Comments | casfic: Creating characters and wasting them

casfic

Creating characters and wasting them

Sep 23, 2003 19:35

I got an email yesterday from someone telling how much they had enjoyed reading PWK. Apart from the warm fuzzies this gave me, they made an interesting comment about one of the characters. They told me I even made them care about Meredith, the Auror who appears in chapter 13 ( Read more... )

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Comments 6

narcissam September 23 2003, 11:42:22 UTC

Yes, I hate wasting characters! I particularly feel bad about Theodoric Dunstan who showed up for two paragraphs to have a tiff with Barty Crouch Sr. and then headed off for the United States of America, never to be seen again. I felt for him! I thought he had a point in choosing to flee with his family rather than fight. And now he's entirely out of the picture. Darnit!

BTW, Cas, expect Chapter II of the revised 1975 in your mailbox soon.

NM

casfic September 23 2003, 13:30:41 UTC

In some ways doing doing something like that is worse than not just making good use of the character. Here you've written him out in such a way that it makes it very hard to bring him back. Bummer when that happens.

Cas

PS will look forward to ch2 of 1975

shelaghc September 23 2003, 13:00:39 UTC

Just a silly question perhaps? And maybe I'm forgetting something I already knew...

But what's an MOM character?

Thank you for your kind indulgence.

casfic September 23 2003, 13:26:44 UTC

MOM = Ministry of magic. Standard rent-an-Auror character of the shoot first ask questions later variety. :)

shelaghc September 23 2003, 13:35:28 UTC

I knew I was going to be embarrassed.....

I was thinking it was writer lingo for something entirely different.

:-Þ

(The comment has been removed)

casfic September 23 2003, 23:52:24 UTC

I fled a thread on FA a few months ago, where people insisted that you have to know the characters you write/create through and through

I've seen similar sorts of bullshit there. The proponants are usually people whose fics I've never found worth reading. I could care less whether I know if my characters like ice cream - or like you, I only do so if it's relevent to the storyline. Take the example of Meredith, I gave above - I don't think I ever decided what his first name was - it simply wasn't important.

I do recycle characters though. Denis Jacks from All Debts, first appeared as Ferenc Lazlow, an inspector in the Budapest police in an Angel fanfic I wrote a couple of years ago. I'm using him again in the piece of original fiction I'm writing at the moment. If there is a situation where you can re-use a good character it's such a waste not to!