scratchandscribbles asked: I tend to do a lot of fanfiction because everything sparks ideas for me. I come up with characters and always grow super attached to them. I develop character arcs for them and make all of these plans for original stories involving the fandom and whatnot. But I have a problem. I was wondering, would it be better to change any canon characters etc to my own as well so my stories/novels are publishable or should I just write them as fanfiction and keep them on the internet?

Tazzy: Well. This is a difficult question, to say the least.

It’s possible to publish fanfiction, actually, but as it is, I’d suggest you keep them on the internet. It’s great that you develop the original stories of the fandom into something new, but just changing the canon characters to your own could still be seen as plagirism. Say you wrote Doctor Who fanfiction, and just redubbed canon characters with new names and tweaked some details of it, it’s still more than likely that someone’s going to realise what you’ve done. 

Being inspired by shows, books, movies (etc) is great, but otherwise, I’m not sure it’s advisable to try and publish definite fanfiction (even if you do change the canon characters to your own). 

Here’s a challenge for you. What’s your longest fanfic? However many words it is, write an original story with absolutely nothing similar to the fanfic you want it to parallel. Make all of the characters your own, and ignore the urge to perhaps base them on characters from certain fandoms.

(Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your message, though? Please correct me if I’ve gotten the wrong idea, and I’ve answered this incorrectly! :’D )