by Ros Woolner
Our June workshop was about using fan fiction – fictional writing based on an existing work of fiction – to jump-start our own writing. Because fan fiction starts from existing characters and settings, you can use it to beat the blank page, to experiment with different genres and styles, or to practise weak points in your own writing, like dialogue for instance.
When it came to our turn, we each listed six favourite stories and wrote down two characters (or one character and a setting) from each, numbering them from one to twelve. Karen then used a random number generator to pick a character/setting to start writing about.
The resulting pieces included stories based on Hansel and Gretel, Daedalus, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes. And a tale about Dracula trying to register with an NHS dentist.
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