30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 8)
8. 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.
Hey, meme, you realize using present tense lets me weasel out of that question right? Because I did, yes, when I was younger and I'm sure they had Mary Sue tendency at the least. Now I try to stick to canon characters and avoid the OCs.
There's nothing wrong with OCs, per se. There are OCs I like very much, in fact. Sometimes they're even necessary if there isn't a canon character that fills the role you need or you can't alter the story to work with existing characters. For instance, you want to write a story about two characters running a coffee shop post-canon. Two people cannot run a coffee shop alone. You may have to create customers or baristas.
I think so long as your OC doesn't overshadow the canon characters and is written like an actual person, not an ideal with an informed flaw, you're probably OK. Going back to the coffee shop example, the barista you've created is a nice person who occasionally shows up a few minutes late and makes really good lattes. If one of her bosses talks to her about being late and she agrees to do better and does it, and every so often someone compliments the latte that's not a big deal. These things happen, just make it detail not the front and center of the story. If the story is about her showing up an hour late, getting spoken to, and her flipping her hair and going on a tirade while the boss humbly backs down and begs forgiveness, or the shop has customers out the door solely for her wonderful, amazing, best-in-two-cities lattes and the fic runs on her being praised for it? Yeah. You have a problem. I wouldn't even want to read an original story about that, let alone one where I come for characters A and B and their quirky little coffee shop.
...
If I wind up writing a Doctrine of Labyrinths coffee shop AU, it's all your fault, meme.
Hey, meme, you realize using present tense lets me weasel out of that question right? Because I did, yes, when I was younger and I'm sure they had Mary Sue tendency at the least. Now I try to stick to canon characters and avoid the OCs.
There's nothing wrong with OCs, per se. There are OCs I like very much, in fact. Sometimes they're even necessary if there isn't a canon character that fills the role you need or you can't alter the story to work with existing characters. For instance, you want to write a story about two characters running a coffee shop post-canon. Two people cannot run a coffee shop alone. You may have to create customers or baristas.
I think so long as your OC doesn't overshadow the canon characters and is written like an actual person, not an ideal with an informed flaw, you're probably OK. Going back to the coffee shop example, the barista you've created is a nice person who occasionally shows up a few minutes late and makes really good lattes. If one of her bosses talks to her about being late and she agrees to do better and does it, and every so often someone compliments the latte that's not a big deal. These things happen, just make it detail not the front and center of the story. If the story is about her showing up an hour late, getting spoken to, and her flipping her hair and going on a tirade while the boss humbly backs down and begs forgiveness, or the shop has customers out the door solely for her wonderful, amazing, best-in-two-cities lattes and the fic runs on her being praised for it? Yeah. You have a problem. I wouldn't even want to read an original story about that, let alone one where I come for characters A and B and their quirky little coffee shop.
...
If I wind up writing a Doctrine of Labyrinths coffee shop AU, it's all your fault, meme.