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Original Characters in Fiction


Sunwoo
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(P.S. Before anyone asks me, this has nothing to do with Corrin or Fates. I just read a really bad Pokemon fanfic last night.)

Everyone loves making stories. One doesn’t need to put a pencil to paper or fingers to a keyboard to come up with a character, a scenario, or a headcanon. Your imagination is the limit to your creativity. Writers can give life to their own characters and worlds, or to characters and worlds that already exist.

Not everyone writes good characters. The term “Mary Sue” has been around for a long time and has been thrown around with such frequency that it’s lost almost all meaning. But there are still characters who could qualify as Mary Sues in writing, whether it be original or in a published work.

In this essay, I’m not going to talk about how not to write a Mary Sue. It’s something that every writer will go through, at one point or another, to varying degrees. Some people will grow out of it and will become better writers. Other people will resist all advice or criticism about their character and story, clinging only to praise, and never change their ways while believing they are a better writer than they are. People who grow out of Mary Sues will learn how to not write them on their own, and there is no point in trying to give advice to someone who doesn’t want it. What I will talk about are general points I feel are important in creating an original character, factors that make a character more believable or likable or realistic.

The Most Special Snowflake in the World

A lot of original characters serve the purpose of being wish fulfillment on the part of the writer. Ever read a fanfiction for some book or videogame or movie in which an OC was paired with an existing character? That’s wish fulfillment. Now, I’m not going to tell people to stop writing wish fulfillment stories, because in a way all of fiction is wish fulfillment. But what people do need to realize is that if they’re writing to an audience not everyone is going to care about their fantasy.

When people seek out fanfiction, they are seeking out works with their favorite characters and most would like their favorite characters to be in-character. It’s easy to create an OC that fits into an existing universe and to gush over them because they are your wish fulfillment come to life, but remember – the only person who knows your OC is you. Readers don’t know your OC and may not even want to read about them. An OC who constantly steals the spotlight and makes everything about them (everyone praises them, they succeed at everything, things fall into their lap all too easily, everyone pities them or comforts them, etc.) is going to be irritating because most readers don’t want to read about your OC. The readers came to your story in the hopes of seeing their favorite characters do something cool, not get upstaged by the writer’s pet.

Your OC may be loved by the characters in the story, but most readers will hate them – and why shouldn’t they? Your character has shoved the canon characters out of the spotlight to the point where they’re just backdrops to the OC. The personalities of canon characters are twisted to pander to the OC, while anyone who doesn’t like the OC is either treated as a horrible person or outright written as one. Everything revolves around the OC – the villains, any special new powers, the main cast … The OC is like a black hole that sucks up everything around them just to add it to themselves. Everyone else has to settle for being a side attraction, and not all of the existing cast will come out with their personalities intact. The story becomes more protagonist-centered, so things that do not concern the protagonist are glossed over or not even discussed. Interesting topics pertaining the other characters may become a footnote or never brought up – or worse, the OC may snatch it up and make themselves the special one! This is an especially irritating tendency of some OCs, to “borrow” things about an existing character that make them interesting or sympathetic or especially powerful but also unique, and become the “only other” person who shares those traits, which shows a lack of originality.

A well-written OC doesn’t need to make everything about them, or be overly important, or derail existing characters’ personalities and relationships to make themselves more fitting in or sympathetic. Writing in your OC at the expense of existing characters is the fastest way to draw the ire of readers, who don’t care about your OC but do care about the characters you are derailing.

This problem is also prevalent in some original, published fictional works. Is there one specific character who is just the center of attention without any good reason for it? Do they constantly get away with things that other characters are reprimanded for? Is the amount of praise or love they receive disproportional to what they do or how they act towards other characters? These are some indicators that a character may be an author’s pet, and not in a good way. While it is natural for main characters to get a good chunk of the spotlight, compared to other characters, being the main character does not give one the right to undue praise or special treatment. This is just bad writing, unless there is a very good reason for the character being treated as if they are special when they are not.

Most people want to be special, and so the temptation to make their wish fulfillment OC special is a strong one. A writer who is writing purely for wish fulfillment who knows their story may be bad but does not intend to share their writing with anyone could get a pass for this. But anyone who intends for their story to be liked and taken seriously will find themselves disappointed for the most part.

Interactions are a Two-Way Street

Another common problem that a lot of wish fulfillment stories have is the lack of understanding of realistic interactions or how people talk and interact. People are complex beings. We don’t always understand why we feel the way we do, and no two people will act alike. We don’t act rational all of the time and we don’t always make the right choices, and many times we are just wrong and say things that hurt other people.

People who are writing pure wish fulfillment don’t grasp this level of complexity. All they care about is a world where their stand-in OC is beloved by everyone they care about and are good at everything, and anyone who opposes them is the bad guy. The OC is immediately loved by all on the first meeting. The other characters fight over them in the hopes of being their one true love, or at the very least are said to pine for them for a non-insignificant amount of time. The characters that the writer hates become jerks for no reason, or are treated unfairly by other characters just for not liking the OC, who is kind and gracious and never did anything to deserve such hatred. Villains are unexplainably obsessed with the OC, or may turn good just because the OC is so good and pure. Side characters all become interchangeable cheerleaders for the OC without any real individual personality.

Not everyone will like you – this is an unavoidable fact of life. And not everyone who dislikes you is some bad guy who’s objectively wrong and should be hated by people. On the contrary, if this is your true mindset, then people who dislike you probably have a good reason for it. You are not the center of the world, and you should not write yourself as such. People are not going to drop everything else in their lives just for you, and those who refuse to do so are not awful jerks for it. The villain probably isn’t going to be obsessed with your OC in particular, unless you give them reason to do so. Maybe your OC is an important part of their evil plan, or a defector who knows too much. Or maybe your OC just threw a coffee drink at them once, making their robes forever smell of caffeine and the villain is petty.

Minor characters shouldn’t exist just to make the OCs look good. Even if they only have minor roles in the story, they exist to show that the world is more than just the main heroes and the villains. They should have goals and personalities of their own and have lives beyond the main characters (or your OC). Also, if minor characters are really so interchangeable that you could cut half of them out or switch their dialogue, and it wouldn’t make a difference at all, then you need to either drop some of them or make them more distinct. People are unique, and no two people will react the same way, so two characters who are virtually identical in function really serve no purpose other than to unnecessarily pad out the cast.

One other important topic to discuss is negative emotions – don’t be afraid to make your OC or the “likable” characters show some negative aspects of their behavior. We all have flaws, so if your OC is human then why shouldn’t they? Negative emotions such as hatred or jealousy or cowardice or being quick to give up aren’t things that other characters besides your OC should have just to show how superior the OC is for not having those feelings. Negative emotions and how we deal with them are what makes us who we are. Is your OC the type of character who is easily susceptible to negative emotions and will eventually give in to hatred and resent? Is your OC the type of person who can only overcome negative emotions with professional help or the support of their friends? Or is your OC someone who’s “been there, done that” and learned to manage negativity and be a functional person, but still struggles with certain things? Limiting your OC’s scope of “negative” emotions to only those that make them sympathetic is a cop-out as well. Negative things about a character shouldn’t be there just to make them look cute or sympathetic, it should be a part of their personality that could be considered a flaw – to remind us that they are human.

A character who shows no negative emotions and is written as always being in the right is not a good character. What is so interesting about them if we don’t see them struggle and learn? If we don’t get to see them feel and doubt? The best thing about life is being able to learn and become better people for it. This should hold true for characters, too.

The Brain is a Muscle - Use It!

I don’t believe Mary Sues and bad characters should be defined by the traits they have – even though it is a surefire indicator that a character may be one. A great author can make anything great, even the most special snowflake. But there are too many people who delude themselves into thinking that they are the exception to the rule and that they can do it, while not listening to people who try to tell them otherwise.

More importantly than traits are the interactions that a character has with the other characters in the story. Interactions are everything, because they are the traits and the personality put into action for all to see. A character can have all the stereotypical Mary Sue traits and still be a well-written character if their interactions with their fellow cast are believable and realistic, without too much importance given to that one character. But a character who exists only for a writer’s wish fulfillment who is praised by everyone, disliked only by the “bad guys” (or characters the writer hates), and generally nice with no negative reactions or emotions is not a character. They are a tool.

Whether in fanfiction or in published writing, these are traps that any mediocre writer can fall into. A good general rule of thumb to any character is to ask yourself the following questions:

1.     If I were not the writer of this story, and this exact same character showed up in another person’s story, would I like it or not?
2.     If this character were a real person, how would I feel about them?

If you wouldn’t like the same type of character in someone else’s story, or if a real person like your character would make you feel inadequate or jealous, then this is an indicator that either your character has to change or that others shouldn’t just praise them and like them. If you’re just writing for yourself with no intention to publish it, ever, do what you will. But if you are writing for feedback and for people to like your story, think hard – really hard.

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*claps*

This is an amazing read, Sangyul. Bravo! You basically said everything I would've said about writing original characters, whether they're for fanfiction or something entirely your own.

It's true that every writer starts out going through Mary Sue/Gary Stu-like characters and working their way away from that. I can say this from my own experience, and back then I had a real hard time taking criticism too. Though it wasn't so much that I didn't want to listen, it was more than I felt discouraged and like I wasn't doing anything right. But the very first OC I ever created started out as a female Link of sorts for the Zelda series. No, she wasn't literally a gender-swapped Link or anything, she just had a similar role in being a sword fighter in Kokiri-like clothing (she's a Hylian who was raised in the forest as well). But that was where their similarities end. What made this character so Sueish years ago were the random abilities and talents she had and the fact that nobody really disliked her or anything. She had no noticeable flaws. But that would change and now she's pretty awesome. I kinda wish I'd given her a backstory other than the Hylian child in the forest thing, but I couldn't change that without drastically changing a lot more, so it had to stay with a bit of reworking.

But yeah, she was a pretty bad character to start with. It's a miracle I didn't just abandon her all together, but I really wanted a Zelda story that featured two main heroes, with one being Link and the other a female adventure partner for him. Though one thing I did do right from the beginning, I would say, is that I didn't have this character shove Link out of the spotlight at all. He actually always got a little more attention since he's Link, and while the OC gets her own little arcs, they still don't overshadow Link at all, as some of it involves a mini-quest to save him when he's severely wounded.

Although, I wouldn't say that OCs having bigger roles than canon characters in a fanfiction is necessarily a bad thing. You can also have a case of a fic like my FE one, where it's Ike and a few other Tellius peeps helping a new continent with their own eventually widespread conflict. There will realistically be a whole cast of new characters in something like this since it's a new land! Sure, the canon characters could've still been the main protags, but many fans would argue that Ike's story is finished and that he doesn't need anymore spotlight. And as much as I love the guy, I agree, his story is pretty much done. And by extension, the stories of the other Tellius characters are done too.

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I don't necessarily always create an OC in my fanfics, I have more of a tendency to write bits of myself into preexisting characters.

5 hours ago, Anacybele said:

but I really wanted a Zelda story that featured two main heroes

I actually tried to do something similar, except it was a guy who accompanied Link. Here is a detailed gist:

Spoiler

The mythos idea was to center the game around Link and an eventual Dark Link who is playable for much of the game. Basically Link and Chain (uncreative I know, my names are generally utilitarian) start as childhood friends in rural Hyrule. They end up going with Link's Uncle and Chain's Aunt to visit the city, but along the way get attacked by monsters in the employ of the rebel Sheikan Umbra, and are rescued by one of the four Knight Commanders of Hyrule. From there they join the knights and traverse Hyrule seeking to vanquish Umbra's bases in the Goron, Gerudo, and Zora lands.

Along the way, a Gerudo girl falls in love with Chain (though his heart like Link's is directed towards Zelda) and joins as their comrade. Chain also  gets in the 2nd dungeon an ancient trident which becomes his main weapon. Once the alliance part of the game ends, Umbra attacks Castle Hyrule. Saving the King and Zelda, two mini-dungeons later (Wind and Earth) the Master Sword is obtained. Then the quest for the two halves of the Triforce of Courage (one for each hero) is begun to survive in the cursed-by-Umbra Shiekan Lands.

But Umbra strikes once more and Zelda, who surprise surprise held the ToW, who dispels the barrier on the Shiekan Lands and gets captured. Fighting into Umbra's lair they learn from him that Hyrule's recent kings have had a nasty side (seen earlier in Gerudo enslavement) and that persecution of the Shiekan due to their unwillingness to serve a corrupt kingship is why Umbra rebelled. Umbra then summons the darkness that is Demise's Hatred, not to please the Hatred, but rather for Umbra's personal vengeance. When Link and Chain "win" Zelda then gives the ToW to Link, quietly symbolizing her love for him over Chain, and sacrifices herself to save them both.

Back in Hyrule Castle, things get intense and not willing to surrender the ToW or ToC or the Master Sword to the King without promising to free the Gerudo, Link and Chain are suddenly branded traitors. Fleeing into the Gerudo Desert, Link and Chain enlist the help of all their allies- Goron, Zora, Kokiri, Gerudo, Umbra's former minions (Gerudo, Hylian, and Shiekan) and even villagers from their hometown in battle with the King. Defeating the Knight Commanders and invading the castle as a grand battle unfolds outside, Link and Chain get to the King and slay him in battle with the help of Zelda's elder half-sister Impa, the child of the King and the prior Shiekan Chieftain.

The game seems like a happy ending here, and the game rolls into what seems like a postgame months later. But Chain was infected with a little darkness during the Umbra battle, and even with the ToP which ended up becoming his when the King was slain, the wound festers. And just when he, now an honorary Gerudo who has been appointed their leader alongside the girl who loves him, is about to sign the peace treaty ushering in the new era of harmony between Hyrule and its many neighbors, the wound makes him go insane with envy and want of power. Link and others now run around a little trying to stop him for the very end of the game. He then attacks Rauru and manages to gain access to the Light Temple in the Sacred Realm in an effort to seize control of Time. It is here that Link, with all the others who are to become the first set of Sages, put Chain out of his misery.

 

I believe in ancient Greece there was something of a debate over whether it was better to create totally new fantasies, or set everything in the world of the Iliad and Odyssey. 

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7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't necessarily always create an OC in my fanfics, I have more of a tendency to write bits of myself into preexisting characters.

I actually tried to do something similar, except it was a guy who accompanied Link. Here is a detailed gist:

  Reveal hidden contents

The mythos idea was to center the game around Link and an eventual Dark Link who is playable for much of the game. Basically Link and Chain (uncreative I know, my names are generally utilitarian) start as childhood friends in rural Hyrule. They end up going with Link's Uncle and Chain's Aunt to visit the city, but along the way get attacked by monsters in the employ of the rebel Sheikan Umbra, and are rescued by one of the four Knight Commanders of Hyrule. From there they join the knights and traverse Hyrule seeking to vanquish Umbra's bases in the Goron, Gerudo, and Zora lands.

Along the way, a Gerudo girl falls in love with Chain (though his heart like Link's is directed towards Zelda) and joins as their comrade. Chain also  gets in the 2nd dungeon an ancient trident which becomes his main weapon. Once the alliance part of the game ends, Umbra attacks Castle Hyrule. Saving the King and Zelda, two mini-dungeons later (Wind and Earth) the Master Sword is obtained. Then the quest for the two halves of the Triforce of Courage (one for each hero) is begun to survive in the cursed-by-Umbra Shiekan Lands.

But Umbra strikes once more and Zelda, who surprise surprise held the ToW, who dispels the barrier on the Shiekan Lands and gets captured. Fighting into Umbra's lair they learn from him that Hyrule's recent kings have had a nasty side (seen earlier in Gerudo enslavement) and that persecution of the Shiekan due to their unwillingness to serve a corrupt kingship is why Umbra rebelled. Umbra then summons the darkness that is Demise's Hatred, not to please the Hatred, but rather for Umbra's personal vengeance. When Link and Chain "win" Zelda then gives the ToW to Link, quietly symbolizing her love for him over Chain, and sacrifices herself to save them both.

Back in Hyrule Castle, things get intense and not willing to surrender the ToW or ToC or the Master Sword to the King without promising to free the Gerudo, Link and Chain are suddenly branded traitors. Fleeing into the Gerudo Desert, Link and Chain enlist the help of all their allies- Goron, Zora, Kokiri, Gerudo, Umbra's former minions (Gerudo, Hylian, and Shiekan) and even villagers from their hometown in battle with the King. Defeating the Knight Commanders and invading the castle as a grand battle unfolds outside, Link and Chain get to the King and slay him in battle with the help of Zelda's elder half-sister Impa, the child of the King and the prior Shiekan Chieftain.

The game seems like a happy ending here, and the game rolls into what seems like a postgame months later. But Chain was infected with a little darkness during the Umbra battle, and even with the ToP which ended up becoming his when the King was slain, the wound festers. And just when he, now an honorary Gerudo who has been appointed their leader alongside the girl who loves him, is about to sign the peace treaty ushering in the new era of harmony between Hyrule and its many neighbors, the wound makes him go insane with envy and want of power. Link and others now run around a little trying to stop him for the very end of the game. He then attacks Rauru and manages to gain access to the Light Temple in the Sacred Realm in an effort to seize control of Time. It is here that Link, with all the others who are to become the first set of Sages, put Chain out of his misery.

 

I believe in ancient Greece there was something of a debate over whether it was better to create totally new fantasies, or set everything in the world of the Iliad and Odyssey. 

Chain is a creative name for a good friend of Link's though! Put the two words together and you get chain-link, like a chain-link fence. I think that's a nice nod to their friendship.

Dat plot though, wow. The twist at the end is something else.

When I make OCs though, that's where I tend to include bits of myself. I like to say the three main characters of my FE fic, Dawn of Darkness, sorta represent different time periods of my life. Bryan is my past, as just like me, he always looked young and suffered a lot of bullying (though for Bryan, the latter is exaggerated. His case is much worse than mine ever was). Azura, the lord, is more akin to my present self, a desire to be an independent woman. And she's kinda tomboyish which I am as well. Leyon, the third one, is closer to what I hope to have in the future. A happy marriage and a successful career. He's a high ranking general and literally loves shipping people. lol He's had success at it too (he actually manages to get two of his knights to fall in love and claims that he's all but succeeded with another two knights as well!). XD

They're not exact mirrors of my past, present, and future, of course (and there's no way to know for sure what the future holds anyway), but they do have bits of them.

Edited by Anacybele
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I feel like a lot of authors don't appreciate that the audience don't see their OC in the same light as they do. A self insert designed to fulfil desires like being popular, powerful or banging the author's favourite character doesn't appeal to the audience as much as the author - they don't get the same wish fulfilment the author does. What makes it worse is when the author sees any criticism of the character as a criticism of themselves, especially when there's a lot of similarities.

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On the one hand, I can understand why people want to make characters based on themselves. It's easiest to write what you know, and most people (think that they) know themselves. However, this also leads to the problem Shin mentioned -- people who don't know you aren't really going to care about your self-insert fantasies or desires. They don't care that this character is everything you want to be, a creation you've projected yourself onto. All they care about is that your story isn't enjoyable for them to read.

A significant amount of OCs I've made are based on myself and my friends. I think it's okay to take inspiration for characters based on yourself or people you know, but you have to be honest with yourself too. You cannot simply ignore crippling or undesirable flaws that make you the person you are. Even if the character isn't you exactly and therefore does not need all of your strengths and flaws, you cannot just give the character everything you desire about yourself (or everything about yourself that you feel could garner you sympathy) and gloss over the bad stuff.

Eventually, I'm thinking about writing additional essays related to character and story writing but this time exclusively focused on fanfiction -- one on writing canon characters OOC and another one on writing for avatar characters.

Edited by Sunwoo
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From what little fanfiction I've read, I think the biggest problem a lot of people have with OC's is that they just don't know how to incorporate them into the dynamic of the already established characters. It might be a wish fulfillment sort of thing, but I also think it might be that they don't understand the source material as much as they believe as well. Often times, I think the issue is that there have no real way of introducing the character which is why you see so many "long lost sister/brother of character x," because it's just easier to have them meet someone and gives the excuse of having everyone instantly like them-- despite the fact that in many cases, being introduced as a family member would cause distrust among the cast instead. The writer then recognizes this problem, so instead decides to focus their attention to have the OC fit in with the cast, but what ends up happening is that the OC ends up becoming too centralized rather than simply being another character within the realms of the plot. 

Honestly, it's the reason I don't write fanfics, because I honestly find writing fanfics more difficult than writing an original short story. 

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Funnily enough, Desert Sands (My first SFWYBO submission) stemmed from a long line of revisions from a Zelda fanfic I wrote on paper where Twinrova was trying to sieze power from a Gerudo Prince (in an attempt to possess him to serve as a vessel of Ganon). From there, it evolved into it's own thing. The protagonist changed little by little until, now 7 years later, the mythos has changed entirely. It went from just being Hyrule to being it's own continent. I have written one fanfiction, but it was inspired by one that was established in SF Scribbles, and was based on a character that had a lot more development than the one in the base fanfiction. I want to get back to it, but I have to rewrite the entire first chapter because I had to delete my old Google account and start a new one. I'll link both writings down below for your viewing convenience, if any of you are interested. Please note that I suck at proofreading, don't like pre-writing, and that I often forget to draft before I write. These are bad flaws I've tried to overcome constantly, but each time is met with little to no success.

 

 

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I'm not a writer and I don't read much fanfiction, but when I do, I avoid the ones tagged with OCs.

Not that there aren't well written fanfiction with original characters out there, but if I'm looking for fanfiction then there's already a set of expectations and things I'm looking for, and familiar characters from canon is one of those things. If I wanted something original, new characters, a new setting, I'd pick up a book instead.

To echo what Shin said above, other people won't care about some stranger's OC like the author does. Unless they serve some purpose, like minor characters to help the plot forward, background story for canon lore or fleshing out characters mentioned in canon (the Scribbles entries with Canas' wife is a good example), they're hard to incorporate into the established canon in a way the random reader/fan finds interesting.  Thus fanfictions with prominent OCs need to do a better job than the average fanfiction with selling its characters, since you're mainly here for canon.

I'd advise aspiring fanfiction writers to only work with established characters from canon until they get some writing experience, and keep OCs to original work. That way you get practice with writing established characters in character, while you've got free reins to create a compelling setting and plot for your original characters.

Of course, everyone are free to write as many self-insert OCs as much as they want! Just be aware and acknowledge the fact that you're mainly writing for your own amusement (or the friends you base OCs on). RP's are probably a better playground for this though, being a bunch of people creating characters interacting with each other, sometimes in established fandom settings.

 

tl;dr: You can do and write whatever you want but if it is self-indulgent you need to accept that people don't care.

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As a former fan fiction writer, I really don't have a problem with OCs on a whole. I mean, to me, fan fiction is about expanding the world set up in game, and there are more people without names. I know in some of my pieces, I would give names to background characters, if they had any significant action with the canon characters, just to make them seem real. I even had one OC that did have a crush on a canon character, but I never actually intended to pair them (the OC would have died at some point in the story).

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