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Post by vegablack on Apr 2, 2009 23:38:44 GMT -5
Queenie, if you want to counteract the hesitancy people have about reading a story which heavily features an OC make the Summary and plot clear so people are intrigued by the story that you are telling. The aren't going to be attracted by the familiar characters so you need to lure them in by your story description.
Because so many fic communities and search engines are character dominated, I would make my canon characters prominent in the summary, the list of characters and in the story itself. I wrote a story about an OC house-elf which had a good amount of readers (for me) and I think some people read it because I listed Ron as a character and they wanted to read about Ron.
Birdg, I so agree with this quote: "... I've noticed people tend to copy their characterizations from other fanfic writerss so you get 100 fics where Asteria Greengrass is an inspid pureblood tropy wife like some blander version of Narcissa, where Rose Weasley is just as smart as her mother but prettier and has a blander, "more palatable" personality and so on and so forth. It's very dull." This can hold true of so much of fanon where we read the same things over and over again, and very little thought went into the depiction other than the conviction that "this is the way its supposed to be done."
Why would the next gen kids be just like their parents when they've had such different lives than their parents? Scorpius will never have had the same experience that Draco had of being the son of respected and powerful purebloods. Hugo isn't the sixth child in a family of seven overshadowed by a slew of successful brothers. Rose wasn't raised as an only child by a pair of Muggle dentists. (She of all of them might have the life most like her mother's.) None of Harry's kids lived in a cupboard under the stairs or is the youngest girl in a family of seven. None of the children will be brought up poor or unwanted.
I hate it when people don't think about their characters as individuals.
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Post by queenie on Apr 24, 2009 1:46:09 GMT -5
Okay. This is the summary that I've got so far:
When Mr Ollivander is captured from his wand shop in Diagon Alley, it sets in motion a startling chain of events: his grand-niece, Calliope, is recruited into the Order of the Phoenix. Mark Printzen, a Muggle unaware of her true identity, follows her from Boston to London. And Turpentine, a Death Eater more hungry for knowledge than for power, begins an experiment that threatens Harry Potter, the Ollivander family, and the course of history as we know it.
This tale from behind the scenes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince features Nymphadora Tonks, the lovelorn soldier, Luna Lovegood, trader of stories, and Dolores Umbridge, climbing her way to power once again. A tale of scientific inquiry and violations of justice, of the stranger in a strange land and the indissoluble family. A tale of friendship, bigotry, respect, insomnia, and love..
Do you think that has a good balance of character and plot? Or should we perhaps open up a whole new thread?
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Post by Author By Night on Apr 24, 2009 8:29:31 GMT -5
Okay. This is the summary that I've got so far: When Mr Ollivander is captured from his wand shop in Diagon Alley, it sets in motion a startling chain of events: his grand-niece, Calliope, is recruited into the Order of the Phoenix. Mark Printzen, a Muggle unaware of her true identity, follows her from Boston to London. And Turpentine, a Death Eater more hungry for knowledge than for power, begins an experiment that threatens Harry Potter, the Ollivander family, and the course of history as we know it.
This tale from behind the scenes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince features Nymphadora Tonks, the lovelorn soldier, Luna Lovegood, trader of stories, and Dolores Umbridge, climbing her way to power once again. A tale of scientific inquiry and violations of justice, of the stranger in a strange land and the indissoluble family. A tale of friendship, bigotry, respect, insomnia, and love.. Do you think that has a good balance of character and plot? Or should we perhaps open up a whole new thread? I don't think we need a new thread, since it's still on the topic of Original Characters. Your summary looks fine to me, although I'm not sure where you're going with this Turpentine bloke. Is his plan something that will be widely known? Because we'd probably have heard about it in canon. But if it's something Calliope merely discovers, that isn't widely known, then that's different. It's certainly intriguing. Why would the next gen kids be just like their parents when they've had such different lives than their parents? Scorpius will never have had the same experience that Draco had of being the son of respected and powerful purebloods. Hugo isn't the sixth child in a family of seven overshadowed by a slew of successful brothers. Rose wasn't raised as an only child by a pair of Muggle dentists. (She of all of them might have the life most like her mother's.) None of Harry's kids lived in a cupboard under the stairs or is the youngest girl in a family of seven. None of the children will be brought up poor or unwanted. I hate it when people don't think about their characters as individuals. This! I've seen this with 100% OC children too. In reality, kids are usually a combination of their parents, other family members, friends, with some life experiences that also impact them. In many ways I'm like my mother, but in many other ways I'm nothing like her. And the ways in which we are alike still come in different forms. So going back to OCs... while Luna's daughter might also be free-spirited, it might not be in the sense that she actually believes in Snorkacks and wears odd clothing, but rather, perhaps she likes to collect odd things and listens to very old wizarding music. She's still very unique like her mother, but her uniqueness shines through a different way. Rose Weasley might be a perfectionist, but perhaps it's more in a social sense, whereas Hermione's was in an academic sense.
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Post by Mirabelle on Apr 25, 2009 0:16:45 GMT -5
Sometimes children react to their parents by consciously or subconsciously choosing to be different. I see it most often in Scorpius fics--he decides to reject all the things his grandfather believes in and becomes a decent guy. But it could also be James who decides to differentiate himself from his father by excelling academically rather than living up to his grandfather's "troublemaking" namesakes. (Why don't people remember James was also Head Boy and therefore probably academically successful?) Or it could be Rose, resentful of a lifetime of nagging by her mother, who decides that she doesn't care about getting perfect grades and she'll just do the best she can without stressing over it.
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Post by queenie on Apr 27, 2009 21:48:51 GMT -5
AuthorByNight: Well, the project isn't well known, but as for what he's attempting, it is very ambitious. Probably he doesn't mean to change the course of history, but, it could be possible, and I wanted to make it sound exciting.
Mirabelle, I agree completely. My father is very into Westerns and the Old West aesthetic - we even have a bison skull hanging in our living room since time immemorial (to me, anyway), and so as a child I declared that I hated Westerns, hated deserts, and hated cowboys. It took a long time for him to break through to me with 'My Darling Clementine.' Oh, what a nightmare for Ron - a child that is resistant to the idea of enjoying Quidditch! Though considering that Quidditch appears to be the only pastime in the WW, I wonder how long that could last... Another thing to keep in mind is that from what we see in the Epilogue, it looks like Ron and Hermione are working very hard to include both Wizard and Muggle culture in their family. This will already make Rose and Hugo's values and tastes different from their parents - however, I can imagine that Harry and Ginny won't be very involved in the Muggle world. I can see Harry being rather anxious to leave that as much behind as possible.
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Post by Chocolatepot on Apr 28, 2009 13:59:32 GMT -5
vegablack - Dickens did write some total self-inserts. You know the characters like Oliver Twist and Smike and Little Nell, the children who get stomped on by the world? They're based on Dickens's unhappy childhood.
I've gotten to the point where MS fics like the one kelleypen described are like crack to me. Maybe it's nostalgia? Agreed with birdg on the blandness of many OCs - maybe the flaming Sues are more pleasing to me because of how vibrantly they angst and kick ass.
I disagree. I don't think a self-insertion is necessarily just the author put into the universe - it's a Mary Sue who reacts the way the author would like to react, who looks the way the author would like to look, who is loved by the characters the author loves, and when this wish fulfillment is blatantly obvious. Or maybe that's what you're saying? I've read quite a few stories where the main character was clearly the author all glammed up.
I think a good way to give flaws to a character is to imagine/write a few scenes of them, then think back on it as a reader and figure out what flaws you assume they have from it - she's hacking monsters down with a sword and seems cocky, he puts people down way more than is necessary, she folds like a card table, he becomes paralyzed with fear ... although this method probably requires too much thought than those who write Sues care about putting into character development.
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Post by Mirabelle on Apr 28, 2009 22:06:24 GMT -5
Completely off-topic, but I've been thinking that flag capture would be freaking awesome if played with flying brooms.
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Post by dancingpony on May 13, 2009 22:01:07 GMT -5
What a great description! I read a Mary Sue parody once in another fandom that was a perfect illustration of exactly this. I'll have to see if I can find it again -- even someone unfamiliar with the fandom would recognize "her." (The title of the piece was something like "Here Comes Mary Sue.")
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Post by vegablack on May 13, 2009 22:23:21 GMT -5
I'd love to read it. I'm a big fan of Mary Sue satires.
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Post by dancingpony on May 14, 2009 12:28:21 GMT -5
Here you go. It's a very short piece . . . but I don't know how Mary Sue could have been any more perfect. Chrys wrote this for a Scarecrow and Mrs King fan fic mailing group, but I'm glad she posted it on fan fiction net. I enjoyed seeing it again. www.fanfiction.net/s/2486407/1/Meet_Mary_Sue
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Post by siriusgirl on Jul 23, 2010 14:36:24 GMT -5
Well, one of my OCs was largely based on me, for a story my sister was writing. The story never happened, but I was rather fond of Amerah Patterson, so I kept her for Harry Potter vignettes, elaborated on her. From her soon she got a family. I wouldn't say she's a self-insertion, she's based on me and is a lot like me, but not exactly the same.
One thing that is crucial is to make a character believable. If you're character is a Slytherin, but one who is a good person, you still have to keep the traits that make a Slytherin, keep her cunning, ambitious etc. Even try looking up more things to help your character (does it sound lame if I say that my OC encourages me to research).
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Post by siriusgirl on Dec 14, 2010 22:26:48 GMT -5
First off, if you're writing a character they must be believable. If a character is a Slytherin, she has to be a believable Slytherin, doesn't mean she has to be evil, but she has to have the Slytherin traits. Or if she is a Gryffindor, show why she belongs there. Can be obvious or more subtle That's a very good point. I think that it's one thing to self insert a teeny bit - even JK Rowling admits that there's a bit of her in Harry and Hermione. However, she's also clearly a very different person. Ah, but here lies that crucial line between a character that the author feels a kinship with and a character who is a blatant self-insertion. There are so many hallmarks of a Mary Sue...the flawless physical beauty, the inappropriate anachronistic details, the overwrought silly name. SO, just for fun, here are my examples of OC possibilities, as if Mo herself were writing: OFC, no insertion: Harriet is a sweet, chubby Hufflepuff. She's pureblood, but not a bigot. However, she didn't believe Harry Potter until it was too late -- she thought he was just stirring up trouble, and she hates trouble! OFC, total insertion: Mo is a 40 year old American mum who just discovered her magical powers! Hijinks ensue as she must go back to school with a bunch of British teenagers! OFC, Mary Sue division: Meau VonShylteton is the beautiful heiress to a magical fortune. The boys of Hogwarts are all captivated by her from the moment her Ferrari pulls in to the Hogwarts driveway...but, this mysterious beauty with amber eyes and waist length Titian hair is hiding a tragic past. Only her brilliant mind and loving heart can save her when the truth comes out...SHE'S HARRY POTTER'S LONG LOST TWIN SISTER! Oh, lordy. I love to write intentionally bad stuff. I can't help it. It's a compulsion. OK, move over! I wanna have a shot I'll use my OC Laura Gamp, a Slytherin the same age as the Weasley twins. As Laura: Laura is an aristocratic pureblood Slytherin two years older than Harry, she is smart, determined, resourceful and ambitious, but can also be manipulative, vindictive and selfish. She does have a few friends. She dates and later marries Ciaran MacDougal. She is very attractive with dark brown hair, and a petite built. While having an aristocratic family does make things easier, she does face challenges along the wy Laura as a Mary-Sue: Mary-Lorraine MacShalter is a girl whose heart and soul as pure as snow, to the point no one knows why she's in Slytherin. Her kind heart and pure innocence bely a tragic past. . Everybody likes her and the boys fall all over themselves. This beauty has black hair, creamy skin and large violet eyes. She is the heiress to a wealthy wizard family. When she does do something wrong it is always forgiven based on her tragic past. Nothing she does is ever her fault. Mary-Lorraine was abandoned as a baby . . . Snape is her biological father from an illicit affair with Lily Potter when they were teens! LOL, the second one makes me laugh at how melodramatic it is, and make me gag.
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