Like a pear cider that's made from 100% pears

I would say that recreating the characterisation, mood and general vibes of an existing work of fiction is in fact a skill in and of itself that's acquired via practice. A common compliment delivered to fanfiction writers is how well they have captured the spirit of the original work. Inexperienced fanfiction writers fail to do this.

When creating an original character you can, ultimately, say anything about them and now it's canon bcos you created them and you said so. conversely, well, if you are covering a well known song and start playing the wrong notes people will notice immediately.

In addition: a lot of fanfiction, IMO, is in actuality a form of metafictional literary analysis. a story where two characters sit down and talk about their feelings about a canonical event? literary analysis, which is of course a skill. Sometimes fanfiction is bad bcos the writer is not good at interpreting texts.

and i thought this was a really strange thing to say because that's the easy part. like???

most people have lots of ideas; most people who want to write have more. it's very common to get 30-60% of the way into a piece of fiction and realize that you now have to stop inventing and start pulling-together, and you don't know how. which is why there are so many published novels out there that are really interesting and then the resolution is sort of awkwardly bullshitted.

the fact that fanfiction lets you skip the alternately overly-seductive and grunt-labor elements of 'making everything up' leaves you free to really engage with subtleties of craft and writing skills it's hard to get frequent practice in on with original projects, because you have to get the work so close to completion before you can even start that bit.

writing is not a single skill, it's several dozen. they don't all improve from the same types of practice.

Via mastodon(aka the fediverse)