Writing a Character Arc for a Canon Character

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Writing a Character Arc for a Canon Character
by bex1112

Writing fanfiction poses different challenges than writing an original work. The greatest among these challenges is probably how to write a new story with characters that already exist. For a story to work characters have to grow and change, they need to find themselves in new ways. There needs to be a character arc.

When you're writing an original story with original characters this is much easier, because the characters are your own. You the author get to choose their personalities, their motives. However the duel blessing and curse of fanfiction is that the characters already exist, they already have an established way to act. There's something of an art to balancing the already established aspects of a canon character with their arc in your story. So in this little chapter, hopefully without restating what's already been said, I'll try to show you how I go about writing a character arc for a canon character.

Let's start with an example. Say you're writing a Harry Potter fanfic and you decide that Harry is going to kill Hermione. So you write a heart wrenching confrontation, an epic fight scene, a dramatic death. You research every fact and figure, the scene is perfect, beautiful, a real tear jerker. Except everyone hates it. The reason? Harry isn't just going to pop up out of the blue and kill Hermione. Duh.
So what's the solution? You can't write a story where nothing happens, that would be boring. Harry can't stay at Hogwarts forever, there won't always be another Death Star for Luke to blow up, the Winchester brothers can't kill the same demons over and over.

Characters have to have a character arc, otherwise life will be boring for everyone. As fanfiction writers we get the great pleasure of picking up characters that we already know and love and throwing them into totally new situations. However instead of focusing on how to make that new situation convincing I'm going to talk about something that I believe is much more important. Thoughts and dialogue. Because if you can convince readers that what your character is saying/thinking is something that the canon character would actually say/think you're already three quarters of the way to "convincingville".

Look at it this way, would Barry Allen ever say, "Before we continue, we should thoughtfully plan out this excursion, thoroughly examining every possibility and event. By doing so, we shall reduce our risk by 72%."? No! Because Barry never plans out anything. Is Sherlock Holmes going to say, "What's up my dudes!"? No! Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be caught dead saying "my dudes". Do you want to make Peter Parker think to himself, "Hmm, there's somebody dying over there but it's not my problem."? Of course not. Because as he said himself, "With great power comes great responsibility."

These are all examples of characters acting out of character, and your readers will notice. Characters are people. Sure, people are unpredictable. But people also have a set of core values, an internal code of sorts. People stick to their codes, and so they will always act within a set of parameters. You need to make sure you keep your canon character acting within their canon internal codes, otherwise they'll be acting out of character which is what we don't want. You can have the greatest plot of all time and it'll mean nothing at all if you can't imitate a characters speech and thought. The mark of a truly great fanfiction writer is one which can not only create an incredible plotline but also imitate a canon characters speech pattern.

Let's take a look at an example in my own story, The New Avenger. Picture this, Percy Jackson is hanging out in Central Park with some mortal friends. Suddenly without a scrap of warning a monster appears. Instead of going after Percy it begins attacking the mortals. What does Percy do?
In canon, Percy never hung out in Central Park, never had mortal friends. This is uncharted ground, what to do? Well first, don't panic (I panic way too often. A panicked author is not a good author. Neither is a sleep deprived one, trust me. When you're trying to edit a chapter with no vowels you'll see what I mean). After you don't panic (or stop panicking) think about similar situations. When Percy gets attacked in the canon timeline what does he do? Does he wait for the monster to come to him? Does he curl up in a ball and cry? Does he run away screaming?
No, of course not. Based on his past actions we can pretty reasonably assume he's going to taunt the monster, call it names. "Hey! Snake hair! Remember me!" We know Percy lacks decision making skills, so given the choice to run away from certain death or towards certain death it's pretty easy to know what he'll do. "So I do the only reasonable thing. I run. Right at her."

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