Withdrawal and writing woes

Withdrawal
My singing lessons are on hold for the moment as the music school is closed for the summer break. It's only been 2 weeks since my last lesson - I'm suffering from withdrawal already.

Speaking of withdrawal, one of my favourite TV series is also on a  break, so I have been filling the void by avidly reading ... *gasp* ... fan fiction. I know that there are very varied opinions on fan fiction from people that despise it via those that don't understand why anyone would write or read it to those that love it.

Fan fiction
Personally I adore fan fiction, probably because I have been creating it since I was a wee youngster - only I've never written it down. I've been a voracious reader from a young age and I have a very vivid imagination. I would get really caught up in the stories I read and then be really disappointed when they ended. So I made up more stories set in the worlds I'd read about. Once I got older and was introduced to long-running TV-series, some of those worlds captured my imagination as well. I never bothered writing any of it down, which I quite regret now as it would've been fun to look back on. And I definitely would never have dared mention it to anyone for fear of people thinking I was really weird for getting so caught up in the stories I read / saw.

But the last couple of years I have found these repositories of fan fiction out there on the intarwebz and have marvelled at how many others there are in the world that enjoy it too. I find it fascinating how different people pick up on different things just in one episode of a show and it sets them off on a storyline that can keep going for many chapters. Sure, a lot of fan fiction is romantically inclined, whether between existing characters or existing character plus original character. But why is that a bad thing? There is a reason the romance genre in books and movies has always flourished - it is obviously popular.

One complaint I've seen is that people only write fan fiction, romantically angled ones in particular, to get to put a character in there as an avatar of themselves. Again, to me that doesn't seem like a bad thing - as long as the original character is a good one that fits in. In fact modelling a character on yourself can be an easy way to get going with writing. And one has to consider that fan fiction is written because the author enjoys it, not because they get paid for it.

Wish fulfillment proxies
I won't deny that I have seen a lot of original characters that are complete wish-fulfillment proxies. They have the beauty of a model, the body of a porn star, the intellect of Stephen Hawking, the martial art prowess of Jet Li, can shoot like a sniper, the cooking skills of Nigella Lawson AND everyone likes them. They have no flaws, are just amazing at everything and the canon characters just don't know how they got along without the original character around.

Now browsing around a bit I came across the term Mary Sue that seems to be used to describe this phenomenon. There are even tests out there that are supposed to tell you whether your character is a Mary Sue. My main problem with the Mary Sue concept is that it seems to focus inordinately on whether the character is an avatar of the author rather than whether the character is a wish-fulfillment proxy.

In these tests a lot of questions are about whether the character has a name like the author's, dresses like the author, has the same interests as the author. To me this is completely irrelevant. What matters is the quality of the character development and the writing in general. At the end of the day I'm never going to meet the author, so how would I know that the character's hobbies are based on theirs?

Easy mistakes to make
Writing a main character that is over-the-top unbalanced is a common mistake made by novice writers. It is, hopefully, all part of the learning process. But it is very unhelpful for the development of the writer if the focus of the critique is on similarites between the character and the author rather than on the balance of the character itself.

As a reader I have encountered many stories where I really enjoyed the idea, but it got pulled down by certain common mistakes / cliches. And in most cases it is such a shame as the story itself was good - the character/s just needed a little more rounding off and / or the writing needed a bit of polish.

A balanced character
The key problem I have seen is that of the balanced character. Someone can be good at something without having to be the best in the world ever. A character that happens to have a good singing voice and enjoys singing is fine. A character whose voice is so amazing that they really should be a superstar and regularly mesmerises people with their angelic song - a bit OP*, as we say in gaming circles. (*over powered)

On the flip side, someone can have emotional baggage that makes them struggle to form long-term relationships - but it doesn't have be in the form of abuse / violence / being kidnapped by slave traders. We humans are quite capable of being complex emotionally without having endured things that would have you spending the rest of your life in a padded cell gibbering incoherently.

Descriptions
Descriptions are good, but another common mistake is to pile them all on top of each other. The author probably has an incredibly clear image of what the character looks like and it is easy to get carried away when trying to put across this to the reader. You don't want to start the story with a paragraph (or more) listing the character's hair colour, eye colour, body shape, clothes and every single accessory. Think long-term - you want to drip-feed the reader descriptions over time. You are not trying to give the reader a colour photograph, you want to give them a rough sketch focussing only on the important details - their imagination will do the rest.

The crew
The final thing on my list is not to do with the character itself, but how everyone else in the cast is written around it. One of the questions on the Mary Sue tests is whether all other characters like the original character. The question is relevant, but a bit too broad I think. When you meet a new person it is highly unusual that you will instantly like them, but it is equally unusual that you will instantly dislike them. Most of the time our feelings for a new person will be neutral and when we feel neutral, don't-really-know-you-yet towards someone new, we will usually be nice to them. Unless there is a very good reason to trust / distrust them, of course. So being treated ok is definitely not a sign of a wish-fulfillment character. It is the over-the-top reactions to the character that might signal that - whether it be positive or negative.

So, ehm, end of lecture I guess... I got on a bit of a roll with that one. ;-)

(Yes, I might just be working on a piece of fanfic - but after unloading all my opinions I may not dare let it out in public view. It is after all a lot easier to edit others' work than creating your own. :-) )