Before we begin, I want to make it abundantly clear that the purpose of this rant/post isn't to bash Fanfiction writers or to make light of the hard work of Fan Creators. It'd be incredibly hypocritical of me to do so as more than half of my written work is Fanfiction, and I made a post a little over a couple of months ago gushing about my favorite Fan-Made animations and music of the Brony and Undertale communities respectively. If you want to rewrite Naruto, Bleach https://19216801.onl/https://routerlogin.uno/, MHA, or any other Manga to fit your taste and possibly make the story better, then go for it. My issue isn't with you.
My issue is with people who so flippantly claim that Fanfiction writers on the internet are better writers than the original authors because they managed to write a more coherent and enjoyable narrative when the truth couldn't be any more different. And it may seem obvious like an obvious correlation to make: give the author's work some polish and much-needed love and you should be a better writer than the original author, and it may seem absurd for me to disagree with this notion. But I do disagree with this notion, and I have a couple of reasons for doing so.
And here's why.
Reason #1: More than Half of the Legwork is Completed.
The very nature of Fanfiction is the primary backbone for this reasoning. When rewriting a Manga, the original author's already done more than half the legwork for you. The characters, setting, world, plot, and sequence of events have all been established, and all that's left for you to do is to pick and chose what to include, what to exclude, and how to switch events to make a more coherent narrative. At first, this may not seem like a significant point to make, but more than half the brainstorming stage of making a story has already been done. You don't need to fret about creating the characters or the world or the setting or the sequence of events, all that's been done, and all that you have to do is manipulate and change it to make a better narrative.
And I'm not saying that it's easy, it most certainly is not, and anyone who can not only do it right but do it right on a consistent basis deserves to be recognized for it. But rewriting an already established story is a lot less like writing a new story from scratch where you only have a vague idea of what the story's going to be, and more like editing a first draft where you already have a solid idea of how the story's going to progress and how the characters will be. This difference is indeed significant as it puts into perspective just how much work the Fanfiction writer has to do when compared to the work the original author had to do, in which, it's clear which writer's done more work.
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