Character Counts
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Character Counts |
| Creator: | Merlin Missy |
| Date(s): | October 26, 2007 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom, focus on Batman |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Character Counts |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Character Counts is a 2007 essay by Merlin Missy.
It has the subtitle: "Batman Is Unimpressed By Your Emo OC."
Series
This essay is part of a series called Dr. Merlin's Soapbox.
Some Topics Discussed
- characterization, original characters, how we portray canon characters
- know your characters, know their history, make them act like actual humans (unless they are aliens)
- a focus on Batman
- run your original characters through a litmus test
From the Essay
Setting aside the psychology, your characters, being from an established universe, have pre-set jobs, responsibilities, family ties, and any other number of details that make up a character. These feed into your characters' desires just as much as those longing gazes over the oysters and Cabernet Whatitsface. As an example, my current passion revolves around superheroes. Capes, tights, overblown egos saving the world every ten minutes, pile it on. The characters I write about want to protect people, as many as they can. Sometimes that desire runs amok and we get delicious little AUs where they become fascist dictators. Sometimes they don't manage to fulfil that desire, and we get angst in heaping spoonfuls from the guilt. If I'm writing Batman, I get both. Yay!
Your character wants to do his or her job, and except in cases of slacker characters, they tend to want to do their jobs better than anyone else, often because other people will die if they don't, and so we tend to write about people who are Really Really Good at what they do. Some have country-sized egos to go with that (Rodney McKay, I'm looking at you). Some have inferiority complexes because they screwed up once and never want it to happen again.
Know your characters. Know their histories. Know their backstories or make them up in your head if there's no canon. Find out why your character does what he or she does and what he or she is afraid of. Desires to keep things from happening (again) are just as important or more so to your characters are the desire to get into someone's pants. If you know what your characters want and you know what they don't want, you'll go into your scene with a stronger understanding of what's going on between the two of them over the soup.
...other characters (canonical and otherwise) might interfere with your 'shipping desires. That doesn't make them evil characters, or even poorly-written ones, and digging for reasons to dislike them comes across as small-minded and vindictive, and it leads to bad characterization in fanfic.
What about original characters (OCs)? Aren't they all Mary Sues, author inserts and wastes of time? Of course not. Some are, sure. That's why we have litmus tests and writing guides and how-not-to lists, because despite the fact that Sues tend to be a "symptom" of the problem of bad writing, naming them and fixing their issues goes a long way towards ameliorating the biggest problem, which is not taking enough time thinking through the story and characters before starting a new story.
OCs are not inherently bad by nature. Not even if they're the POV characters in stories. Not even if they've got the classic violet eyes and gorgeous hair and sad backstories. (Okay, all those things together are probably a good indicator, but hey, colored contact lenses are cheap and everyone's in therapy these days for something, so you never know.) The chief problem with newbie writers creating OCs is the lack of forethought into the desires of the OCs and the surrounding characters in the chosen fictional universe.
Batman does not care about your OC's troubled past, except so far as it helps him solve the case. He is not impressed by her violet eyes, her pretty hair, or her musical abilities. In fact, heap on enough cool features, and he'll likely start suspecting she's a supervillain. If she starts dating Robin, he is not going to welcome her into the Batfamily with open arms and show her the Batcave and ask Alfred to make her sandwiches. He is going to set a tracking device on her and find out things like who her family really is and how often she brushes her teeth, because Batman is a big, scary freak that way.