Fanfiction as imaginary play: What fan-written stories can tell us about the cognitive science of fiction

• Fanfiction is an increasingly common way for audiences to interact with media properties.
• This phenomenon is vastly understudied.
• The writing of fanfiction parallels both daydreaming and childhood imaginary play.
• The content of fanfiction may be both similar to and distinct from the content of fiction.
• Research on this topic may provide insight into readers’ intuitions about stories.

Fiction has often been viewed as requiring imaginative input on the part of the audience, but relatively little empirical work has examined the role that fictional characters and worlds play in the imaginings of adolescents and adults, outside of the text itself. Here, I provide an overview of existing research on fanfiction, or extratextual stories written for pleasure by fans, based on an existing media property. I suggest that fanfiction is a form of imaginary play that reflects both emotional engagement with and resistance to the source material. I draw comparisons between writing fanfiction, daydreaming, and childhood pretend play and argue that there is a need for research that explores this phenomenon using more rigorous psychological methods. Such research may shed light on a range of issues in the psychology of fiction and why we read for pleasure.