CHECK IN: DAY 4

[igenlode]

It's Sunday! How did the weekend go, writing-wise (or non-writing-wise)?

Question of the day: what is your process for creating original characters in fanfic?

Comments

[athaia]

I was surprising myself and wrote one and a half scenes for my current WIP.

I don't think I've ever consciously created an OC except for Zana, my OC protagonist (she is one of the ensemble, the other three being canon characters), who is heavily inspired by Dr. Zira from the original Planet of the Apes movie (the one with Chuck Heston) - which unfortunately skewed my presentation of Galen heavily towards Cornelius. She's the only one I sat down for to write her backstory and a character (as in temperament, attitudes, beliefs, etc.) sketch.

The rest of them just walks onto the scene and takes over from there. When I write, I have a movie playing in my mind's eye, and I mostly just transcribe what I 'see' and 'hear' - which means that despite all my planning and outlining, I'm constantly surprised by what 'actually' happens. All those OCs very quickly gain depth and their own agendas, which makes it a bit difficult sometimes to corral them in so that they don't take off with their own subplots...

[igenlode]

The same for me -- they just walk on screen and gain depth (and backstory references) as things happen in the story, rather than being planned out in advance ;-)

[rekishi]

I just, for the first time in way way too long, convinced myself to write a fic and finish it in the same day \o/ I'd forgotten what that felt like and it's damn good!!!

ETA, the fic is mostly OCs too, because it's outsider pov. 😂 And I just... do it??? Idk, I don't really have a process for fic. I sit down and think about them more in orific with charactersheets and stuff but not for fanfic.

[igenlode]

convinced myself to write a fic and finish it in the same day

I have definitely forgotten what that feels like :-D

the fic is mostly OCs too, because it's outsider pov. 😂 And I just... do it??? Idk, I don't really have a process for fic. I sit down and think about them more in orific with charactersheets and stuff but not for fanfic.

It's always fun looking at the canon characters from the point of view of someone completely new ;-)

I definitely espouse the "I just do it" school of thought; I don't think I've ever drawn up a character sheet for anyone, although in one fic that had a truly ridiculously large number of minor OCs (I had to supply an entire ship's crew, plus characters in multiple locations along the way) I did end up drawing up a list of which names I'd used where. The cast for any individual *scene* was quite small, but it added up!

[linaewen]

I've been getting some helpful research and note taking done, should have no excuses for not getting started with my next chapter tomorrow!

I don't know what my process is, the OCs just appear when needed. All mine are side characters who support the main canon characters but I am very fond of them, only a very few have been killed off!

[igenlode]

I don't know what my process is, the OCs just appear when needed. All mine are side characters who support the main canon characters but I am very fond of them, only a very few have been killed off!

Mine definitely just materialise when needed ;-)
I have written a handful of OC protagonists, but that is always with the aim of having an outside point of view on the canon characters, so the characterisation (and backstory) of the narrator tends to evolve very much in medias res. You have someone looking on; the someone automatically has opinions, and the nature of the opinions flavours the character's 'voice'. But I wouldn't set out to create the ideal onlooker for the purpose first...
Mostly I just stick people in to fill a role, and give them names if they seem to need it, and backstories if and when it becomes relevant to the plot.

I am much more likely to kill off main characters than OCs, personally. It has much more impact on the reader :-P

[igenlode]

I think I have actually managed to finish my one-shot (about 1800 words, at a guess); I wrote one 'final' sentence on Saturday and then added another on Sunday before immediately deleting it again on the grounds that the readers were likely to interpret it as evidence of shipping that I had not intended :-(
I then wrote multiple censored variants before eventually rejecting them all and restoring the one I had first thought of!

So far as OCs go, I'm afraid I tend to just make them up on the spur of the moment to fit the needs of the plot. The more they get written about, the more they tend to get fleshed out, but initially at least I tend to pull down stock character types: the fussy old lawyer, the imperious hospital matron, the tabloid reporter, the scene-shifter, the butler...

[seraphikiss]

bit late to the check-in but i've been sick for a few days, though i managed to get a few short one shots out for various events. i'm making slow progress on chapter six of my identity v, 'ad astra'.

AOTD: i daydream of a design and write details that i focus the most on, such as eyes, species (i love making elf ocs), and any traits that i feel are appropriate for the concept. i'm a beginner artist so i typically use doll or picrew makers for designing.

[igenlode]

It's interesting that being an artist affects your approach -- I tend to have no idea about eye colour and so on, because I'm not at all visually-oriented.
(I can think of at least one fic I wrote where the central character is an OC, and so far as I can remember we never learn *anything* about his appearance at all, because it simply never came up. I may have mentioned somewhere that he is quite short and ugly, but I definitely never gave any thought to what colour his hair was, or indeed whether he had any or was bald, which wouldn't have been entirely out of character :-D)

[merrileemakes]

I actually wrote something! I banged out a short draft on Saturday, let it brew for a bit and then edited and refined yesterday.

I have very little process for creating OCs. They usually just appear. My only real intervention is to consciously make them something other than default cis/white/straight.

[igenlode]

Hurrah for progress!