Characterisation and Canon

[quillori]

Further to a discussion elsewhere as to what counts as OOC, it struck me that there are a number of approaches to writing fanfic, each of which aims to a have a different relationship to canon, and that there is little point discussing appropriate characterisation without considering

Comments

[quillori]

That's a very good point. I did sort of start this post with the idea of making it easier to get on with a certain sort of canon purist: you know, divide up the territory and let them have their area and the rest of us have ours, and make sure any debate was properly focused on what writers tried to do with their stories / what readers liked to get out of them, rather than pointless cries of "But that's not canon!". But I suspect that even my Category 1 is too broad for some people, since it still has an element of 'what would happen if', not just 'more of what's on screen / on the page'. And you're quite right, however you start out, if you write a long story, or set it well in the past or future, or make it strongly AU, you are likely to end up in Category 2 whether you wanted to or not, because it just isn't realistically possible to stick close to canon.

I think I would argue some AUs can be Category 1, if they are tightly focused on asking what we would expect to follow from some specific change to canon, but of course, what should be expected to follow may be some pretty major changes in characterisation. So, Category 1 because the aim is to make a sort of deduction from canon, rather than just go with some possibility canon suggested to you, but on the other hand, no, not necessarily at all to your taste if what you're interested in is sticking close to canon.