Introducing an Original Character into Fan Fiction

It can be hard work inserting an original character (OC) into your fan fiction. Your readers tend to be much more unforgiving of them than the cast borrowed from somebody else.

They are there to read expansions upon the canon. There are personalities, whom they know and love, living again in the out-pouring of your prose.

Familiarity is the key. Any company trying to launch a new product against the competition of a well-known brand name could tell you that. Adding an OC requires breaking exactly the same mindset.

Moreover, there is easy ammunition already piled up and ready to hurl at your work. Just one person commenting with an accusation of a Mary-Sue and your story is sunk.

Yet, if you can get it right, then your original character can lift your fan fiction into another level. You will have successfully written something that stands out amongst the same old, same old. It's a risk worth taking, if you wish to produce a rich storytelling, which doesn't seek to mindlessly reproduce the canon.

After all, that's already been done and better. It's the reason that you're all here.

Many ardent fans will immediately shriek and run away at the barest sniff of an original character in any fan fiction.

Too stung by Mary-Sues, for some it's a reaction born of bitter experience. Too many bad original characters have ruined what could have been a beautiful addition to the fandom library.

For others, it's the mere presence of someone not conceived in canon. This was not what they came here for; it's false advertising.

Make no mistake, your first and biggest hurdle is seamlessly allowing your character to gain entry into the tale, without your readers closing ranks.

The trick is to look at this as you would a real life scenario.

Who are you most likely to warm to:

• a stranger off the street, who just barges into your house?
• a stranger who arrives with your friend, who enters at your invitation after being introduced?

Unless you're extremely trusting, my guess is that the majority of people would have opted for the latter. This is good etiquette for both your home and your fan fiction.

Original characters will be accepted more readily if they are first viewed through the eyes of an imported canon member. It doesn't have to be a big deal; in fact, it's probably better that you don't make a huge fuss.

Allow the familiar person to look at them, speak to them, check them out or interact with them. If you have plans to make your character play a substantial role in the story later, then a more complete introduction might be appropriate.

But the longer you spend on that, then the more likely it is that alarm bells will sound in the minds of your readers. Baby, gentle steps will win the day; then the stranger in the house has a chance at becoming an old friend too.

Anyone walking into a crowded room might scan them en masse, but they will identify with nobody.

It's a general melee and a back-drop to a scene. The people populating that crowd are like extras milling around the screen in a television show. They will be forgotten a second later.

If you want your original characters to blend effortlessly into your fan fiction, then they can't all appear at once. There's no empathy for a mob here nor anywhere.

Your great storyline might demand it though, so some preparation is clearly necessary.

Allow for several paragraphs, if not whole chapters, where your readers are led by the hand into meeting all of these newcomers. Your canon character will need to be in some situation where people arrive, singly or in small groups, to be gradually drawn into the narrative. A party is good; or an interview process.

Bear in mind that the more people being introduced, the less likely it is that they will individually stick in your reader's mind.

I once had thirteen significant original characters to insert into a fan fiction. It took me about a third of the novel to maneuver the majority into the cast.

First I had two main canon people looking at an internet forum. They encountered three of the OCs there and discussed them. My readers met them through the eyes of familiar protagonists, which served as the aforementioned introduction.

Next my canon characters visited a launch party, attended by the three newcomers. By now, those reading could fix them as acquaintances and position them in the world of this story. I was able to use this setting to sneak in a couple of other OCs. They stayed on the outskirts of the narrative, until the canon people could draw them in.

Thereafter, each time the group met, another person could be added to the encounter. The others were alluded to in conversation, which meant that it wasn't a shock when they turned up. Never, at any time, did I allow any of them to run away with the storyline. The main characters were always the focus around which the supporting cast orbited.

By moving a mention into a meeting, then an acquaintance into a familiar face, my readers were gradually able to recognize the new names. After a while, they could even empathize and identify with them.

It took until the very last act before the final OC turned up. He had been talked about throughout, so the reaction was unanimously one of welcome. By the end of the novel, I had a much wider scope for story-telling, than the restrictive world bequeathed to me by the canon's author.

If you want your people to live and breathe on the page, then you will have to write them with passion and soul.

They don't have to agree with canon characters, nor even like them. They certainly shouldn't be carbon copies of anyone already well-known amongst the cast. They should absolutely possess their own minds.

This doesn't mean that your OC has to take over the story. There would soon be a readership rebellion if they did that. But it's the kiss of death for any character which appears woefully two-dimensional.

They're not there as wall-paper, but as important figures there to enrich the scenes that are unfolding on the page.

Everyone should be left with the sense that we've merely touched an otherwise full life, which just happens to have momentarily run parallel with your canon-based world. They populate the universe through which familiar fan fiction personae move. Done well, their realism reflects back upon the main characters, enhancing them too.

This advice holds true regardless of the intended role of your creation within the narrative. It might be a brief encounter, perhaps someone behind the counter selling goods to a canon member; or it might be an individual destined to seriously impact upon their lives. In both cases, your original character needs to be written as a fully-fledged, animated personality.

Believing in your person is the first step towards your readers accepting, then identifying with them. Soon it won't matter that they weren't in the story that inspired it all. You will have formed your own fanon cast.

The images illustrating this page are all based on my original characters. I'm a writer, not an artist, so naturally I didn't draw a single one of them.

The credit must go to just some of my wonderful readers, who have all accepted my own OCs over the years. They were each kind enough to put brush to canvas to bring them even more vividly to life.

The artists are:  Spoiled-kitten; Miyamashi; BrookeStardust; A-pseudonym; Melissa; and Jenn.

I've been writing fan fiction for four years and I've managed to gain hits in the hundreds of thousands reading my work. Last night, on one of my forums, people lined up to tell me that they really wouldn't mind reading spin-off stories about my original characters.

I tell you this solely so you know that it's possible to create OCs that work.