky to use. There's still plenty of smut, but a huge order less and some stuff is basically banned.

There are lots of smaller sites, but... not really a good option for kids. 

[Tanaqui]

I would not recommend self-publishing at Amazon because you really don't want to get smacked with a cease and desist over it. Fanfic is legally gray-ish when there's no profit motive. It's not so gray-ish when money is changing hands, even pennies.

If he's mostly *posting* fanfic and not searching it up I'd go with Ao3 - but I'd absolutely either or both a. insist on proofing it for spelling and punctuation and/or b. leaving an author's note pointing out that this is a child and comments should be kind - either constructive criticism only or even NO criticism. (In fact, i think you can screen comments, can't you? If so, you can have him sign up through your email and set it so you, the primary account holder, are the one approving comments. Then he can't see any bad or inappropriate ones.)

Another thing you could do is have him post his fic on a different webpage and simply link to it on Ao3 or whatever. Then, again, you would be controlling what comments are seen and also he wouldn't be spending a lot of time browsing.

As for the appropriateness of other people's fic, this probably varies a lot by fandom. Some fandoms may be better, as a group, at using tags correctly and rating fics that are only 18+ correctly and so on.

I don't know of any kids-only fic sites, and that may be just as well - seems to me that those might actually attract the sort of randos who like shocking and upsetting children, whereas a mixed-age site which trends steadily older can be less of a thrill.

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

He calls it fanfic, but he’s not actually using any characters from other people’s stuff except greeK mythology.  There’s a Percy Jackson-esque character with a different name. 
He attends a special needs school and the two or three friends he has do not have the reading or comprehension abilities to read this story.  Outschool classes have been really hit or miss with him, but I’ll look and offer it.

Mostly, he really just wants to know if other people will like it, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that. I actually kind of think they will, to be honest.  He’s got a pretty solid plot and some witty dialogue.  I feel like I could scrounge up ten or so people to read it and that would be good enough for him. I suppose I could just publish it on a website. 
 

mostly I just want to encourage his writing. 

[R828]

Perhaps you could just post it here and all the hive aunties can give our honest but of course kind and encouraging feedback? 

[Ausmumof3]

This is a slightly different thing but have you considered sending it to the actual author.  My dd sent a letter to an author in the US and it took ages but she did write a really encouraging kind letter back (or one of her publicity agents did).

Otherwise don’t forget there’s a writers workshop section on here.  It’s not heaps busy but if you tag is we’d read it and give some positive feedback.