Session 5: Characterization I

[waldzell]

AnnouncementsThe third assignment will be posted in a friends-locked post after this session. I also thought I should remind everyone that if you're choosing to take the fanfic option, please remember to leave me a link to your fic before the end of this course. The fanfic will be accepted as long as it's complete (or at least a significant

Comments

[aishuu]

Characterization is key in AU, since it's love of the characters which motivate fanfic writers to create. For me, I try to keep the "core" traits in tact - usually value system, basic personality. To continue with your Tezuka reference, he's always going to be reserved - unless there's some major catilist that changes the fundamentals of his personality. If there IS something that changes his personality, that needs to be addressed directly in the plot, and serve as a plot point, hopefully. If I was creating a strip club AU, for instance, I would not have him "on stage" unless I was able to create a backround which was able to justify his sudden shift of personality. I'd probably have him as the club owner, a business he'd inherited from his father. Character "placement" in AU can compliment character personality.

[sefilin]

I agree. I don't think I could cope with a Tezuka who either burst into tears with reasonable frequency, or started spouting over-the-top poetry.

I could possibly accept a temporary personality change via Inui juice or spiked drinks (or in a future fic, him out drinking with work buddies at an izakaya), but any permanent change would need to occur gradually. The pacing of changes has as much to do with whether I find them feasible as justification for the changes.

[sodzilla]

The most important thing is to avoid perfection. If you're going to change one thing in a character's background or personality, you've got to remember that the result won't necessarily be perfect.

Say, for example, you've got a character who's bitter and untrusting of others because he grew up as an orphan on the streets, and you want to look at how it might've been if he'd been taken in by a family. So far, so good, he won't have the same issues - but might he have ended up obsessed with finding out what happened to his birth parents? Or insecure because he never felt his adoptive parents loved him as much as their own children?

[wingdance]

Mm... while characters can start out having a similar personality in the AU as they had in canon, if the circumstances are very different, the characters end up completely different from their canon selves. And while I think it's silly to think a person would be the same if their life had been different, still, they can end up as really OOC in the end, even if the change in personality was done well. I guess what I'm saying is that in AU, OOC isn't necessarily a bad thing, if it's done properly and with good reason.