Fanfic to Pro-fic, musings

While I've been going through the submissions process on the 'I Do' anthology, I've had a lot of submissions from fanfic writers who (I think, rightly) saw getting a story into the anthology as an opportunity to get their foot in the door of writing professionally.

It's been the first time that I've had the chance to look at the fanfic style of writing from the outside, and that was very interesting.  It's also, I think, been the first time that some of the fanfic writers on the project have had the opportunity to hang out with pro-fic writers, and that's been a bit of an eye opener too.

So in the spirit of newly being confronted with some differences between fanfic and profic - and meeting a number of people who would like to turn pro but feel a bit unsure of how to go about it, I thought I'd write down my thoughts on the subject.  In part two, if I can find a piece of my old fanfic to de-fanon I might do a case study of how to turn fanfic into pro.

But the first thing I want to talk about is differences in the basic elements of what makes up a fanfiction and a profiction story.

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