You write Tom POV so well, but all the Tom’s in your stories still feel distinct? How do you do that?? I could not even write him normally (not that Tom is normal ever) let alone versions of him that all feel like him but are slightly different for each story T.T
this is so nice, thank you so much!
i find the first trick is isolating your character’s core traits. then, once you have a sense of their most integral parts, you can fiddle with external stuff (environment, relationships, etc) without losing their integrity
for au’s especially (where the question becomes “how do i make my character, whose entire sense of self was shaped by something—like the existence of magic—feel like himself without that thing”) this is actually super fun if you enjoy character work!!
it starts similarly enough to rebuilding anything, really. if you’re going to take an object apart and put it back together with different pieces, you have to find substitutions that can fit where the originals did
sorry for my metaphor, pfft, but consider the ‘existence of magic’ we mentioned earlier. so much of tom’s character motivation stems from that—so, without magic, does he just cease to exist?
no! that’s anti fanfic propaganda!!!
we just have to give him some narrative equivalent that he can treat the same way (like chess in tbok, or piano in steps, for example)
he’s an obsessive, controlling, ambitious sorta guy, and without that, he wouldn’t feel like tom! so redirecting those traits can make him seem authentic even when the original motivation is gone
making him prodigious, giving him that tom-like superiority complex, feels canonical because it is. and shifting these traits onto something other than magic is what gives you room to play with what, exactly, that thing is
for my fics that still feature magic—which is, admittedly, most of them—i think the distinctions in tom come from 1.) their current circumstances in that moment of time, and 2.) the destabilization harry ends up doing to them
people change over the course of their lives, and different phases give me a lot to work with! is he young, and more malleable, like in fiawy? then his fixation on harry, his possessiveness, etc, can branch into so many logical changes over time
and as long as you keep the spirit of their canonical traits alive, they’re going to become distinct from your other work on their own, because the things that happen over the course of a fic should show up in their interior world!
its just like you and me. our experiences leave a mark, and shape us going forward, in ways you don’t even need to consciously try for :)
i will say that other people have less character focused ways of writing—my povs are very interior—so i can’t help much out of my wheelhouse, sorry! i’m sure you could write a wonderful tom, though <3
i’m answering this a little high, i gotta be honest, and i did not realize i had written so much 😁👍 but i hope any of this is helpful, and i love you!
