Thirty Days of Fanfic - Day Eight
Jul. 5th, 2011 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodan8 – 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.
Oh, boy do I write OCs. I love writing them. Not that canon is deficient, but because sometimes there are stories that can’t be told without OCs. And frankly, when you’re writing fan fic for a weekly television show – writing OCs is like writing a new episode. Particularly if you’ve got case!fic on your mind.
The first major fanfic I wrote, Privileged, featured Peter’s rather unpleasant, but very smart twin sister. My beta reader, the incomparable![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gyzym commented that Isabelle was about as far from a Mary Sue as one could possibly get. Novice that I was, I had no idea about Mary Sues and Marty Stus. I had heard the expression in relation to romance novels (thank you, Beyond Heaving Bosoms), but since I knew next to nothing about fan fic tropes, I didn’t even realize that people did that. Ahhh, so damn naïve.
Most of the time, when I write OCs, I need them as foils for Peter, Neal, Elizabeth or any of the other White Collar characters that I’m focusing on – so I don’t think there is really any worry about them becoming Mary Sues/Marty Stus. The aforementioned Isabelle will probably be the closest I’ll ever get to a Mary Sue, in that we share a law degree and contempt for stupidity (but I’m not afraid of goats).
One of my more, um, creative OCs was Donatchz the Damned, a hulking beast of a man that was Neal’s leather-fetishist submissive in prison (A Dangerous Young God). Another character I’m particularly fond of is Sonia Millstein, the owner of La Serenissima from Retail Therapy II – Frilly Bits. She’s a Survivor and an old friend of Neal’s – and their acquaintance was based on Neal’s humanitarian efforts in restoring a painting stolen by the Nazis to her (how bitterly ironic, eh?).
The grand Urban Fantasy epic I’ve just finished has quite a few OCs – needed solely to move the plot along. I do confess that one of them has quite a bit of backstory – but every time I try to cut it, I end up having to replace it with exposition. The backstory provides a reason for that OC to be in a very specific place at a very specific time to help Our Heroes. But once he's finished helping - he disappears. Never to be heard from again. Or maybe not.
Oh, boy do I write OCs. I love writing them. Not that canon is deficient, but because sometimes there are stories that can’t be told without OCs. And frankly, when you’re writing fan fic for a weekly television show – writing OCs is like writing a new episode. Particularly if you’ve got case!fic on your mind.
The first major fanfic I wrote, Privileged, featured Peter’s rather unpleasant, but very smart twin sister. My beta reader, the incomparable
gyzym commented that Isabelle was about as far from a Mary Sue as one could possibly get. Novice that I was, I had no idea about Mary Sues and Marty Stus. I had heard the expression in relation to romance novels (thank you, Beyond Heaving Bosoms), but since I knew next to nothing about fan fic tropes, I didn’t even realize that people did that. Ahhh, so damn naïve.Most of the time, when I write OCs, I need them as foils for Peter, Neal, Elizabeth or any of the other White Collar characters that I’m focusing on – so I don’t think there is really any worry about them becoming Mary Sues/Marty Stus. The aforementioned Isabelle will probably be the closest I’ll ever get to a Mary Sue, in that we share a law degree and contempt for stupidity (but I’m not afraid of goats).
One of my more, um, creative OCs was Donatchz the Damned, a hulking beast of a man that was Neal’s leather-fetishist submissive in prison (A Dangerous Young God). Another character I’m particularly fond of is Sonia Millstein, the owner of La Serenissima from Retail Therapy II – Frilly Bits. She’s a Survivor and an old friend of Neal’s – and their acquaintance was based on Neal’s humanitarian efforts in restoring a painting stolen by the Nazis to her (how bitterly ironic, eh?).
The grand Urban Fantasy epic I’ve just finished has quite a few OCs – needed solely to move the plot along. I do confess that one of them has quite a bit of backstory – but every time I try to cut it, I end up having to replace it with exposition. The backstory provides a reason for that OC to be in a very specific place at a very specific time to help Our Heroes. But once he's finished helping - he disappears. Never to be heard from again. Or maybe not.
