Why Is Literary Fan Fiction So Appealing? Asking ‘What If’ Questions About Your Favorite Classical Stories

Readers hunger for literary retellings, as we can see from popular books such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (a re-imagining of Dicken’s David Copperfield) and Percival Everett’s James (a retelling of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). Whether it’s about wanting beloved characters and their adventures to continue, or wanting to hear more about a side character, literary re-imaginings can refresh our favorite stories or take them in entirely different directions. For both readers and writers, this desire for retellings comes from a place of curiosity.

(Romance Retellings of Literary Classics.)

This is not the case for all readers: Some would demand hands off their favorite books. But other readers can’t resist wondering: What if ... ? And it’s from this place of curiosity that new stories spring. For writers, taking on a classic work and asking some “what if” questions can begin the process of jumpstarting their next novel. Below are some “what if” questions to help get started, with examples taken from recent literary fan fiction publications.

Changing the gender or race of a character in a classic text makes us aware of the extent to which social conventions inform identity. In Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle the author does just that. In this reimagining of Melville’s Moby Dick, Ishmaelle, the narrator, appears as a young, orphaned girl who disguises herself as a boy and gets hired to work on an American whaling ship in the 19th century. Captain Seneca, a free Black man who commands The Nimrod, does so at a time when the country is entering a civil war over slavery. Guo’s choices to alter the gender and race of two main characters in Moby Dick allows her to explore issues of identity, power, social barriers, and fate in this interesting take on a timeless tale.

Modern retellings of classic texts not only refresh and update favorite plots, they can hold up a mirror for us to see how issues today reflect those in the past. Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, for example, shows how the modern opioid epidemic in American Appalachia, where scarcity and addiction make people prey to perpetual scam artists, mirrors Dickens' society of colorful characters who are similarly caught up in a web of poverty and exploitation. Kingsolver refreshes David Copperfield’s vivid voice and critical perspective through the eyes of an orphan boy struggling to survive in a hostile, predatory modern world, with the modern pharmaceutical companies being the biggest scammers of all.

Changing the perspective can shift the roles of heroes and villains; shine a light on a side character; give a voice to a silent one, and in doing so allow us to see the story from another angle and to question who gets to tell the story in the first place. In Percival Everett’s James, Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is retold from the perspective of Jim, the runaway enslaved Black man who accompanies Huck and Tom on their journey on the Mississippi River. Jim is a passive, mostly unheard character in Twain’s classic story, but in Everett’s re-imagining, Jim not only speaks, but he does so with wit, philosophical eloquence, and biting satirical commentary as he observes the evil and iniquities of his time. Once readers have this perspective and hear this voice, they can never read Huckleberry Finn in the same way again.

A magical element added to your favorite classic can be transformative. If you’re going to change things up, why not change up reality as well? One example is Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful, a magical reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, told from the point of view of a queer Vietnamese-American Jordan Baker. Along with her follow-up novella, Don’t Sleep with the Dead, which takes place after the events of her previous novel, Vo’s books ask: What if our favorite characters in The Great Gatsby are not who or even what we think they are; what if there are portals into worlds only hinted at by the eyes in the billboard? What if our deepest, most forbidden desires take us to the darkest places, where only demon lovers can meet?

Who doesn’t love a good mash up? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies combines high society drawing room drama with apocalyptic horror. What’s enjoyable about this is the discrepancy of different worlds and genres colliding into each other. In a more recent publication, Katie Bernet’s YA thriller, Beth is Dead, takes one of the most wholesome families in literature, the March sisters of Little Women, and blends their story with a contemporary murder mystery. The incompatibility is the point and the fun of it. Of course, being literary fan fiction, source characters should stay true to form: When Elizabeth Bennet wields a sword to decapitate a zombie, she needs to do it with her standard wit and with disdain for Mr. Darcy’s judginess. When Jo March sets out to solve her sister’s murder, she’s also itching to write about it.

When I was writing 4 Janes, my re-imagining of Jane Eyre, I started with a single “what if” question: What if Jane, instead of marrying Mr. Rochester, married the clergyman, St. John Rivers, and became a missionary’s wife? Then more “what if” questions arose. What if Jane Eyre did marry Mr. Rochester, what would their life be like after their reunion? What happens to the child they conceive at the end of Brontë’s book? What happens if they were to lose that child? The “what-if” questions kept coming: What if a young woman in modern day Vietnam starts reading an abridged copy of Jane Eyre in order to learn English and starts to feel like their lives are connected? What if, on the other side of the world and of time, Jane Eyre dreams of a foreign Asian land, and ends up time-jumping there in search of a lost child? What if a young, parentless boy in a modern New England boarding school starts dreaming of a bigger life?

The advantage of collaborating with a pre-existing source is that a world is already in place to work with, even if your retelling ends up turning that world on its head. While a book should always be able to stand on its own, for readers, a story inspired by a classic source deepens their engagement with both the original and its reimagining. So, Writer, keep asking your “what if” questions; let one question lead to another, and let your new stories soar.

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