samsom | 30 day fanfic writing meme Day 7

7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?

Not really, since I’m not likely to read fic about a character I don’t like. However, Vivere, by Rheanna, did the impossible in making Lindsay and Kate extremely interesting characters I enjoyed reading about. She made me care about Faith in more than just that abstract ‘oh, she’s on my TV’ kind of way by giving her her own ‘voice’ in a way that I don’t think either AtS or BtVS ever succeeded at. But she didn’t change my opinion of the canon portrayals. She just made me think she’s a damned good writer. LOL

A good writer can draw you into a fic. If Rheanna, or Yahtzee for that matter, wrote about Xander and Willow, I’d probably read it because I know they’ll give these two characters something through their writing that I’d be very interested in reading. So it’s the writer’s talent that matters, not necessarily the character themselves.

The trick is getting me to click the fic, though.

Okay, I’m going to contradict myself here. In order to click a fic, there needs to be a character I want to read about – let’s call this character Spordelia. I will click the link because I know Spordelia will be in it, and then if the writing is good, I will get drawn into the other characters, not just the one I was in it for in the first place. This happened with Vivere. Even the Bangel parts made me sad in that fic, for Angel mostly. Rheanna made ALL the characters interesting and she made me care about them.

In the end though, it still doesn’t make me appreciate a character on either show if there was no appreciation to begin with.

Okay, maybe I ought to add a disclaimer in here. I am in no way a self-reflective writer. I write mostly by instinct, and I depend on

damnskippytoo to mold the results into a cohesive whole (something I will always be grateful to her for). So in answering questions about writing, I tend to ramble and have half expressed thoughts that go nowhere. Don't expect anything more than that, you'll probably be disappointed. /disclaimer