Pretty much all my stories so far have featured a core OC & I realised today that for the couple of one-shots I’ve done, I have a passing relationship with those OCs, but for the longer stories, it’s like I live in the OC’s head. Part of it is no doubt the nature of spending months writing from a character’s perspective, but it feels odd now that I’ve recognised it. Like having an alter ego or a twin.
Does this make any sense to any other writers or am I just talking complete nonsense?
Makes sense to me! Whether OC or figuring out a canon character, the longer a work is the more involved and developed you get with writing them. Even if you write some connected oneshots with the same characters, there is a bit of a separation there with how they are between those different stories. In a longer story, your brain gets into the character’s progression. Or regression, depending on how the story goes.
I think it makes sense. It’s like acting, you embody the character as you write them and they become a familiar yet separate identity from your own.
If you ever get into reading note/reflections of bigger-named writers talking about their process, you will see this a lot. As far as I know, this is a very normal thing.
I think the nature of writing characters is forming an idea of who they might be as people. The longer you spend with them, the more you get to know them and maybe the more attached you get as well.
😅 Glad to know it’s not uncommon. I guess it makes sense. You have weeks or months (or years) trying to figure out these characters in your head (& without any formative material, in the case of OCs) so they make more of an impression than characters you dip into for one-shots or short stories.
I realise it may be part of the reason I enjoy reading others’ longfics as well, so long as the characters are consistent. Even if it’s a canon character, I feel there’s always the writer’s interpretation of them in the story & some of those interpretations are wonderful especially for my favourite characters, even if they totally diverge from what I know of that character. I don’t really consider OOC to be a negative in that case. But if the character does something that’s OOC within the context of the version of them in the story or becomes inconsistent with themselves, then I’m likely to drop the fic.
I agree that OOC isn’t necessarily bad. I also agree that OOC within the context of the fic itself (or even the original story) bothers me. I’ve absolutely read novels where a character suddenly deviates heavily from their developed persona and it almost always seems to be a matter of convenience. E.g., to justify making them a villain or a less desirable love interest. It makes me crazy.
Yep. Like the “idiot ball” concept in TV, random sudden OOC is almost certainly down to plot needing a convenient reason for something to be crowbarred in & the writer not having a more elegant option. Very off-putting imo.
