Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The O.C. Basement: Emma Stiles Australian Fan Fiction Writer

Developing imagination … Emma Stiles, 13, has written three online stories based on hit drama The OC and discusses script ideas with her friends via chatrooms. Photo: Ben Rushton

Here is a very early 2000's O.C. fan article - brought to you by The Sydney Morning Herald 2005


For fans of glamour soap The OC, the end of an episode is agonising. It means a week-long wait to find out whether Summer will open her heart to Seth, or whether Marissa and Ryan are meant to be.

So a growing number of impatient teenage girls are embracing a new craze known as fan fiction, in which they create their own scripts for favourite shows and post them on the internet. The website www.fanfiction.net allows devotees to write about hundreds of shows, movies and books ranging from Gone with the Wind to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

California drama The OC is a top pick for many Sydney schoolgirls, although Summerland, Charmed, Lost and Desperate Housewives are also popular.

Balgowlah teenager Emma Stiles heard about the website from a friend four months ago. At first she read and reviewed other people's stories, all written under pen names, but soon she plucked up the courage to write her own.

Emma - known online as Summereth Ryrissa - has now written three stories about The OC. She discusses ideas with her friends via chatrooms and emails her favourite authors.

While others merge shows, create bizarre scenarios or use their own experiences, 13-year-old Emma prefers to stay true to the show. "My life wouldn't really fit The OC," she says.

Another website devotee, Genevieve Gilan, from the Central Coast, decided she would like to become an author after working on scripts for fan fiction. The 17-year-old believes her writing has improved.

"I think it's made me a lot more confident," she says. "It makes me think that if someone wants to read my writing [online], then if I ever do become a writer, they'll read that too."

Author Cecilia Dart-Thornton was discovered when she wrote for an online writers' workshop. She found it easier to post work on the internet than submit it to a publisher. "You can always pretend that people in cyber space aren't real," she says.

Some of the authors on Fanfiction are clearly beginners, whereas others are accomplished writers, she says. However, the site's real value is in encouraging imagination. "It is interactive and that's vital - you have some input, you have some control in a way of the world around you. You don't have to sit there and have things fed to you - you can give something back."

She suspects most of the writers are young women. "On the message board on my website it is mainly young women who contribute and discuss the books among themselves," she says. "They are very literate, very articulate and very sociable."

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