By DENIELLE LEONG
alltherage@thestar.com.my

WHILE most fan fiction writers enjoy making up stories on their own, A-Levels student Nurhanani Fazlur Rahman, 19, prefers the unique collaborative effort involved in “role-play fanfic”.

And she doesn’t do her writing on forum boards like most of the others in the genre – she does it on Tumblr, as part of a community of about 30 authors from around the world.

In fact, Nurhanani – or Nani, as her friends call her – has five separate Tumblr blogs, each dedicated to a character from the A Song Of Fire And Ice series. Most of you would probably know it better as the books that created HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

One of those blogs, for instance, is dedicated to Arthur Dayne, a legendary knight who died pre-canon (before the time period written in the story). Nani started the thread by writing a story as Arthur Dayne, and someone from the community came in and continued it as Jon Snow, another character in the series.

Nani is the only Malaysian in the community. Some of them spend hours every day planning, writing and maintaining their blogs.

“Sometimes, I’d wake up to seven stories waiting for my reply,” she said. “I guess I’m quite obsessed with it.”

But fan fiction is about more than just making stuff up – you really have to know what you’re writing about.

For example, when she was writing a story about Brynden Tully (another Game Of Thrones character) going to war against Scotland, she had to do quite a bit of research on British political history.

Brynden Tully from HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

Nani would even discuss story ideas and character development with some of her international collaborators on Skype before proceeding to write the stories.

She has also read up about guns for another character. She refused to reveal too much about that story, but the bubbly girl did describe it as “borderline psychopathic”, before adding “no, it’s not even borderline!”

“You wouldn’t want to read what I write for that story. It would shock you, because when you look at me, you’d probably think ‘oh, what a sweet girl!’ But these characters I write about are gruesome,” she confessed. “But someone has to play the bad guy.”

Aside from the role-play stuff, Nani said she has written several “normal” fan fiction works as well, though she rarely publishes them.

“I once wrote a Lord Of The Rings fanfic that reached 50,000 words, but I dropped the project. I did want to publish it after it was completed, but I never really got around to finishing it,” she said.

“It’s not easy writing fanfic, especially long ones and when you’re having writer’s block. With role-play, on the other hand, you have someone else to bounce your ideas off with.”