If you’ve begun to write original fiction, how have you managed the transition to original characters and worlds? I’m finding I’m having a hard time making them feel real, and to even write anything meaningful/descriptive/emotive. It’s just so easy to jump into a fanfic idea and I know how those characters would react. But all the exercises I’ve found online just feel so silly or fake? Such as “what’s your OC’s favourite pizza?”
Ooof. Yeah. I have some thoughts on this.
For background, I have written both fic and original novels. I started writing fic in 2014, and was somewhat successful when I was posting. A couple of my fics still have people reading them, mostly The Green Girl and Lady of the Lake. At one point, my fic Rebuilding was the most popular fic on FFN.
I queried for the first time in 2017 and signed with my current agent in 2024. In that seven-year time period, I wrote 12 novels, queried 7 of them, and learned a lot about making the transition from fic to original.
(What is querying, you ask? To get a book in most bookstores, you need to 'traditionally' publish with a publishing company, and they, mostly, only consider books sent to them by literary agents. To get a literary agent you send a specific type of letter selling the idea of your book, which is called a query. Which sucks, and people estimate the percent of people who query successfully is in the single digits. This isn't super relevant to the actual question, but normal people are sometimes like, 'what is that' and part of the bona fide of how I am qualified to answer this question is that I was both reasonably successful at getting people to read fic and have crossed through at least one difficult gate on the road to tradpub.)
Onto answering the question now that the background is established. Feel free to skip to here if you are reading!!! You won't miss anything!
I hate those stupid exercises. What pizza does my MC like? So unimportant in the "why is she acting this way?" universe.
In Harry Potter fic it was SUPER EASY to do write believable reactions and interactions because we all know the characters' backgrounds. Hermione is a fish out of water with zero social skills who organizes things like her life depends on it. Harry was horribly abused by his relatives. Ron is poor and defensive about it. Draco is rich and spoiled and has helicopter parents who buy his way out of any problems (until they can't). This lets us put them in situations and have them react according to those emotional wounds. Each of these characters will react differently if, for example, they go to get coffee in a coffee shop AU and the barista looks them up and down and then turns away and chats with a co-worker rather than make them a latte, and we all feel confident writing that story because we have such a firm grasp on who they are and how they'd behave. People can also read it without us having to tell them anything about these characters because they already know!
So, how to do that in original fic?
OH MY GOD, IT IS SO HARD.
I mean, it must be easier for other people to make the jump, because it took me 12 books and 7 years, but HOLY SHIT is it hard.
When I start a book, these are the things I want to know about a character (not their stupid pizza preference)
Name:
The Lie They Believe:
What They Want/Fear:
What They Really Need:
The Stakes if They Don’t Get It:
To figure this out, I need to know what part of their background traumatized them. (And I probably want to figure out the basic plot of the story, what they will need to do, and make the trauma the one that is going to make it hardest for them to manage the challenge placed in front of them.)
SO...
Let us say I am going to write a sports romance. It's going to be set in a college, and it's going to be a M/F rom-com and the female main character is going to get a job tutoring the male character, and, because this is a romance, they are going to fall in love.
OK, cool.
What lie does she believe that is going to make this hard for her? Maybe she faked her way into this tutoring job and doesn't actually know shit about math, and is one chapter ahead of this guy, and thinks she is too stupid to do this (because her abusive parents always told her she was stupid and she internalized it). Now we've got a girl who is going to be abrasive and defensive because she very much doesn't want this guy to figure out she isn't actually qualified. (Gonna make her a math whiz who has no idea it's not normal to self-teach at the speed she is because her self-esteem is shit because I want this to be a lie she believes, not an accurate assessment of herself.)
OK, what does she want/fear? She wants to keep this job because she needs the money to stay in school and she fears getting found out. Bam, we have external stakes. She is sure she has to manage this tutoring gig or she can't afford school and has to go back home.
What does she really need? To unload the toxic "you are worthless and stupid" messages her miserable parents embedded in her.
What are the stakes if she doesn't? Well, this is a romance, so she's gonna miss out on true love if she can't figure out her shit.
Then you do him, and you give him a wound that clashes with hers. And then you put them in the plot and let those emotional issues work themselves out.
BUT you don't need to know her eye color to start, or his favorite food, or the name of her dog. You will figure that out as you tell the story about them.
You will be tempted to data dump all this information when you draft but my recommendation is to treat it like you are writing an AU of your favorite characters, that the audience does know things, and then go back and work in character background information when you edit. BECAUSE you will have to do multiple drafts. The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. The second draft is just cleaning it up so all the things you figured out in that first draft don't contradict one another.
tl;dr - don't worry about all the tiny details of your character up front. start with the lie they believe, what they want, what they'll do to get it, and what the stakes are if they fail and let the rest of the details appear as you write. And give yourself permission to edit. don't worry about making it great the first draft - it's gonna take more drafts to get a rich, layered story than it would with fic.
OK, I have rambled a lot, and I hope this is at all helpful!
Some books I think are good for making the transition from fic to original:
Story Genius
Save the Cat Writes a Novel
kaledo-art
2087
gummygunk
blakekathryn
titsay
annaxmalina
pixelskylines
