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30 Days of Fanfic meme: writing OCs
Jul. 31st, 2011 05:39 pmDay 8 - Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.
I don't write OCs very often simply because OCs aren't the reason I want to write fic. They're occasionally useful, but I'd rather explore the canon characters and leave the OCs for original fiction, not fic. Similarly, I don't read OCs very often because they're not why I want to read fic, but there are authors I trust to do them well, and who I know won't be writing a self-insert with changeable eye colors who's actually the love child of Theta and Koschei raised by the Dursleys and who secretly grew wings and acquired psychic powers at age thirteen.
I don't think it's all that hard to avoid writing a Mary Sue -- don't give your character wild powers unless the story absolutely demands it; don't make them closely related to one of the main canon characters; and above all, remember your character, like virtually everyone else, is going to have flaws. What's hard is avoiding people calling your character a Mary Sue even when she isn't, or simply assuming that an OC = Mary Sue and never reading your story in the first place. And those problems seem inevitable, at least in the fanfic community.
Anyway, the OC I paid the most attention to is Sarah, the young grocery store clerk in Clean-Up on Aisle Three ... . (I have OCs in some other stories, but they're generally in and out of the narrative so quickly I don't need to do much characterization.) Sarah worked because she was a normal person with a normal job, normal problems, and a willingness to help the Doctor, but not the kind of inner strength that would allow her to travel with him. I could have written that story with a Mary Sue, but that would have been much less interesting to me. My only regret about her is that I wish I'd had an extra 250-500 words to flesh her out a tiny bit more, but alas, Big Finish's word count limitations were pretty strict.
( complete list of days )
I don't write OCs very often simply because OCs aren't the reason I want to write fic. They're occasionally useful, but I'd rather explore the canon characters and leave the OCs for original fiction, not fic. Similarly, I don't read OCs very often because they're not why I want to read fic, but there are authors I trust to do them well, and who I know won't be writing a self-insert with changeable eye colors who's actually the love child of Theta and Koschei raised by the Dursleys and who secretly grew wings and acquired psychic powers at age thirteen.
I don't think it's all that hard to avoid writing a Mary Sue -- don't give your character wild powers unless the story absolutely demands it; don't make them closely related to one of the main canon characters; and above all, remember your character, like virtually everyone else, is going to have flaws. What's hard is avoiding people calling your character a Mary Sue even when she isn't, or simply assuming that an OC = Mary Sue and never reading your story in the first place. And those problems seem inevitable, at least in the fanfic community.
Anyway, the OC I paid the most attention to is Sarah, the young grocery store clerk in Clean-Up on Aisle Three ... . (I have OCs in some other stories, but they're generally in and out of the narrative so quickly I don't need to do much characterization.) Sarah worked because she was a normal person with a normal job, normal problems, and a willingness to help the Doctor, but not the kind of inner strength that would allow her to travel with him. I could have written that story with a Mary Sue, but that would have been much less interesting to me. My only regret about her is that I wish I'd had an extra 250-500 words to flesh her out a tiny bit more, but alas, Big Finish's word count limitations were pretty strict.
( complete list of days )