How very out of character of you...

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]



I'm sure we've all had this experience: You're reading a work of fan fiction and enjoying the heck out of it. Then.... boom; a sudden loss of characterization.
It's not the end of the world; no alarms go off, no oxygen masks fall from the ceiling -- but just like that, the little world you were immersed in goes away. You may forge ahead, but now you're all too aware of the actual process of reading the story again.

It happens even with the best of fan fic writers: Occasionally you're going to write someone's fictional darling acting not quite like themselves. Sometimes it's on purpose, of course; a chance to play with 'what if' scenarios, or to explore a side of him or her that's been shown but not expanded upon.

What's your tolerance for OOC fanfic? Are there stories you feel captured a character particularly well? Stories that play with or alter their behavior in ways that are creative and entertaining? Or ones that put them in wildly unusual AUs but maintain their personalities? Are there characters you have a knack for writing or that you struggle with?

Would love to read your thoughts - and if you have a link to some well-crafted fic with strong or interesting characterization, please share! I could use a good read this week, myself.

Here are some links of interest. The OTW doesn't necessarily agree with every opinion, but offers them as interesting musings on the subject of characterization.

• Characterization in Fanfic: Using Canon as the DNA for Your Characters by Dreamflower


• Avoiding Mistakes in Fanfiction Writing: A Beginner's Guide


• Will the Real John Watson Please Stand-Up


• Common Fanfiction Mistakes - characterization


• The Seven Deadly Fanons of Characterization

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading those links, but I now have a terrible urge to write a fanfic in which Merry Brandybuck and John Watson criticise each other's Three Character Flaws and then Snape turns up and they all indulge in a Quote War...

I think I'm fairly tolerant about characterisation. A good writer can convince me of a lot, because I tend to believe that character is very experience and situation-dependent, so I am quite happy with, for example, movie-Legolas and book-Legolas and a post-book Legolas who doesn't quite match either the other two...

But I get the impression that a lot of people fall in love with a particular characterisation and will defend it to the death.

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Hee. Funny - and yet, also an idea for a future post or two in that first sentence so thanks! :)

Good point re: movie versus book characterization. The medium can affect that, certainly, with the constraints and opportunities particular to it. And yes, people are flexible enough to change with their situations (hopefully) so why not characters?

I find some so much easier to capture than others - and I wonder if it's because they appeal to me more, or because they were better drawn in canon to begin with? Maybe both.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The Eagle movie and the Eagle of the Ninth book on which it was based is an example of a situation where the physical characterisation of the two main characters is a complete opposite of the book, and the personalities are also very different, even though the setting is almost the same.

I am not sure why both book and movie work for me when they are SO different, but they do. And a number of fans (me included) have written fusions of book and movie. I found that an interesting exercise, because you want to try to leave it open for the reader to flesh out the character as he lives in their head, there are some things you can describe in detail, and some that you emphatically can't because you have to leave that area for the reader to fill in.

With TV and movie, the fan almost always sees the authorial viewpoint when it comes to characterisation. You can hear what the characters say, and you can see their expressions, but you cannot hear their thoughts.

Whereas, in books at the moment and a lot of fanfic too, the limited third person viewpoint seems to be enormously popular, so you do not see the movie, you read the character's thoughts and reactions and see throgh their eyes.

So, is a limited third person story about, say Merlin and Arthur, told from Merlin's point of view, really out of character, if it does not conflict directly with canon? I may be thrown out of a story, believing "Merlin doesn't think like that!" But if there is nothing in the canon to dispute it, because the canon is not shown from inside Merlin's head, then another reader may find the fic compelling and superbly characterised, because they are reading the actor's expressions just a little differently to me.

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Very good points about the perception and perspective of the reader/viewer, thanks for sharing them.

With TV and movies, I'm often amazed at how various viewer 'takes' on a character and his/her story can differ so widely. The author still has his/her voice, but fandom will get what it gets from the show and the performances. That's not unique to those media, though, of course. For instance, I can think of a couple of songs that are not love songs, but are widely perceived to be - in one case the songwriter says he's come to accept it and in the other he said it really makes him wonder if they were listening to the lyrics at all!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Another example would be cultural expectation colouring the reaction. With 'the Eagle' movie, I was amazed to discover US reviews where the American-accented Romans were taken at face value as 'the good guys' because they were clean and had familiar voices, whereas the Britons were depicted as more primitive and clearly 'baddies' (because in Hollywood, the British accents always indicate a bad guy??).

This amazed me particularly, because I thought the depiction of the Romans in that movie showed them as strikingly unsympathetic - indeed, it came across as having a specifically anti-US-imperialism message to me - and in the British cinema where I watched it, people in the audience were cheering on the native British attacks on the Roman fort!

Where your eyes come from really does seem to make a huge difference to what you see with them.

[spiced-wine.livejournal.com]

I do have very strong views on certain characters, and I admit I will backspace away from stories that turn those characters on their heads. I never say anything, as a fanfic writer is free to write what they want, but if canon has painted a clear portrait, well I probably love the characters because they're like that :) If, however, the character is not very fleshed-out, a bit of a blank page, a good writer can convince me of pretty much anything. :)

and if you have a link to some well-crafted fic with strong or interesting characterization, please share! I could use a good read this week, myself.


These are all Silmarillion or Lord of the Rings.

I am a huge fan of The Price of vengeance (http://efiction.esteliel.de/viewstory.php?sid=764&index=1) by Encairion.


Silmarillion fanfic. Amazing characterisations, very adult, several warnings. I adore the way she writes characters I love, and has also fleshed out others. In fact any of her stories are incredible.

No matter what I do my pc refuses to copy any more links. It is a new one and completely useless :( I will have to come back to this with links if I can --- edit: Here's some at least.


Mael-Gûl, (http://archiveofourown.org/works/3727156/chapters/8258992) by Crowdaughter

The Sons of Thunder, (http://efiction.esteliel.de/viewstory.php?sid=51&index=1) by Ziggy.


Into This Wild Abyss, (http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/archive/home/viewstory.php?sid=635) by Pandemonium_213

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the links, I will give them a read.

I agree re: not commenting when I find something that doesn't appeal to me. I think even with constructive criticism, less is more. But I do love it when I find a fic writer who can really capture a character's voice - it's such a talent!

[spiced-wine.livejournal.com]

not commenting when I find something that doesn't appeal to me. I think even with constructive criticism, less is more

I don't do concrit, even if people ask for it. I like to focus on what I love about a story, not what I don't. I have quite often read books which do nothing for me, but I don't waste time emailing the author. I just give them to charity and move on. The author's vision is theirs and unique to them, and it's not for me to pick it apart. (I would point out obvious typos etc, but that's it).

But yes, when I find some-one writing a character as I envisage them, I gorge on that. I love it.

[graycardinal]

Interesting question. As it happens, my second gateway into fanfic was through Kim Possible, and that fandom is noteworthy for supporting two very different OTP pairings: Kim/Ron (aka K/R), and Kim/Shego (aka KiGo), with large bodies of work built up in both camps long before the 4th season of the series canonized the K/R pairing. What I discovered was that if the writer did a sufficiently good job of extrapolating a given characterization from what we saw on the screen, I could enjoy works from both camps. Three examples (all on the long side, but note that in two of the three cases, I'm giving you works outside the relevant author's longest/best-known series). Just as further anomaly: all three of these recs are for stories by male authors, and that's broadly representative of the demographic for KP fanwriting, or was when I was active therein a decade or so back now....

An Unacceptable Sitch, by Allaine
First in a series that grows into KiGo, featuring both strong characterization and skillful plotting.

The Code of the West, by King in Yellow
This author is best known for a strongly characterized, wide-ranging KiGo series ("Best Enemies") that has been evolving for a decade now, with dozens of stories extending to well over a million words. This new story, though, is self-contained, stars Shego, and develops a pairing that I don't think anyone else in the fandom had even begun to contemplate before this summer.

Kim Possible: The Next Generation, by MrDrP
Yes, this is a fusion of ST:TNG and Kim Possible, essentially dropping the KP characters into the TNG continuity. Yes, it's almost 200K words. But darned if it doesn't do a first-class job of integrating its material, and building a solid K/R relationship story at one and the same time. (I could have pointed you at MrDrP's "Epic Sitch" stories, a mainstream KP series also developing the K/R pairing. But while that one's not as sprawling as the "Best Enemies" cycle, the overall word count is still, well, epic.)

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing the links. It's not a fandom I'm familiar with, though I've definitely heard of it. I will take a look.

I've found a few shows lately that I enjoy, for which I have almost no preference on pairings. It's a refreshing change for me - usually I have an OTP and pretty strong feelings about it. I'm enjoying simply being able to watch where the plot goes for once!